That makes more sense. Whew. Thought Vancouver or BC maybe got lost in an earthquake or something. But TGee's post made no mention of a Ontario and suggested it was a national thing. The challenge is by creatively making up categories does not help skating's reputation or image. You need stability and build up a brand. But that may not be the purpose - more skating to us fans is always good.
Sigh....that's what I get for catching up late at night...I was originally just going to put OUA, which is fairly well known in the university community in Canada, and then thought I'd better explain it was university level for those unfamiliar... No creativity...just missed a word.
But do need to underscore for the record that I'm not one of those folks that considers that Ontario=Canada. [Do acknowledge that it has about a third of Canada's population at present which makes all kinds of hierarchies really asymmetric.] I'm actually a transplanted west coast person.
That said, as someone who grew up in BC....the province that felt that it only needed 3 universities until very recently and strongly resisted the establishment of 2 of the 3 of those in the 1960s [because like you wouldn't want them to compete internally would you], I should share that one of those 3 universities, Simon Fraser, is a longstanding member of the US NCAA system, and the largest and oldest one, the University of British Columbia [UBC], has sought to join the NCAA.
So, am very aware that BC's commitment to a Canadian university sport system is fragile at best....No earthquake, but not entirely sure that being part of a Canadian system is in their best interest. [BC internal politics is always byzantine, and I know better than to subject the broader universe to the minutae...after folks across the mountains reportedly all think that BC folks are laid back lotus eaters....Sooooo NOT.]
I'm actually fairly impressed now that we're out here that Ontario has a large and very active and functional provincial level university athletics system. OUA
is a big brand in Canada....Where the national umbrella organization is called Canadian Interuniversity Sport [CIS]. CIS is not a well known brand, to my knowledge, unless one follows university level Canadian football or hockey.
At any rate, OUA is a university level association that is doing well on figure skating. The university-based skating clubs compete both in OUA and in regular Skate Canada events. I've seen skaters at Skate Canada events representing their university clubs, and I see skaters from our club shift to compete mainly in OUA events once in university.
Not sure about other provinces....Perhaps Mango and others can fill in the picture.
What I do know is that UBC's figure skating club was only established in 2015-16 by a student who had previously been a university skater at Waterloo in OUA, and was surprised to find that UBC had a great ice facility but no provision for figure skating, either recreationally or competitively. And now they have national team member Kevin Reynolds out using the ice there from time to time [from what we can see on his Instagram].
Sorry to hear that you don't trust my web-links SB...Suggest that you get a filter and blocker on your browser if you don't have one already....I only share those links that make it through ours...