For immediate release: 11 June 2021

Sovereign Lake Nordic Club, in Vernon BC, is the first ski area in Canada to signify its commitment to ending working poverty, by paying all its staff and contracted workers a Living Wage

The living wage is the hourly amount a family needs to cover basic expenses. The calculation is based on a two-parent family with two children – the most common family unit in BC – with each parent working full-time. The Living Wage for Kamloops is $15.92 an hour.

“Sovereign Lake Nordic Club is honoured to be recognized as a Living Wage Employer. In placing our employees’ health and financial stability front and centre, we help to build long-term sustainable employment opportunities for our community, while reducing training costs in this traditional high staff turnover industry. With an 80% annual return rate of our employees, it helps maintain a friendly and familiar atmosphere for our members and guests. We want to ensure that as an employer we can foster inclusivity and diversity in the workplace. By meeting and exceeding these minimum benchmarks for a living wage, we are creating a strong team more akin to a family than just a job” Troy Hudson, Sovereign Lake Nordic Club.

 

“We’re delighted that Sovereign Lake Nordic Club has come on board as a Living Wage Employer. Paying a Living Wage is good for the employer, the employee and the local community. We invite other ski areas and local employers to join the Living Wage movement,” said Anastasia French, Living Wage for Families Campaign Organizer.

 

Certifying as a Living Wage Employer is a voluntary commitment employers make to invest in their communities and local economies. There are nearly 250 Living Wage Employers in BC, with over 25,000 employees who don’t need to worry about how they will afford rent, food, and other essentials for their family because they are guaranteed to earn a Living Wage.

Contact

• Anastasia French, Living Wage for Families Campaign, [email protected], 236-865-3815
• Troy Hudson, General Manager Sovereign Lake Nordic Club, [email protected]

Notes

1. The Living Wage for Families Campaign annually calculates the Living Wage for communities across British Columbia. They certify employers that pay a living wage to their staff and contractors, and advocate for complementary government policies that would help families make ends meet. Their goal is for every working British Columbian to make a living wage.

We are excited to open up our 2021-22 registration season with an extra early bird discount for June only. Pricing reverts to Early Bird rates from July 1st through October 31st. If you are a 2020-21 Season Pass Holder then you already have your RFID card and all you will need to do is enter your email used last season for your login and it will automatically populate your new pass or program purchase with your existing family members or personal details.

For more information please go to the Season Pass overview and pricing page HERE.

The Board has approved a long-term plan to strengthen programs at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Club (SLNC). The Board’s work is guided by the SLNC 2018 Strategic Plan. This plan outlines five goals and within these goals, 11 objectives, with three of the five goals directly related to Club programming needs.

In January 2021, our Programs Director, the GM, and the Board identified the need to focus on these three goals of the Strategic Plan that address our long-term needs for Bunny Rabbits through to Masters programs. The group has prepared a Programs Plan that addresses how SLNC will meet the targets set forth in the Strategic Plan. This new plan will help guide the Board’s decision-making over the next three years (2021/2022 through 2023/2024).

The Plan provides much-needed staffing horsepower to grow programs, enhance the culture and community of Nordic skiing at Sovereign Lake, and create a new and engaged Programs Committee that focusing on skills development, competitions, events, and volunteers.

SLNC will accomplish this by hiring 4 key programs-dedicated positions. Our Head Coach will be supported by:

• A new part-time Masters High Performance Coach,
• A new part-time Biathlon Program Coach,
• A new part-time Skill Development Program (SDP) Lead Coach to grow the program for kids ages 5 through 12, and
• A part-time Programs Administrator will act as our program registrar and communication lead.

These new positions will be supported through a small increase in programming fees, revenue from competitions, fundraising, and directing $10 from each Season Pass sold to support Programs. This means that
every single club member is a direct supporter of the long-term growth and sustainability of our programs.

The Board is also providing a one-time contingency from our cash reserves if needed to offset shortfalls during this expansion of Programs in the 2021/2022 season.
Budgeted programs expenditures for 2021/2022 will be double what they were in 2019/2020 in support of Programs. The Head Coach position is also now being funded through the new Programs Budget Framework, a
change from past seasons.

We are excited for this new chapter of growth at Sovereign where attention has been focussed primarily on Club operations for the last number of years. We want to thank all those who helped out with the creation and implementation of this new plan. The job descriptions for these 4 new positions will be posted on the club website shortly. The plan is to fill these positions by May 15th and hold the first new Programs Committee meeting in June, to plan for the upcoming season.

Season Passes and Programs Registration open on June 1 st. All registrations will happen through the website and a notification will go out the week prior to launching sales.

Have a wonderful spring.

Your SLNC Board of Directors.

Well… better late than never!

AIM Contracting has finally made it up to Sovereign Road and we have a fresh grade just in time for closing weekend. It is still not great but we will take what we can get.

We have reduced our operating hours effective immediately from 9am to 4pm due to increasing slushy conditions in the afternoon and lack of skier traffic. You are welcome to ski on the trails after lodge operating hours and use the portables for washrooms.

Thank you.

Keep those skis fast and fresh next fall by getting a summer storage wax done at Sovereign Lake. For $20 we will summer prep your skis with a steel brush and a universal glide wax, plus we will even scrape them for you in the fall when you are ready to hit the trails again. We will accept skis until April 9th with all skis being picked up by April 11th.

Summer Storage Brush and Hot Wax:  $20.00 + taxes. 

Thank you for your generous donations made by our members and the public in celebration of International Women’s Day. All Day Ticket proceeds and donations were in support of the Archway Society for Domestic Peace.

The Archway Society provides a wide range of supportive services for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Services provided include; safe shelter (transition house program), counseling, child and youth advocacy, outreach services, and collaborative community projects.

We are proud to support this essential service in our community with a donation of $1286.10

This is the best time of year to stock up on nordic supplies as we are offering 25% off everything in the lodge including Bliz Sunglasses, Sun Bum sunscreen, Kombi merino clothing, Swix / Vauhti waxes, and more!

Also, don’t forget we are offering great discounts on lesson bookings all through Spring Break! Call us today for more info.

Sovereign Lake is excited to announce that we are the first club to fully integrate and embed the new Nordic Pulse Grooming App in Canada within their website.

Nordic Pulse was born out of a desire to make grooming reports easier to find for skiers and to help clubs share their trail conditions. Julien Locke (SLNC website developer and former NST athlete) believed strongly that deciding where and when to ski should be a quick, easy, and fun experience. After years of wading through outdated websites, online spreadsheets, snow phones, user-reported blogs, and the like, it was time to create a new platform.

Nordic Pulses’ objective is to make grooming reporting easier for ski areas. Grooming teams work long nights preparing the corduroy for the coming day’s skiers, and the last thing the groomers want to do at the end of a long shift is to fiddle around with logging in to a website or updating a spreadsheet with cold fingers.

With Nordic Pulse, grooming teams simply enable the in-app GPS tracker while they groom and the app syncs the data to our server every few seconds. With both AutoSync and offline storage capacity, Nordic Pulse is optimized to work in a variety of scenarios such as sending real-time data through cellular data, bulk uploading whenever the snowcat passes through the stadium and briefly connects to the club’s wifi connection, or operating fully offline and out of service.

We are excited to offer this modern and sophisticated grooming reporting program to our website to provide our membership and visitors a quick reference tool for the latest groomed trails. Tell us what you think. We are excited to get some customer feedback.

Click HERE to check out the new Nordic Pulse Grooming app.