The Penguin Ski Club

It’s the winter of 1932, and for the past few years, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific snow trains have been bringing thousands of young people at the Saint-Sauveur and Piedmont stations to take on the Nordic ski trails and go down the local ski slopes. It was around this time that a group of young women from Montreal decided to set up their own ski club in Saint-Sauveur. Their goal: to improve their alpine skiing skills to excel in competitions.

The Penguin Ski Club founded by Betty Sherrard and her friends was the first women's ski club in Canada. The number of recruits was limited, and the club operated on an invitation-only basis. The brilliant performances of its members soon made it a household name, both nationally and internationally. The club's progress was closely followed by the “Montreal Star” sports column written by Myrtle Cook (1902-1985), a great Canadian athlete. This media exposure helped to popularize ski racing among women and to change mentalities regarding women and sports.

High-level competitors [top row from left to right]: Margaret Burden Brunneau, Jean Staniforth Bennett, Joan Tyler, Joey Abbey, Nora Newman, ?, Lorna Meagher Casgrain, Beverly Mace, Claire Fisher [bottom row from left to right]: Peggy Orr, Lilly Elder Taylor, Rhoda Wurtele Eaves, Jane Bishop, Nancy Mckean, Dorothy Burden Reid, Joan Erzinger, Barbara Wickes Foster, Barbarra McTaggart & son Donald, Alice Johannsen, Peggy Johannsen, Margaret Russell, Betty Capon. 

Photo taken by Rhona Wurtele Gillis 1943. CSHFM Collection.

Determination and passion were the hallmarks of the Penguin Ski Club. As competitions progressed, star athletes emerged like Pat (Patricia) Paré, whose performance in Mont-Tremblant made the front page of the New York Times on January 22, 1940. “One of North America's most skillful skiers, Miss Pat Paré of the Penguin Ski Club, achieved today what no other woman has been able to accomplish this winter. The 20-year-old provincial downhill and slalom champion raced down the standard one-mile trail with a brilliant time of 2:15 to win the coveted gold medal.”

That same year, Patricia Paré became the first alpine ski instructor at the request of Joe Ryan, an American millionaire and owner of the Mont Tremblant resort. This was a shock for the Ski Instructors' Alliance, which excluded women at the time. Twenty years later, Paré took over the management of the Mont Sauvage resort in Val-Morin and turned it into a popular family ski resort.

The Penguin Ski Club’s victories encouraged young women to take on the steep slopes. Such was the case of twins Rhona and Rhoda Wurtele, who joined the club after finishing high school. 

Picture: Rhoda Wurtele, Lucile Wheeler and Rhona Wurtele.

They were already champions in tennis and swimming. Their progress in skiing was spectacular, and the “Flying Twins” quickly made a name for themselves, winning several competitions in the early 1940s against more experienced skiers.

In 1948, they competed in the Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and again in 1952 in Oslo, Norway. However, it was at the 1956 Games in Italy that another club member, Lucile Wheeler, won Canada’s first Olympic medal in alpine skiing, earning bronze in the downhill event. She went on to claim two gold medals and one silver at the 1958 World Championships in Austria.

Meanwhile, in Saint-Sauveur, the club organized special races for young women and intercollegiate competitions with the Red Birds club, which was made up of young men who had recently graduated from McGill University.

Penguin Ski Club members trained with a renowned instructor in Saint-Sauveur, Duke Dimitri von Leuchtenberg. His teaching was based on the Arlberg method, an Austrian technique invented around 1910 by Europe's fastest skier, Hannes Schneider.

Picture: Dimitri von Leuchtenberg (1898-1972) and Ekaterina Arapova von Leuchtenberg (1900-1991).

Duke Dimitri was a Russian aristocrat who fled, with his family, to America in the 1920s. He was a remarkable horseman and skier, and a great lover of the outdoors. He designed ski slopes in the United States and the Laurentians, and taught the Arlberg technique in Franconia, New Hampshire. 

In 1938, he purchased from his cousin, Marquis Nicolò degli Albizzi, the guesthouse at 200 rue Principale where the latter entertained wealthy personalities. After working as an independent instructor, the duke founded a ski school in Saint-Sauveur, the first to be certified by the Canadian Amateur Ski Association.

At the end of the 1930s, other European alpine skiing personalities, displaced by the Second World War, came to Canada and the United States, and their presence in the Laurentians greatly contributed to the development of skiing in the country.

After a few years of renting cramped rooms with uncomfortable beds, the club received from generous donors, John Henry and Herbert Molson, a purpose-built ski lodge on their land. 

Picture: Penguin Ski Club Lodge. The Rhoda Wurtele Collection.

It was designed by architect Alexander Tilloch Galt Dunfort, who had designed Mary Dorothy Molson's opulent residence, now owned by the Montreal Urban Community. The lodge featured a specially equipped ski storage and waxing room, a living room with a fireplace, a kitchen and seven bedrooms with bunk beds for a total of 24 beds.

It was inaugurated in 1939, but the club didn't occupy it until a year later as it was used as a home for English refugees sent to Canada by their parents at the beginning of the war. 

The lodge was entirely furnished by the Molsons with great attention to detail, with the club emblem above the fireplace and twenty-four toothbrushes on their stands in the bathroom. A three-year supply of coal was also provided.

The lodge became the heart of the club, its upkeep brought a sense of responsibility among the young women and, as Betty Kemp would say, an unfailing solidarity among them. Thirty-four years later, they were sadly forced to part with it. The building was destroyed by fire in the early 1990s. The club officially ceased operations in 1982, and in 1991, was inducted into the Laurentian Ski Hall of Fame.