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Canadian Adaptive Snowsports Ski and Snowboard Festival at Kimberley Alpine Resort

The 45th annual Canadian Adaptive Snowsports (CADS) Festival is underway at Kimberley Alpine Resort this week, from March 20 to 24.
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The 45th annual Canadian Adaptive Snowsports (CADS) Festival at Kimberley Alpine Resort. Pictured is Festival Manager Elisa Marin-Couture (left) and Amy Royea, Operations Manager. Paul Rodgers photo.

The 45th annual Canadian Adaptive Snowsports (CADS) Festival is underway at Kimberley Alpine Resort this week, from March 20 to 24.

This is a country-wide festival organized by CADS National and is week of inclusion, fun and freedom for people living with disabilities to participate in skiing and snowboard tailored to their specific needs.

“We were here four years ago and we’re still here because Kimberley is like home for us,” said CADS Festival Manager Elisa Marin-Couture. “It’s really adapted for our participants, it’s a nice place, we always have great weather, so we like to come to Kimberley.”

Before Kimberley, CADS was in Sun Peaks and before that out east at Mont-Sainte-Anne, with the goal of giving as many people the chance to participate as possible.

“It’s to promote fun, adaptive, respectful skiing and snowboarding for our population with disabilities,” Marin-Couture said. “We just want to make sure that that population can shine like the others and show them that they can do sports and they can have fun on the snow also.”

The event offers lessons to all skill levels from beginner all the way up to Black Diamond Racing. Instructors are trained to support students with visual impairments, physical impairments and cognitive impairments and ASD.

The event kicked off on Sunday with an opening ceremony and the registration and base of operations table opening at KAR’s plaza.

Lessons are offered from 9 until noon with afternoons geared towards the instructors, who can get levels evaluations and work on their own skiing.

“We also have Alpine Canada coming with us for the Para Alpine team, so they come and they have a run with gates and they just practice and they have their nationals following the festival this year so they’re managing all together,” Marin-Couture said. “So it’s a big event with lots of fun and lots of good memories.”

Amy Royea, Operations Manager with CADs, said that KAR has always been very accommodating for them, and Jerry Johnston who founded CADS in 1976, is from Kimberley.

“The adaptive program here is small, they’re always looking for more volunteers and support, so it would be really great for the community to get a little bit more involved with that to help promote it, but we love coming here and bringing more people,” Royea said.

She added that when CADS came to Kimberley in 2014 they had 22 students and 42 instructors and this year that number has nearly doubled with 43 students and 82 instructors, who come from all over Canada as well as the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

“So we just keep growing and growing and everyone loves coming to Kimberley,” she said.

The closing ceremony for the festival is Thursday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. with awards, food provided by the Stemwinder, and a DJ performance.

Royea encourages anyone who would like to get involved to contact East Kootenay Adaptive Snow Sports.

“It’s a great little program and they always need volunteers,” she said. “They don’t have very many instructors but they have lots of students who want to participate and they can’t meet the demands.”



paul.rodgers@kimberleybulletin

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