George LeFeuvre – Builder

Inducted 2012

Burin native George LeFeuvre was one of the founding fathers of the Menihek Nordic Ski Club in Labrador City and in 1973 he was one of the leaders in the launching of the Great Labrador Loppet, which is now in its 38th successful year. When George joined the club executive as Trail Maintenance Director his duty was the grooming and track-setting of the trails. George and his team would start the preparation of the 2km – 3km ski trail by packing the snow with snowshoes in the early morning and then skiing it in the afternoon. This method was replaced when the ski club obtained its first Alpine double track ski-doo. The big ski-doo was great for packing snow but the different drags George developed and made to pull behind the ski-doo made the trails much better. From there, George and others at the ski club made their first track-setter that made two tracks in the snow. In 1983 and 1985 Labrador City was awarded the Final World Cup Race and the First World Cup Race of the season and George was Chief of Course for both events. In 1986 George was invited to be a guest speaker at the International Cross-Country Trail Symposium in Toronto. George’s skills came to the attention of the officials responsible for the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary and in 1987 he worked on the trails for the Canadian Senior Cross-Country Skiing Championships and for sixteen days he worked grooming and track setting the trails for the Pre-Olympic World Cup races. In 1988 he worked for six weeks as Assistant Chief of Mechanical Grooming at the Olympic Games. In 1991 George helped with the preparation of trails at the Canada Winter Games in PEI and he was invited to Italy to work on the trails for the World Nordic Cross-Country Skiing Championships. In 1995 and 1997 he was in Thunder Bay and Norway to assist the Chief of Course in trail grooming and track setting the course for the World Nordic Ski Championships. In March 1998 George was in Corner Brook to help prepare the trail grooming team for the 1999 Canada Winter Games cross country skiing competition and during that same month he was Chief Technical Advisor for that event when Labrador City hosted the Newfoundland Winter Games. In 1999 he was invited to Austria to assist the Chief of Course with the preparation of the trails for the World Nordic Ski Championships. This occasion proved to be a very valuable experience because George was again the only non Austrian on the crew and he had the opportunity to work with extreme snowfalls. In total George has also been involved with trail grooming and track setting the course at over 30 national and international competitions including the 2002 Salt Lake City and 2006 Torino, Italy Olympic Games. He was a presenter at the 2001 2002 Grooming and Track Setting Clinic in Michigan, for Olympic and World Championship Events.