Like many free-range kids of the 1980s, Andrew Hardingham’s folks would drop him off at Norquay and leave him to his own devices. A graveyard of old gondolas and chairlifts at the base of the Big Chair had become his jungle gym — unbeknownst to him at age 7, he was playing on Norquay’s earliest lift system.
As Norquay turns 100, stories like this anchor us — memories that do more than recount the hill’s transformation; they put us inside it, present for moments we didn’t yet know were historical, because we were just having too much fun to notice.
As much as we’re honouring the past 100 years, this centennial is also about recognizing how the hill continually strove to embrace the new. A real test of that spirit came with the arrival of snowboarding in the ’80s.
At twelve, Andrew and his pals were among the second generation of snowboarders. Calgary’s Ken Achenbach — widely regarded as the godfather of Canadian snowboarding, who opened the world’s first exclusive snowboard shop — made Norquay the first hill he ever rode, in 1981. When Sunshine pulled out of hosting the Snoboard Shop North American Snowboarding Championships mid-season in 1988, Norquay stepped in without hesitation and ended up on the cover of Transworld Snowboarding Magazine.
Norquay, despite snowboarding’s detractors, embraced it early and gave athletes like Andrew and Ken both the infrastructure and inspo to fuel their passion. As Andrew recalls, there was an us-against-them mentality between skiers and snowboarders at the time. He’s already fallen hard for the new sport (literally, breaking his wrist on day one) and by all accounts was thriving on the rivalry. He had found his sport.
For a posse of Banff kids, snowboarding was an after-school program (or during school, depending on who’s asking) all thanks to the proximity of Norquay to town. Andrew’s playground now had a half pipe (allegedly the first in the Bow Valley), triple jumps and a mixed terrain park, and Norquay hosted big air events that drew competitive riders from across the country. Andrew went on to an 18-year career, saying he owes a lot of his success to the hill that chose to deliver a high-end snowboarding experience, building big (but safe) jumps before other areas. “They were ahead of the curve,” he says. At a time when snowboarding’s future was still being debated, Norquay invested in a rental fleet of quality boards — better boards meant better learning, and a more accessible entry point into the sport before most resorts had even accepted snowboarding was here to stay.
Playing with history is just Andrew’s thing. He’d look at old black and white Bruno Engler photos — like the one of Rudi Gertsch launching into the stratosphere off the Tea House (now the Cliffhouse Bistro) — and decide to recreate it as a snowboarder, announcing to the next generation of riders that their sport too had a claim in the hill’s history.
Now some 40 years in, a new crew is making the hill their own. The Quay Queens — open to “anyone who identifies as a Queen” — are building community and, in their words, learning to be empowered in the park.
It started with four: Ken Barber, Moos Van Maren, Katie Atchinson and Faith Nickel. Katie had secured the go-ahead from Norquay to launch the hill’s first intro to park program, which planted the seed for the ride days that followed. Ken, an instructor and coach at Norquay who started teaching at 13 — her first job, and as she puts it, she wants it to be her last — knew the hill well. When I caught up with her, she was in Calgary hosting the 2026 FIS Park and Pipe Junior World Championships. But for all her credentials, she also understood that knowing a hill and belonging to a place can be two different things.
A lunch break conversation became a group chat of over 200, which became a standing invitation for women riders to come out to the park every Friday night. When Moos and Katie eventually moved away, Ken and Faith kept it going, with Brier Gyles and Amelia Weber joining the fold. Jojo Brent, part of Norquay’s park crew, rounds out the five as their eyes and ears on the snow.
The fact that Norquay has night riding, as Ken puts it, “is huge” unlike the other two resorts of the Big 3. And Norquay didn’t just allow it — they backed it. The events team, Teha and Pamela in particular, pushed for the Quay Queens to have a place and the financial support to make it real. “We wouldn’t have been able to make this happen if it weren’t for Norquay supporting us,” Ken says. Teha saw the potential early. “I had a feeling the Quay Queens would grow into something bigger than just our hill,” she says. “Clubs like this are so important because they give women of all levels a space to feel comfortable, supported, and confident to try new things. I was happy to back these ladies as they break down some of the barriers in the sport and encourage more women to show up, take up space, and have fun progressing in snowboarding.” For a program built on volunteer energy and borrowed momentum, having someone in their corner mattered.
They now hold four Quay Queens ride days per season. The next one for 2026 is scheduled for March 10th — a dedicated day on the hill starting with park safety and a yoga stretch, then women broken into groups by level with the whole park to themselves until 2pm — with awards for best dressed, best trick, fear crusher and hype queen.
But underneath it all is something meaningful and enduring. Ken knows how long Alberta winters are, how isolating a season can get, how easy it is to leave a place when you feel like you don’t have one. There have been days this season she wasn’t sure she wanted to get out on the hill — but the days she went anyway, she says, “always filled her cup.”
That’s what the Quay Queens are really building — not just a ride day, but a reason to stay.
At Norquay, it seems, there’s always been room for one more.
