Put Our Footwear Between You


and the Water


Editor’snotes Picture the future of kayaking


I liked our last cover using Paul German’s photo of over two dozen kayaks lined up hip-to-hip on the beach at Deep Cove, B.C.The image struck me as one that was obviously “kayaking,”maybe new paddlers getting into boats for the first time. But Brian Johnston didn’t like it and wrote us a letter to say so: “Your cover shows a beach that is packed with 20 kayakers all in a row.To me, this is one of the most unattractive images I've ever seen of kayaking. I assume the message you’re trying to present is that kayaking can be for all types of people— novice to expert—but I would argue that the most attractive attribute of kayaking is that it gets you away from the crowds and out into the natural environment. This photo expresses the exact opposite for me!” I have to agree with Brian that kayak touring certainly can offer solitude and


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take you into the natural environment, but to limit it and not celebrate the social aspect of paddling sells us short. I took up cross-country skiing again this winter and I thought a lot about this letter while exploring groomed trails at my local cross-country ski centre.There are many parallels between the long-established Nordic ski world and the relative- ly young sport of kayak touring.Brian’s wilderness-only idea of kayaking translates to limiting skiing to backcountry touring and suggests that recreational ski centres and races are “unattractive.” Roughly 75 percent of Nordic skiers aren’t in the backcountry, they are meet-


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ing friends in the evenings or early Saturday mornings in snowy parking lots on the edge of urban sprawl.They are club members, racers and families skiing recre- ationally.These are the people who run bake sales and bottle drives to raise money to build a warming/waxing shack at the trailhead.They are members of associations and people like Brian Motorshed, a retired bicycle shop owner in Petawawa,ON., grooming and fussing about the local trails because he loves to ski. Small recreational ski races like the one in Deep River,ON., register 300 names on entrance lists and well-developed circuits such as the Keskinada Loppet in Hull, QC., have as many as 1500 pairs of skis cross the finish line. Kayak racing is gaining momentum on the West Coast and other pockets across


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North America.We hope this issue’s feature article about racing,“The Need for Speed”by Sue Handel, sparks more interest and helps develop a stronger race scene. Sue’s article isn’t about paddling in solitude in far-away places; it’s about getting together on Tuesday evenings and putting some miles behind you. We are a few hundred years behind but imagine if kayak touring could match the model of cross-country skiing. Imagine if we could match its participation rate, if the existing paddling population became the 25 percent of touring pad- dlers on remote coastlines and we added 75 percent at the recreational club level. Imagine if we could motivate hundreds of volunteers to run kids’ programs, organ- ize races and build waterfront club houses.This would benefit guys like Brian Johnston and it would benefit all of us. Because clubs and associations filled with active members breed advocacy, and advocacy with numbers equals a strong lobby to protect kayaking’s wonderful places.


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4 Spring 2003


Scott MacGregor editor


editor@rapidmag.ca WRITEto:


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