GET OUTSIDE!

EMBRACE the OUTDOORS SAFELY, and you’ll be HAPPIER and HEALTHIER, and have a whole lot more FUN this WINTER

- Dominique Lamberton

FOR DECADES, Andrea Traynor dreaded winter. Every fall, as the days grew shorter and the air crisper, she would start to feel nervous. And then, for the four months of sub-zero temperatures typical of southern Ontario, she’d be blue. “I just suffered through it because it was my normal,” says the lifestyle and travel writer who lives in Courtice, Ont. “I thought, Winter sucks; trudge on.” That is, until she found skiing.

The year she turned 40, Traynor and her family spent a weekend in Mont-Tremblant, Que. While she didn’t ski — and had never been interested in learning — she didn’t want her two kids to miss out. Just because she loathed winter didn’t mean they had to. So the family suited up for lessons and, to her surprise, she loved it. In fact, she adjusted the itinerary so she could ski for the rest of the weekend. That was five years ago, and Traynor and her family have skied almost every winter weekend since. “I don’t know if it’s because of all the extra vitamin D or because skiing made me realize my body is capable of so much more than I thought it was,” says Traynor. “But having something that I love to do all winter, that I can do with my whole family — it changed everything.”