A LOOK BACK
minor altercation between the bus and a car. For the remainder of the week the crew insisted on wearing crash helmets and asking if this was ‘the Death Bus’! Part of the ritual on the homeward run during the second year was to see how long it took to overtake assistant coach Pat Turner on his bicycle. Pat was the bowman in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic gold medal winning Canadian 8+ and he was no slouch. It was not until half way up Dunbar hill that we usually caught up with him. Novices to the sport in those early days will remember how disconcerting it was rowing in Coal Harbour with seaplanes sweeping in low as they came in to land. They seemed to be just above head height. Characters from those early formative VRC days that come to mind are Kibben Jackson. If any piece of equipment could be found to malfunction Kibben would find it. Adrian ‘The Beast’ Thompson was so named for his performance on the erg. Costantine Tanno and Matt Grenby went on to row at Yale and Harvard respectively and were the first Saints Crew Ivy Leaguers. In 1988, we competed in the first of the annual Saints College Boat Races against the newly created Fighting Irish Crew of Vancouver College. The race was modelled on the better known Oxford–Cambridge Boat Race, complete with coin toss for choice of station, but with a nod to Ivy League tradition of the victorious crew winning the losers’ shirts. The original set of racing rules specified that the defeated program director should treat his victorious counterpart to a few pints of “a dark malt-based alcoholic beverage of Irish origin”, which happened to be a favourite tipple of both. For the record, Saints won the inaugural race and the first post-race brunch was held at Jonathan’s restaurant on Granville Island. After two years at VRC, the program relocated to Delta Deas Rowing Club. Mr. David McLean, a St. George’s parent, had very generously donated sufficient funds to complete the construction of
the boathouse. The Delta Deas Rowing Club had been unable to finish on its own. Now we were proud owners of our own fleet of shells, and this soon grew to include two 8+s, two 4+s, and two 2-s. Saints rowers spent the next couple of years on Deas Slough under the direction of former Upper Canada College coach Peter Mordie. All novices will have fond memories of their first water practices in the 16-seat training barge. Rowing in this contraption brought to mind the slave galley in the film Ben Hur. Eight rowers on each side pulled their hardest to move what seemed like a 10ton concrete block, all the while under the scrutiny of the coxes and coaches, who would wander up and down the central walkway critiquing technique and dispensing words of encouragement and occasional wisdom. In these early years, we attended regattas at Brentwood and Shawnigan, which then doubled as the now-defunct BC Junior Rowing Championships, and also Green Lake in Seattle. A number of longstanding traditions began in these early years; for example, the annual dinner and awards night. The first was held at Mother Tucker’s Restaurant in 1988. The spring training camp was initially at Brentwood College School and we made annual visits to the Canadian Secondary Schools Rowing Association regatta in St. Catharines, Ontario. In 1990 for the first time, Saints crews headed off to St. Catharines, Ontario and the Canadian Secondary Schools Championships and the program began to establish a respectable reputation. New Head Coach Boris Klavora was a former strokeman for the Yugoslavian Olympic 8+ and was renowned for being the coach for the Canadian national men’s team for the previous two Olympics and several world championships. Boris was an excellent technical coach and always had his feet firmly on the ground. I remember his common sense advice to me when I was worrying if our crews were good enough to go back East to the nationals. He said that it didn’t matter if they weren’t that good. What mattered was that the crews back
East were worse! In the event, many of the crews back East were considerably worse and the Saints contingent returned with several finals appearances and a bronze medal in the junior lightweight 4+. This proved to be the first of many national medals to come and kept us well ahead of the schedule, called for by 1987’s inaugural Five-YearPlan. Those early trips to St. Catherines were very intense and exciting affairs. It was still very much a novelty racing at such rarefied heights and the sense of occasion was deeply felt. There were, of course, the usual boyish pranks to let off steam (usually involving water balloons and much mopping up) but, no major behavioural problems, at least from the athletes! The same could not be said of the parents. After an exciting day of racing, we were asked to leave a very expensive Niagara-on-the-Lake restaurant because of one parent’s tired and emotional behaviour. We adults had to wait outside, while the boys finished their meals without incident! Not a scenario one would normally imagine! In 1992, we held spring training in the warmer waters of San Diego. We celebrated the first Provincial championship win (the senior heavy 4+, which went on to place second in the nationals) and the first, and so far only visit, to the Mecca of the rowing world, the Henley Royal Regatta. We moved to False Creek to what we thought would be a shortterm temporary home in the Burrard Civic Marina car park. The Brentwood spring training camps will be remembered for the spectacular sunrises from behind Mount Baker across Mill Bay and Boris’ homemade muesli-style breakfast mix. From 1992 to 1997, we noted that the Brentwood sunrises paled by comparison with the sunsets in San Diego. We also enjoyed the excursions to Sea World and Disneyland and these became staples of all future camps. We also established a last-night tradition of a themed dinner with humorous awards and the occasional skit. Some might still have difficulty for-
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