Canoeist Haley Daniels is hoping to fundraise her way to the Pan Am Games in Toronto this year with the help of her new cookbook, Canoeist Kitchen. JUSTIN PARSONS/Crag & Canyon
A locally based athlete is hoping to cook her way to the top of this year's Pan Am Games.
Calgary native Haley Daniels, who trains out of Kananaskis, is the reigning Canadian white water canoe slalom champion. In an effort to fund her 2015 paddling season, Daniels took to the unlikeliest of places — the kitchen.
“Each year, I have to raise anywhere from $30,000-50,000 for my competing season,” Daniels told the Crag & Canyon.
“I was trying to think of a creative way to raise that money.”
The result is a compilation of her favourite plant-based recipes, titled Canoeist Kitchen.
The world-class athlete stumbled upon her love for cooking after discovering that she was allergic to dairy products and eggs.
A dietary restriction can make anyone's life that much more complicated, but when you spend four to six months out of the year travelling to various competitions, and when you depend on your food to fuel your success, it can be especially challenging.
“By cutting those out of my diet, I really couldn't eat a lot of things at different restaurants and when I was on the road it was really hard for myself,” said Daniels, who began researching the benefits of plant-based diets and experimenting with different culinary combinations while on the road.
Since cutting all animal products out of her regime, Daniels says her muscles recover faster and she has more energy — something everyone, not only aspiring Olympians, can benefit from.
“That's what really sparked the Canoeist Kitchen — I was cooking for myself and realizing that there's a lot of good food out there that I want to share with other people,” she said.
Daniels enjoyed the process so much, that she plans to put out a new book every year, as well as a series of Canoeist-inspired cooking classes, like the one she is hosting Tuesday at the Paintbox Lodge, as part of the Canmore Uncorked Festival.
“It's a fun way of saying 'Hey, I'm an athlete and I'm for sale,'” said Daniels, who finds that too often amateur athletes end up relying on a very small circle of supporters to fund their careers.
“There's a fine line; you're almost exploiting your network.”
Canoeist Kitchen is Daniels' way of breaking that cycle. By offering a fun and useful product, she hopes to branch out to a wider audience.
Canadian athletes have been getting more and more creative in their approach to fundraising — in January the freestyle skiing appeared on CBC Dragon's Den asking for a $2 million corporate sponsorship over four years — after the sponsorship pool dried up in the wake of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.
As a smaller national sport organization, CanoeKayak Canada often gets overlooked by those remaining corporate sponsors — leaving athletes to come up with much of the money necessary to travel and compete.
But Daniels won't let this stop her from leaving a mark on the sport she has enjoyed since she was a toddler.
All proceeds from Canoeist Kitchen book sales and related cooking classes will go towards paying this year's paddling fees, which includes a ticket to the Pan Am Games in Toronto.
On its way to becoming an Olympic-sanctioned event — it currently figures on the Tokyo 2020 schedule — this summer will mark the first time women's white water slalom canoe is included in a multi-level sporting competition.
With the Canadian championship title under her lifejacket, as well as a handful of top 15 World Cup finishes, Daniels hopes to add a podium at this prestigious event to her name.
“I really do have a passion for paddling and I'm not going to let my bank account stop me from doing it,” said Daniels.
To sign up for Tuesday's cooking class held at the Paintbox Lodge from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. or participate in Daniel's online silent auction visit: haleydaniels.ca.