PJ McKenzie only had her skateboard and just $100 when she flew to Toronto in 1977. She was 17 years old, had no place to live and her father thought she was mad.
When she landed, McKenzie immediately went to the city's biggest skate park where a competition was starting. No one knew who she was, but if they did it wouldn't have surprised anyone that she would go on to win the competition.
McKenzie was determined to be a skateboarding star.
"It was all about getting as far as I could."
Over 40 years removed from her skateboarding career, McKenzie now lives in Kaslo where she recently retired after running a local restaurant with her husband for three decades.
Few in her personal life know McKenzie, born Pam Judge, was Canada's first women's skateboarding champion and a pioneer of the sport. McKenzie didn't even tell her daughter she used to skateboard until she was 16.
Despite being a two-time amateur champion, McKenzie simply didn't believe anyone would care after she reluctantly quit the sport in 1980.
"I think that's why I kept it such a dark secret. It was heartbreaking, but I knew that my contribution somehow eventually might get there."
The spotlight was on women's skateboarding this summer at the Paris Games when 14-year-old Fay De Fazio Ebert competed as Canada's youngest Olympic athlete. There's a global audience for it now that didn't exist in the 1970s when McKenzie started toying around with her brother's board.
Skiing, not skateboarding, was the Judge family sport. McKenzie had dreams of competing for Canada's downhill ski team, while her brother Peter would focus on freestyle. McKenzie made it onto Alberta's provincial squad but what she describes now as team politics soured her on the sport.
Instead she started playing around with her brother's skateboard during the off-season, so much so that her father had to buy McKenzie her own. Skateboarding, she found, was a niche sport but also an inclusive one. Boys welcomed her at the local park and taught her tricks.
McKenzie wondered if she could make the sport into a career. In the mid-1970s skateboarding had found a new audience in California and that interest migrated north. There were competitions and sponsorships available.
"I could see the future of it. At that time, they were saying skateboarding is a fad. I really disagreed with that."
McKenzie quit skiing and began to focus full-time on her board. She started learning more tricks — the handstand is her personal favourite — and training six-to-eight hours daily.
In 1977 Calgary hosted the first Canadian Amateur Skateboard Championships, which McKenzie entered and won. Shortly after she arrived in Toronto and began working with a coach, she caught the eye of California skateboard makers Gordon and Smith. The company offered her a sponsorship, and McKenzie moved to its base in San Diego.
McKenzie won another national title in 1978, and competed for two more in 1979 and 1980. She earned attention from the press — "Remember that foxy chick who cranked through the slalom course of last year's nationals?" reads one blurb — as well as honours from then Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed. She toured extensively, doing tricks for spectators at the Daytona 500, filmed a commercial for Coca-Cola and continued to win competitions.
"I just had fun all the time. I didn't have time for grief or badness or people not getting along, and that was a big deal to me. Keeping it positive."
Natalie Porter, an author who writes about Canadian women's skateboarders on her website Womxn Skateboard History, says the nation's story of women's skateboarding starts with McKenzie.
"Those national championships were critical because it was a real showcase," says Porter. "She was often on tour down in the States and then across Canada. So I am confident that girls took notice and she really is pioneering."
In 1980, McKenzie decided to leave the sport. Skateboard's popularity had begun to fall off and parks were being closed. It hadn't yet become a mainstream sport as she'd envisioned — that wouldn't arguably happen until the mid 1990s, and skateboarding only made its Olympics debut in 2021 — and making a living was becoming difficult.
Instead she met and married her husband Grant, and the pair opened a restaurant in Calgary before moving to Kaslo in 1992 where they ran The Rosewood Cafe with their two daughters. Skateboarding became a part of her past, one that McKenzie didn't think anyone would have much interest in knowing about, although in 2007 she did help raise $122,000 to build Kaslo's skatepark.
But in 2022, on a whim, McKenzie decided to search for her name online. She was surprised to find a post on Porter's website acknowledging her championships. Someone had remembered after all.
Porter, whose book "Girl Gangs, Zines and Power Slides: A history of badass women skateboarders" comes out next year, says she's committed to giving female skaters their due. These days the sports' young stars are using social media to build their own popularity that doesn't rely on the traditionally male-dominated skate press.
"These girls haven't come out of nowhere. They're not coming out of a void. There's this rich history of women skating bowls and pools and pushing themselves on handrails consistently throughout these past 40 years."
Now 60 years old, McKenzie herself hasn't skated in over a decade due to a long history of mostly ski injuries. But this summer she sat entranced by the young women competing at the Olympics.
On a visit to Kaslo skate park, she pondered what improvements might be made with some fundraising then considered dropping into the bowl herself.
"Now if I get a nice new board, I might start riding the park again," she says. "Don't tell my husband."
