Having arrived in Canada from Costa Rica just two months ago, Stuart Salazar is gliding right into Canadian life — literally.
The family he’s boarding with while working here in Sudbury recently introduced him to hockey and skating, two activities that aren’t really a thing in his country.
Wanting to get some proper instruction, he signed up to take adult beginner skating lessons with the Copper Cliff Skating Club, with his first session taking place earlier this week.
Like Salazar, many of the participants in the program are newcomers or immigrants to Canada.
Speaking to Sudbury.com, Salazar said he was “super excited” to begin — and for someone who had only been on skates a few times, he appeared to be doing pretty well out on the smooth McClelland Arena ice surface.
Another participant in the beginner session, Janaina Claro, joined Sudbury.com in telling Salazar about the Ramsey Lake Skate Path, which has yet to open for the season.
“Yes, it’s excellent,” she enthuses to Salazar. “It's a little bit chilly. But come March, when it gets really sunny out, and the path is ready, it goes all along the shore, and it’s quite nice. You’ll have your skills.”
Janaina, who enrolled in the learn-to-skate program with her husband Fabiano last fall, said they’ve been in Canada for six years now.
When they got here, they tried to skate by themselves, but they ended up falling a lot. They enrolled their two kids in Canskate lessons, “but I was always there saying ‘Oh my God, I’d love to be there,” Janaina said.
“So my goal is to continue doing this and have fun with my kids,” she said.
Copper Cliff Skating Club president Laurie Eastman said this is the club’s first year offering an adult learn-to-skate program.
“We brought that forward from a need and from requests from a lot of people,” she said. “We thought we would give this a pilot run.”
Eastman said the program currently has 11 people enrolled. The winter session began a few weeks ago and runs until the third week of March.
She said people are welcome to join in the lessons, even though the session has already begun. Although the website said the lessons are for adults over the age of 18, Eastman said teens aged 14 and older who are beginners could also possibly take part.
By the way, if you’d like to see the adult learners in action, they are actually going to take part in a skating show at the upcoming Walden Winter Carnival along with other members of the Copper Cliff Skating Club.
“We'll do a cute little routine,” Eastman said.
The adult skate lessons are taught by Fattin Mahfouz, who came to Canada from Brazil as a child. Ethnically Lebanese, Mahfouz is multilingual (although she said her fluency varies), speaking languages including English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic, easing her communication with students.
Mahfouz said she loves teaching the adult program, which she also coached when she previously lived in Ottawa.
“The majority of them, they're newer to Canada, the ones that are doing this program. So the countries that they come from, usually there is no snow, it's a hotter climate. Skating or hockey or speed skating or any of those sports are typically not seen in those countries, right?
“So when they come here, it's something different for them, and they want to experience it. Like myself, when I moved here from Brazil, the first thing my parents did was take it out to the Rideau Canal because we moved to Ottawa. That was like the thing to do right when you come to Canada.”
Mahfouz said she ended up taking skating lessons as a kid, and went on to pursue figure skating, while her brother took hockey, “and so began our skating adventures.”
Bjorn Bjergfelt, who came to Canada from the United Kingdom a couple years ago, is another one of Mahfouz’s students.
“My kids are in school and they're learning to skate, so I wanted to learn to skate as well so I can join them,” he said. “I didn’t skate before this. I literally couldn’t even walk around the ice rink.”
Bjergfelt said there’s “not loads of ice and snow in the United Kingdom,” and while there used to be an arena in the city where he’s from, “they closed it down, and the next one was like an hour and a half away.”
“I have a bit of a vision of being able to skate on Ramsey Lake,” he said. “So I imagined we’d all skate as a family around Ramsey.”
If you’d like to sign up for adult beginner skating lessons through the Copper Cliff Skating Club, the sessions take place on Tuesday evenings from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. Registration information is available online here.
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. Bold is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
