A First Nations mother is putting forth a considerable effort in order to raise the funds necessary to pay for the figure skating dreams of both her daughters.
Robin Henry’s two daughters, Teysean Angeline Henry and Blake Hope Henry, both got into the sport at a young age, and Angeline provided more details on how she discovered figure skating;
“I was around 5 or 6 years old, doing swimming at the time and I guess some kind of figure skating competition was on TV and I said, hey mom, I want to try that. I want to skate on the ice and jump and spin. Then she registered me into Can Skate, which is the beginner level for figure skating and where you can learn all the basics and foundations of skating. Since I stepped onto the ice, I’ve never stepped off it since then.”
The sisters have already accomplished quite a bit in the sport, something that Robin would explain that she is very proud of while also mentioning why the ice is so important to them;
“It makes my chest heavy, it makes me so proud of my girls, especially my oldest and now my youngest is following in the same footsteps and enjoys it just as much. Ice is home to us, it takes all the worries around us away, I can even see it in their eyes when they step onto the ice. They enjoy what they do and as long as I see them having fun and working really hard, I don’t mind doing my part in fundraising and working as hard as I have been. It’s really unbelievable how far we’ve come.”
Robin then detailed the various methods she uses in order to raise money for her girls, outside of her own job, and just how much it typically costs for the girls to skate in a year;
“We do things like bottle drives and I have a new one coming this September, where we’re working with World’s Finest Chocolates, and they’re going to be sending me 100 cases of chocolates to sell for both of them. It would be about a $5,000 profit for them, so that would help us get them to all the competitions, it helps with the travel fees and all of their registration. For each of them to skate per year, is a minimum of $5,000 each. Wherever we can get ahead in fundraising, we’re willing to do it.”
Angeline currently skates with the Prince George figure skating club and Blake is a member of the Terrace figure skating club with their upcoming routines featuring the likes of Billie Eilish and Michael Jackson providing the background music.
And anyone else who might have similar goals to Robin can also utilize programs such as Jumpstart, Canadian Tire’s charity designed to help kids get access to and play sports, to help their kids stay active and maybe even achieve bigger dreams.