Sports and Hobbies

An enthusiastic athlete, Anne-Elise Keefer takes part in a variety of sports. On a daily basis, she swims a mile at the local pool complex at Minoru Park in Richmond,B.C. Over the years, she has formed lasting friendships with her fellow swimmers and lifeguards, and has even gone on several vacations with these buddies.

When Anne-Elise teaches annually at the Courtenay Youth Music Camp, or in the past when she taught at music camps such as The Pacific Rim Music Festival, Bowen Island Suzuki Flute Camp, Toronto Music Camp and the National Music Camp, she has taken full advantage of their water-side locations. She always could be found blissfully swimming into the far distance during the teaching breaks! In 2004, when she gave "guest enrichment lectures" on Celebrity Cruises' ships Horizon and Mercury, she earned outrage from fellow passengers when she actually attempted to swim fast laps in their tiny pools!

Anne-Elise's love for the water has influenced her interest in the sports of scuba-diving and sailing. Spurred on by an impending vacation to Los Cabos in 1992, she took her initial PADI "Open Water" certification. Over the next couple of years she carried on her diver education, earning her "Advanced", "Medic First Aid", "Rescue Diver", "Equipment Specialty" and eventually "Divemaster" certifications.

She went on to assist in the instruction of numerous scuba classes in her role as divemaster both in the pool and in the ocean. An experienced educator, she was able to transfer her skills as a music teacher and lecturer to the sport of diving, and she proved to be an alert and understanding support to the sometimes anxious dive students. In fact, on more than one occasion, she prevented disaster by rescuing straying and panicking divers in local waters and in Hawaii! Anne-Elise has also assisted instructors by leading underwater tours for certified divers in both Canada and in Hawaii.

Having assembled an enviable (and expensive!) assortment of diving equipment for both cold water and the tropics, she developed a wide circle of friends who could act as dive buddies. She has divided up her time between the fantastic local diving around Vancouver, B.C., and the glorious sites of south-eastern Florida, the Hawaiian Islands, the "Mayan Riviera", "cenotes" (caves and caverns) on the Yucatan Peninsula and the Caribbean Sea.

Anne-Elise first fell in love with sailing one spring when her husband Marko was touring Europe with his Senior Band from St. George's School. She decided to surprise him by learning a whole new sport in his absence! Taking an intense course with Cooper Boating Centre in Vancouver, she attended classroom sessions and practical classes on the boats. Feeling like a millionaire at the helm of a sleek 35-foot yacht, Anne-Elise quickly became enamoured by the sport!

In short order, she took the "Basic Cruising " and "Intermediate" standards, and took the unusual step of also acquiring her "Coastal Navigation" and "Celestial Navigation" certifications. Enjoying the delightful company of many new sailing friends, she went on trips to the Bowen Island pub for the day, and longer cruises up Howe Sound, to the "Sunshine Coast" and to various "Gulf Islands". Anne-Elise even acted as the navigator for a flotilla of yachts on a multi-day cruise around the "Gulf Islands"!

She was always a valued member of the crew on any boat, as she provided musical entertainment ranging from folk songs and classical favourites belted out on her flute from the bow in calm waters to "jam sessions" with other boaters in harbour pubs!

From her earliest days, Anne-Elise has loved animals, and she is always surrounded by pets in her house, wherever she lives. Like so many other young girls, Anne-Elise especially loved horses, but unlike most of them, she never outgrew the need to be near horses. As a child, she went to the usual riding lessons and pony camps in the Toronto area, but continued the lessons as an adult when she returned to Canada after her studies in Europe.

Shortly after their marriage in 1982, her understanding husband Marko encouraged her to indulge her life-long dream of buying a horse! She bought a solid hunter called "Callisto", and enjoyed several years of dressage, jumping, hacking along the country roads and fox-hunting with the London Hunt. Together, Callisto and Anne-Elise won several first place equitation and dressage ribbons, and excelled in the hunt field, but they were abject failures when it came to jumping. There were many dramatic falls, gut-wrenching crashes, humiliating refusals and just plain embarrassments when they entered jumping events! When they moved to British Columbia in 1987, she reluctantly sold the horse to a good home, and sadly expected to end her end her riding days.

