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Sharon and Shirley Firth
Cross–Country Skiing (Sapporo 1972, Innsbruck 1976, Lake Placid 1980, Sarajevo 1984)
Growing up in Aklavik in the Northwest Territories gave twin sisters Sharon and Shirley Firth plenty of opportunity to enjoy winter activities.
In their early teens, however, the sisters discovered the sport that would change their lives – cross–country skiing. Sharon and Shirley would go on to spend 17 years on the national cross–country ski team. They competed in four Olympic Games, including 1972 in Sapporo, 1976 in Innsbruck, 1980 in Lake Placid, and 1984 in Sarajevo. Their unprecedented competitive career, which included four Olympic Games, was partly due to the encouragement of their community.
Motivating leadership among Aboriginal youth
The twins, who were members of the Gwich'in First Nation and part–Loucheaux–Métis, grew up with 11 other siblings in a log house in a traditional rural community. When they were in their teens, their tiny community was moved to a prefabricated model township called Inuvik.
It was there that in 1965, Father Jean–Marie Mouchet, a French missionary priest who had moved to Canada's Far North, introduced Shirley and Sharon Firth to cross–country skiing. Father Mouchet sought funding from the federal government for his fledgling ski clinics for the young people of Inuvik. It was he who proposed the Territorial Experimental Ski Training program (TEST), with the ultimate goal of motivating Aboriginal youth and building their leadership potential.
His proposal was greeted with enthusiasm in Ottawa. It dovetailed with the government's own goals of developing amateur sport and supporting the social development of Canada's Aboriginal peoples as they adapted to mainstream Canadian society. The young skiers of TEST trained outdoors for hours, in temperatures hovering around –40 degrees, in the 24–hour darkness of Arctic winters. In summer, they took daily long–distance runs on the mosquito–infested tundra.
Physical connection with the land
Skiing became yet another expression of their intense physical connection with the land that included trapping, hunting, chopping and stacking wood, and hauling water from the river when it was not frozen. The twins, who had been accustomed to rising at four in the morning to check their rabbit snares in their former community of Aklavik, easily adapted to the challenging regimen demanded by cross-country skiing.
Firth twins toast of cross–country world
Many of the young athletes in TEST dreamed of seeing the world beyond the Mackenzie Delta, and their coaches encouraged top skiers with the promise of international competition. On a shoestring budget, their dreams were realized. Only a few years after its members learned to ski, the team from Inuvik was the toast of the cross-country skiing world.
And Sharon and Shirley were its biggest stars. They blazed a trail through the snow and ice and demolished records nationally and internationally to lead the first Canadian women's Nordic ski team to the Olympic Games. The Firth sisters won 48 Canadian championships between them, and competed in four Olympic Winter Games (1972–1984).
For almost a decade, they dominated a sport that was foreign to their culture. In a world radically different from their own, they raised the standards of excellence for skiers across the entire country.
