Cross country skiing started more than five thousand years ago in Scandinavia and it took almost that long for it to be introduced to Canadians when it arrived in the 1890s. The equipment in the earlier stages of cross country skiing was nowhere near as complex as it is today. Skiers carried a single pole and the skis were heavy, with a length of 2.5 metres and 80 millimetres wide. It was not until 1915 that a Norwegian named Thorleif Haug invented screw-on steel toe-plates. These plates allowed the skis to be stronger, shorter (under 2.5 metres), narrower (less than 60 millimetres) and lighter (under one kilogram each). These skis, paired with a pair of bamboo poles, remained the standard for the next twenty years. Today, more than 3.5 million Canadians own cross country ski equipment and of those Canadians, two million of them ski once a week of more.