However, living in Richmond, close to the stables in the idyllic countryside near the Fraser River, Anne-Elise soon got back into riding. She was given a beautiful Thoroughbred mare that a teenager had lost interest in, and the whole family took turns riding the horse for several years. Again, Anne-Elise had success as a dressage rider with "Tia Maria", but repeated her dramatic past as a disastrous jumper! Unfortunately, "Tia" started to suffer from an incurable foot disorder, and became unfit to ride. After a failed attempt to breed her to a Trakhener stallion, she was sadly sold to a retirement home.

Anne-Elise and her growing family briefly leased a fantastic horse called "Delight" from the stable where they had ridden "Tia". Trained up to Olympic "Grand Prix" level, "Delight" was now in his retirement. It was a joy to ride him, but Anne-Elise often felt that she was in the cockpit of a fighter jet and wasn't quite sure which button did what, as he obeyed signals she didn't even know she had given! "Delight" was soon needed by his owner for other purposes, and Anne-Elise sadly stopped riding for the time-being.

An avid skier, Anne-Elise was initially taught her first lessons as a toddler by her father, Thomas Keefer (who had been at an Olympic level in his younger years). As a child, she endured many hearty family expeditions, using the ankle- high leather boots her brothers had outgrown, hauling along the huge wooden skis with their leather straps and cable bindings, and lagging far behind the others in abject misery! Terrified by the smallest hill and freezing in the ancient boots which were stuffed with newspaper to make them fit, Anne-Elise's first years as a skier were inauspicious! Now she can embarrass her daughters in ski resorts when she exclaims in a loud voice that she started skiing on the ungainly antique skis nailed to the wall!

However, she upgraded her equipment, took many lessons over the years, and went on numerous ski trips to the mountains of Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Vermont, Norway and the Alps. Anne-Elise became an expert skier and to her great surprise discovered a dark secret: she actually loved skiing moguls on the steepest terrain available to her! She now takes a devilish pleasure in tackling all the "double diamond " runs she can handle, and can also boast of having initiated her two intrepid daughters in the love of "extreme skiing"!

While she lived for three years in Norway, Anne-Elise discovered the wonderful sport of cross-country skiing. One of the most intense forms of exercise for the body, this sport approaches a kind of pagan religion for the citizens of Nordic countries. Skiing for hours at a time, Anne-Elise took great pleasure in touring through the incredibly numerous trails that are available everywhere in Norway, threading their way through woods and across lakes. Now she enjoys taking her golden retriever, "Phoenix" on jaunts to the local Vancouver mountains, and always fits in some cross-country skiing when the family goes on annual ski trips to "Silver Star" in B.C.'s Okanagan area.

Anne-Elise has always loved skating, and she takes particular pleasure in using the awesome outdoor rinks on the two lakes at Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper, Alberta. There, skaters can choose between a hockey rink in front of the main lodge, or a huge racetrack sized loop cleared in the ice of the other lake. Nothing can compete with skating under the stars next to a roaring fire, or whooshing around the loop in blazing sunshine, surrounded by glorious mountain vistas!

Last May long weekend, Anne-Elise stayed with a good friend at Whistler, B.C., and finally tried to snowboard seriously. She had been intrigued by the sport after having had a couple of introductory lessons at "Sun Peaks" in recent years. A natural born "yahoo", Anne-Elise took to boarding like a "duck to water"! She picked up equipment and clothing in the sales in the spring, and now intends to split up her vacation time between downhill skiing, snowboarding and cross-country skiing.

As a child, Anne-Elise loved art and had to make up her mind between seriously pursuing art or music as a career. Having decided upon music, she resolved to carry on with art in any way she could, as a hobby. She took courses in drawing and painting as arts credits at the University of Toronto, and took additional training in acrylic painting and life-drawing in her spare time. When she lived in London, Ontario, she took classes in glass-blowing, stained glass and pottery. After moving to Vancouver, Anne-Elise enjoyed taking classes in painting, and developed an affinity for watercolours. Whenever she gets a chance on holiday, she brings out the art supplies and tries to capture her beautiful surroundings.

Anne-Elise has enjoyed using her love of art in her musical career as well. She has shared her knowledge and enthusiasm for art with countless students and audience members, as she has drawn parallels between the history of both arts in her music appreciation lectures and lecture recitals. Anne-Elise has also taken particular pleasure in choosing the art work that she wanted to incorporate in her three CD's: "Far Other Worlds", and "The River of Golden Dreams" Vol.s I and II.