'Like a passion project': Sask. coach receives national award for canoe kayak excellence
'Like a passion project': Sask. coach receives national award for canoe kayak excellence
A Saskatchewan coach has received the 2022 Club Developer Award from Canoe Kayak Canada (CKC) for her efforts in providing inclusive, competitive and recreational opportunities in her community.
When Jessica Riley became head coach of the Yorkton Canoe and Kayak Club (YCKC) 15 years ago, there were only four members, now there are 500 participants each year.
“I was 18 and didn’t know what I was doing, and putting myself through university, and that’s where it started and it hasn’t really stopped,” Riley said in an interview with CTV News.
She said, with the help of her family and a solid volunteer group, they were able to rebuild the YCKC.
“I always considered my club to have been like a passion project.”
“When the going gets tough, you come back to those core reasons of why got involved in the first place,” she said.
Riley was honoured for her dedication at the CKC annual summit, and it’s well deserved according to some of her athletes.
“Without her, there would be no YCKC,” Raya Cuthill, former athlete with YCKC, said in an interview with CTV News.
“She’s helped me with more than just paddling, she helped me with lots of different aspects of my life.”
“She was basically like a mom to me,” Cuthill added.
“I think it’s been a long time coming, and I’m glad Jessica got an award to show what she’s been doing over these past years,” Ewen Hutzul, a member of the YCKC, told CTV News.
Riley is also a paddling development director with Canoe Kayak Saskatchewan, where she likes to focus on helping other grassroots clubs develop programs.
“The cool part is, I get to take all the things that I’ve learned for the past 15 years, and help other clubs get off the ground,” Riley said.
The Biden administration is moving forward with a plan to shoot down a large Chinese balloon suspected of conducting surveillance on the U.S. military, by bringing it down once it is above the Atlantic Ocean where the remnants could potentially be recovered, according to two U.S. officials.
The Arctic air that descended on the Northeast on Saturday brought dangerously cold sub-zero temperatures and wind chills to the region, including a record-setting wind chill of minus 108 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 78 C) on the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire.
Convicted murderer Daniel Jolivet, in prison for the past 30 years, has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested. W5 reviews the evidence he painstakingly assembled while behind bars. W5's documentary 'Buried Evidence' airs Saturday at 7 p.m. on CTV.
The massive white orb drifting across U.S. airspace has triggered a diplomatic maelstrom and is blowing up on social media. A look at what's known about the balloon crossing the U.S. and what isn't.
The oldest preserved vertebrate brain has been found in a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish skull that was removed from an English coal mine over a century ago.
WINNIPEG -- An Indigenous organization is spearheading efforts to develop a system that could make it easier to flag when a person experiencing homelessness is missing.
Winnipeg police released a new image of a 31-year-old woman who has been missing since early last year on Friday in the hope it may generate new information on her whereabouts.
Alberta's high court is being asked to overturn a review board decision relating to the stabbing deaths of five young people at a Calgary house party on the grounds the former provincial justice minister interfered.
A spokesperson for the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) says Metrolinx began cutting down historic trees at Osgoode Hall in Toronto on Saturday before the Ontario Superior Court could hear an injunction to prevent their clearing.
Joey Votto has been coming to the Annex Chess Club (ACC), just north of Bathurst and Bloor streets, every week for a few months now, according to Supol.
A man who took part in four traffic-stopping protests in Metro Vancouver in an effort to save old-growth forests has been given a conditional sentence and six months' probation by a provincial court judge.
Residents from Quebec to Newfoundland and Labrador are waking up this morning to more extreme cold weather. Emergency officials warned people to seek shelter and monitor for frostbite if they had to be outside overnight, as the temperature across much of Eastern Canada was expected to feel like -40 C to -50 C with the wind chill.
Another property reportedly belonging to a family member of Tony Accurso was the target of an arson attack in Laval early Saturday morning. The Laval fire department responded to a call at 3:22 a.m. about a fire at the building located at 1410 Jaffa Street in the Saint Rose district in the northern part of Laval.
A Quebec university study found that nearly three years of the pandemic have had an effect on the travel habits of Quebecers: even with the partial or complete lifting of restrictions, they increasingly prefer to travel at home. The most recent Cahier des tendances published by the Transat Chair in Tourism at the École des sciences de la gestion de l'UQAM revealed that inflation and health measures hurt many Quebecers.
The first North Atlantic right whale to be entangled in connection to Canada’s lobster fishery in over five years has been successfully rescued by marine mammal rescue responders in the United States.
An investigation that lasted almost two years has resulted in moose hunting violation convictions for six people and a lodge in Red Lake in northwestern Ontario.
Convicted murderer Daniel Jolivet, in prison for the past 30 years, has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested. W5 reviews the evidence he painstakingly assembled while behind bars. W5's documentary 'Buried Evidence' airs Saturday at 7 p.m. on CTV.
The owner of Radical Gardens, a restaurant in Timmins said she's experienced nineteen robberies over the last eight years; with the most recent one taking place in the early morning hours Friday.
