One of the original founders and first club president of the North Bay Nordic Ski Club, Tex Mitchell, died recently at the age of 95 in North Bay.
https://www.baytoday.ca/obituaries/mitchell-colonel-john-tex-rcaf-retd-12481590
The following is an excerpt from FLASHBACKS – THEY WERE OUR HEROES VOLUME II – “A publication of the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame; written by Peter Handley and edited by Brent Pigott, September, 2017.
NORTH BAY NORDIC THROUGH THE YEARS
BY DAVE MINDEN, 2017
The North Bay Nordic Ski Club did not appear instantly 40 years ago, and did not evolve from one major influence. Rather, it was the result of a coming together of several distinct groups and personalities that forged, in the mid-1970s, a strong organization that continues today. There were three distinct influences.
The first was a group led by Shirley Bass and Jackie Goulet from the original Laurentian Ski Club. The Laurentian Touring Club, as it was known, was an offshoot of the main downhill club. The split between downhill (Alpine) skiing and cross-country (Nordic) skiing was widening, and cross-country touring skiers continued to seek out remote winter trails for skiing. This involved a great deal of organization: scouting out a destination, arranging transportation by car to the site, and frequently snowshoeing the trails in advance of several dozen skiers. It became the dream of the Laurentian cross-country skiers (who numbered about 70 skiers by 1975) to find a home of their own and to ski on trails that would be packed by snowmobile on a regular basis.
The second influence was Tex Mitchell, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and new commander of CFB North Bay in 1974. Tex was also an elite national level paddler and quickly found himself alongside long-time friend Terry Evans coaching at the North Bay Canoe Club and looking over young prospects in kayaks and canoes. It was here that Barb Olmsted was discovered, and eventually, she and her sister Nancy would become national team kayakers and Olympians in 1984 and 1988, with Barb winning Bronze in the K4 500 in 1984. But what was the connection to skiing? Tex Mitchell was of the opinion (influenced by European paddlers) that cross-country skiing was the best cross-training activity for paddlers, and Tex began a search for a location where his paddlers could ski in the off-season. This led Tex to Camp Conewango on Talon Lake where the owner, Bill Kiedyk, was in the process of starting a cross-country ski trail facility. It was there that Tex Mitchell started the first version of the “Nordic Ski Club”. At the same time, Tex heard through both the paddling and skiing communities that a group of cross-country skiers from the Laurentian Touring Club were looking for a permanent home.
It did not take long before the two groups met in the late winter of 1974-75 and officially merged and formed the North Bay Nordic Cross-Country Ski Club, which with the assistance of lawyer Dick Tafel, legally incorporated in April of 1975 as a not-for-profit business. The paddlers from the North Bay Canoe Club teamed up with Shirley Bass’s touring group and got busy developing and cutting trails. For three winters (1975-76 to 1977-78), Camp Conewango was the home of Nordic skiing in North Bay. A Bombardier double track snowmobile was the grooming machine and a hand-made track setter was used to carve the parallel ski tracks into the packed snow surface. The inaugural 1975-76 season had the following on the Board of Directors: Tex Mitchell (President), Chuck Nowak (VP), George Hendrickson (Treasurer), Bob Krashe (Secretary) with Directors Shirley Bass, Jackie Goulet, Bob Horner, Jim Parks, and Matt Robillard.
On behalf of the North Bay Nordic Ski Club, we express our gratitude to Tex Mitchell for his visionary work and extend sympathies to Kim and family.