Annie Logan: Going where not many girls have gone before

Laura is enjoying the holidays with her family, so this week we’re sharing one of your (and our) favourite posts from last winter. (And if you know an extraordinary person in our community, Laura wants to hear about them. Send her an email at [email protected].)

Annie Logan isn’t a typical girl. She looks the part and loves to tan and hula-hoop and do lots of other girly things but she’s not one to back down from the dirty work either.

“I come home with more dirt on me than my boyfriend,” says the 25-year-old.

A self-proclaimed free spirit with a go-with-the-flow type attitude, Annie has spent most of her young life working. In fact, she chose working full time over school. But like smart girls who don’t finish high school should do, she took it upon herself to earn her Grade 12 diploma from the Adult Learning Centre back in 2011.

What makes Annie stand out from the rest is that she doesn’t just have a pretty face. She’s got a good head on her shoulders, too. For five years she worked in the kitchen at Hidden Valley Highlands Ski Area, and that led to her getting a job as a snowmaker, which she’s been doing for the last year. This year, a new door opened when she was offered a job to be trained as a lift mechanic. And she’s totally excited about it. She sees it as a life-changing opportunity. For the next five years, she will shadow Hidden Valley’s current lift mechanic and learn the ropes of the trade before receiving certification.

She’s only 25 but Annie has been working full time since she was 14.

Right now, as far as she knows, there’s only one other female lift mechanic in the province. And to Annie, that’s something to be proud of.

While being introduced to some equipment at a demo, a few members of the company that came to Hidden Valley were “over the moon” that Annie was a female snowmaker. It’s a profession that not a lot of women take to and it’s a wonder why considering how highly Annie speaks of her job.

I never really looked at things as a girl position or if a job was for a guy. I have the determination to find out what wrong and then fixing what’s wrong. And with the chairlifts at the ski hill, it makes a world of a difference. I grew up sledding and motorbiking and I have a passion for snowboarding. With this job, I found a link between everything.

She loves her job for a lot of reasons. She enjoys being challenged and having to figure things out for herself. She doesn’t mind the cold (as long as she’s got her snow gear on) and happens to enjoy the process of mixing air with water to ensure the smooth operation of a snow gun. The prospect of being a future lift mechanic is an exciting one. Certainly, it entails a higher level of responsibility but it’s something she isn’t shying away from. She doesn’t even seem to mind the fact that she starts work while most people are going to bed. She’s into the rhythm of sleeping through the daylight hours and coming alive at night.

“You get used to it,” she says. “I’ve become nocturnal. I frown upon the day walkers and I’m jealous of their sunshine-filled lives. But it’s nice we get to catch the sun rising. That’s the biggest highlight of working nights.”

She looks at the possibility of becoming a lift mechanic at Hidden Valley Highlands Ski Area as life-changing.

Maintaining a job that is primarily dominated by men says something about Annie as a person. She admits she doesn’t “get along with most women,” and that makes the job much more appealing. It takes a bit for people to realize she’s not your average girl. However, she’s definitely capable of handling the dirty work that sometimes comes with the job. There isn’t much she won’t do.

She’s had all kinds of jobs but much of her career has been spent in kitchens at various local restaurants. She’s employed at Hidden Valley year-round but on weekends during the summer months she’s an aerial and zip line rescue guide for Treetop Trekking.

“I’m outside more than inside,” she says. “I’m not really home all that often. I’m always doing something.”

Working nights means seeing some amazing sunrises. Annie’s camera has snapped many. Photography is one of her favourite hobbies.

Annie didn’t grow up in usual girl fashion. She recalls her childhood in Oxtongue Lake being spent outside usually with “the boys” and that definitely played a key role in shaping who she is today. She’s always loved snowmobiling and motorbikes. And living only a short distance away from Algonquin Park was a huge advantage. She spent a lot of her time canoeing, kayaking and swimming.

In her spare time, she hikes and goes to concerts and dabbles in photography. She told me how much she loves to hula-hoop so I asked her to bring it when we met up for our photo shoot at the ski hill.

It’s freezing outside but she takes off her snow gear and reveals some funky tights and I watch her in total awe as she effortlessly swings that thing around her hips, down her legs and even around her arms.

“Practice, lots of practice,” she tells me of how she got so good at it. “I fell in love with it and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

I knew nothing about Annie prior to our interview. But it’s safe to say she is an extraordinary girl who doesn’t back down from many things.

As she continues her training to become a lift mechanic, she has a lot to look forward to.

“It’s completely turned things around for me life-wise,” she says. “It’s given me a sense of purpose to be a part of something.”

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