Canoe Crossings by Sanford Osler

Author:Sanford Osler
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-927527-75-7
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2014-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

chapter five

RACING CANOES

MY first real exposure to elite-level canoe racing came at my niece’s wedding in Mexico in late 2012. The groom was Mike Russell, a former member of the Canadian national canoe-kayak team, and one of the guests was Adam van Koeverden, fresh from earning his fourth Olympic paddling medal and being named Canadian male athlete of the year by the True Sport Foundation. Several other guests at the wedding were members of the close-knit community of Canadian canoe-kayak racing, and I couldn’t resist asking them about their chosen discipline.

Unlike the other canoes that have been covered in this book thus far, which were originally designed for work (transportation, exploration, and trade), racing canoes are built for sport. Historically, in the record books, and still in some European countries, the two types of boats used in canoe racing are called “Canadian” (C) and “kayak” (K) canoes. Nowadays, they are typically referred to simply as canoes and kayaks. The Canadian canoe is open, and it is based on the original birchbark design. Appropriately enough, Canada’s Frank Amyot won a gold medal in a “Canadian” canoe at the 1936 Olympics. It was the first year canoe racing was recognized as an Olympic sport, and it provided our only gold medal at those games. A pair of Canadians took silver and bronze medals in two-man Canadian canoe races that year as well.

Over the years, the boats evolved, and the Canadian canoes were redesigned by Europeans to become sleeker racing machines. The “C” in Canadian began to unofficially stand for canoe, but the craft continued to be paddled with one knee up, using a single-bladed paddle, in contrast to the fully seated position using a double-bladed paddle employed in a kayak.

Canoe racing in Canada has been governed by CanoeKayak Canada since 1900. Although nominally a national organization, its scope was initially limited to Ontario and Quebec; BC’s involvement and influence was slow to develop. Of the twenty-four Olympic medals that have been won by Canada since 1936 in canoe-kayak events, only two were associated with BC. In fact, only one BC paddler has won a medal at the Olympics—Hugh Fisher. Paired with Alwyn Morris from Quebec in kayak doubles, Fisher won a gold and a bronze medal in 1984. Morris was the first, and still the only, Aboriginal Canadian to win a gold medal in the Olympics. When training at the Burnaby Lake race course prior to the Games, Morris, a member of the Mohawk Nation, would speak in his native language to a bald eagle that often perched atop the poles that marked the course. Standing on the Olympic podium, he raised an eagle feather to honour all those who had helped him achieve his dream. He used his resulting profile to become a role model for other First Nations people and helped promote the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program.

Hugh Fisher was raised in Burnaby, BC, and got hooked on paddling during a family canoe trip around the Bowron Lakes when he was in his early teens.

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