The co-op
Canada's first non-profit ski cooperative
Shames Mountain is operated by My Mountain Co-op — legally, My Recreational Mountain Co-operative. It was not rescued by an investor. It was bought by the people who ski it.
How we got here
From a closure notice to a co-operative
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2008
Friends of Shames
The owners announced they were retiring. No buyer came forward, and a ski hill without a buyer is a ski hill that closes. A group calling itself Friends of Shames formed to make sure that did not happen.
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February 2011
My Mountain Co-op launches
The Friends became a co-operative: My Recreational Mountain Co-operative, trading as My Mountain Co-op — Canada's first non-profit ski co-operative. Membership opened, and the pitch was as plain as it sounds: own your own mountain.
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January 2013
Full ownership
The co-op took full ownership of Shames Mountain. Every season since has been run by an organisation whose owners are the people riding the chair.
Membership
Own your own mountain
That is the co-op's own line, and it is not a metaphor. My Mountain Co-op is member-owned, and its members are the reason the lifts have kept turning since 2013.
There is a practical side too. Members pay $150 less than non-members on every 2026/27 season pass category the co-op publishes — so for most households, joining is not a donation, it is arithmetic.
Member saving, every pass category
$150
Against the equivalent non-member Super Early Bird price. Ask the co-op about joining — this concept does not reproduce membership terms or fees, because none have been verified for it.
Stock photo Indigenous Adventure Pass
50% off day passes, rentals and lessons
My Mountain Co-op offers an Indigenous Adventure Pass: 50% off day passes, rentals and lessons for First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. It is the co-op's programme, run on the co-op's terms.
More on the passes page →Territorial Acknowledgment
The co-op's words go here — not ours
My Mountain Co-op publishes a Territorial Acknowledgment on its own site. This concept reserves the space for it, links to it from every page footer, and deliberately writes none of it. An acknowledgment is not filler copy for a design agency to draft — the wording is the co-op's, set with the Nations whose territory the mountain sits on.
In a live build, this block would carry the co-op's existing text verbatim, with a link to the full page.