Paul Collard remembers the early days of biathlon in Prince George when it was a backwoods activity happening on a makeshift range deep in the forest of Otway Nordic Centre.
Training sessions and races were an ordeal for coaches, athletes and the volunteers tasked with using snowmobiles to haul lights and shooting range equipment stored more than a kilometre away at the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club lodge.
Collard assisted with that setup/takedown duty many times with his daughter Tuppy, a biathlete who went on to compete for Canada 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, whenever they left their home in Vanderhoof to come to a race or training camp in Prince George.
How times have changed.
Otway’s biathlon shooting range and technical building built for the 2015 Canada Winter Games and subsequent improvements to infrastructure have created a world-class facility that can host national and international events, backed by one of the largest Nordic ski clubs in Canada.
This week, 100 athletes from across the country converged at Otway for the 2025 Biathlon Canada Junior/Youth World Championship trials.
“I think this puts Caledonia Nordic and Prince George on the map when it comes to biathlon,” said Collard, president of Biathlon Canada for eight years in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
“We’ve only got a few venues in Canada that can offer this size of this range – 30 targets – and Prince George has advantages over nearly all the others, like Whistler and Valcartier (Que.). The airport is really close with good air connections. We’ve got reasonably priced hotels that are really close. Plus, this is five minutes from town, and you’ve got great snow conditions and snowmaking. So it’s very unlikely an event here will have to be moved because of lack of snow, and you’ve got a very experienced crew that runs these events, which helps a lot.”
Now boasting 2,154 members, Caledonia ranks as one of the largest Nordic skiing clubs in Canada. Its board of directors has gained a reputation for its forward-thinking organizational leadership and large base of volunteers that make those big races happen.
This week’s world trials are sanctioned by the International Biathlon Union and Collard said the Caledonia club will receive close to $8,000 for hosting the six-day event.
“This club has had outstanding management and they’ve looked ahead years and have done things in the right order for the development of the club, and it’s going to pay off in the long run for generations to come and to the city of Prince George,” said Collard.
Collard says there is no reason why Prince George couldn’t host a World Cup or IBU Cup race or perhaps the world junior championships. But he said something that big would require investment from the City of Prince George and Tourism BC to help absorb the substantial cost of staging such an event. The payoff would be the biathlon fans it would attract as tourists and the exposure of national TV coverage throughout much of Europe in countries where biathlon is as popular as the NHL is to a Canadian sporting audience.
“German TV would run this live,” he said. “Hopefully we will see more European participation in North America. They don’t like to come here because it’s eight hours on a plane and eight hours time difference and it’s very difficult to bring them here.”
Hosting the Canada Games 10 years ago created the legacy that led to international biathlon and cross-country skiing events coming to Prince George. Last year the Caledonia club hosted the World Para Biathlon Championships and Para Nordic World Cup Finals on successive weeks, March 5-17.
Otway was also the site of the 2022 biathlon national championships, and in January 2023, the city hosted the Nordiq Canada national (cross-country) team trials.
Collard says if Vancouver hadn’t hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Sea-To-Sky highway would likely still be a two-lane road and there would be no passenger Sky Train access to Vancouver Airport – all built for the 2010 Games.
“The business of having multisport games like Canada Games and B.C. Games can’t be overemphasized, because of we don’t have a goal, like to build this range for Canada Games, it doesn’t happen,” said Collard.
“This is now THE best club in Canada for all-round, all-year facilities. The roller ski trail in Whistler is a joke compared to this, it’s too narrow and it’s not properly engineered, so this is the best roller ski track in Canada. (Olympic trail designer) John Aalberg did it and he did it right. It’s going to give you year-round development and we’ll hopefully see teams from other clubs coming here in the summer to train and maybe we’ll get national training squads here too.”
Dr. David Snadden remembers when he first came to Prince George in the winter of 2003 to decide on whether to accept an offer to help start the Northern Medical Program. A general practitioner from Scotland, he and his wife Moira had a young family and he was asked if they would like to give skiing a try at Otway. For Snadden, it was a deal-clincher.
“We came here to be interviewed and we were shown around the town and one of our colleagues said, ‘Come for a ski,’ and brought us out here and we thought, 'what a fantastic facility to have,' and this was a real attractant for us coming here,” said Snadden.
“It’s a recruitment incentive for professionals coming here, and not just professionals. We need technicians and tradesmen and it gives them something not just for them but for their families. When you came here on a weekend there’s so many children. You can use the bike trails in the summer and (a season pass) is cheaper than a one-day ticket to downhill at Whistler.”
Snadden and his wife both volunteered for the race and he was part of the course setup crew, which was out every morning starting at 6 a.m. to make sure the course was ready for each race.
They had two granddaughters – Iona and Isla Cadell – racing in the trials and their daughter Ali is the Caledonia club’s biathlon co-coach.
“We’re hosting athletes from one of the other clubs and they all tell me these are such nice facilities to ski,” said Snadden. “”They’ve skied all over BC and some of them have skied all the world and they say this is as good as anywhere. This is becoming one of the top venues in Canada.”
Racing in the world trials resumes Tuesday with the mass start race at Otway. The men's race starts at 10 a.m., followed by the women's race at 1 pm.
