Sackville X-C Ski Club

Re: The Great Club Name Debate

By Graham Watt
If I may be impudent enough to comment on some other suggested names, I find Sackville Athletic to be more associated with games (and indoor ones at that) than outdoor, mostly aerobic recreation.

As I said before, SkiSackville is definitely about skiing and that’s good, but it has an alpine ring to it and cross country is leg powered, not gravity powered. It has a touristy feel I admit, but perhaps more travel agency than trail. Sackville Nordic is a good name.

My reason for coming up with the more omnibus Sackville Outing Club (SOC!) is that it covers the year ’round physical demographics  of members almost perfectly. And it specifically relates to outdoor activity. So much of what passes for exercise these days is indoors and anaerobic: hockey and basketball being examples.

Do we really need separate names for everything we do recreationally? Will there be a Sackville Cycling Club? A Sackville Snowshoe Club? A Sackville Hiking Club? A Sackville Cross Country Ski Club? Why wouldn’t we try to put an omnibus name to the outdoor activities we all enjoy here?

Sackville Outing Club would then have more heft and sway with the town as a centralized lobbying point for the activities of our like-minded citizens. Could not the Main Street Mile, the 5 K Folly, and the Sackville Triathlon not be under the aegis of the Sackville Outing Club?

And wouldn’t that little colourful SOC! symbol begin to be meaningful, on a newsletter, a trail sign, a race bib and a tee shirt? I realize this is a not as specific a skiing name as it might be but it has the potential to encompass all our efforts to get leg-powered recreational activities set strongly in the region, and in effect to get all of Sackville back on its feet.

Choosing a name which is open-ended enough to let healthy outdoor aerobic recreation thrive in Tantramar seems to be a worthwhile decision. I would like to see little Sackville concern itself with maximizing the number of its citizens it can attract to healthy outdoor exercise. Not just the spandexed aficionados.

One way is to put a little more critical effort in choosing a name which reflects the broadest opportunities for others, not presently engaged in outdoor  recreational pursuits to join us.

As for Sackville Outing Club having a homophobic air to it, perhaps we should send Eldon Hay around to McGill, Dartmouth (NH), Cornell etc., Outing Clubs to set them straight, if you catch my drift. Got to go. My meds are wearing off!!

Graham Watt