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The Re-Birth of Rowing At Saints

Rowing has been a part of St. George's School since its foundation and in 1986 the program gained a permanent spot in the curriculum. David Darling, a former Social Studies teacher for 20 years has written a two-part history of rowing at the School and reflects on its growth since 1986.

The First Ten Years, 1986 -1996

In September 1986, David was hired to teach senior history and set up a rowing program. David had been captain at the Vancouver Rowing Club and this credential was just as important as and possibly even more so than any of my academic qualifications! However, the return of rowing to Saints was not greeted with auspicious support from the School community. Fortunately Headmaster Alan Brown was a firm believer in the democratic principle of one man one vote and an even firmer believer, that he was the man and his was the only vote that mattered. Thus, it was in spite of almost unanimous opposition from the staff, that rowing made its tentative return to Saints.

The first crew took to the water in the fall of 1986 at the Vancouver Rowing Club with borrowed equipment and an eclectic mix of lads. From the start, the program attracted a wide range of boys. Some had more enthusiasm than athletic prowess! Generally speaking the top athletes tended to play rugby and rowing tended to attract many of those, who were not considered athletic enough for the other better established sports. However, there were always significant exceptions. The first captain, James Millership, and a few others of the inaugural crew, such as Peter Black and Geoff Mair had solid athletic credentials in rugby but, they were in the minority.

During the first two years we used the facilities at VRC and enjoyed the services of former Canadian national rower, John Cordonier, who was our first official Head Coach. As Director of Rowing and armed with my newly acquired Class 4 licence, David was the designated driver of the School bus as well as a coach. He recalls an early trip to Stanley Park, which involved a 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 programme 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 ten-ton 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 long-standing 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 as 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 Year Plan.

Those early St. Catharines trips 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 short-term 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 forgetting the impromptu performance of the Mexican hat dance by Alex Munro and company no matter how hard they try.

We stayed right in Mission Bay at the Catamaran Resort Hotel. The boats were stored on the grass by the beach and Jim and Gerry, two professional boatmen from Oxford, came over each year to drive our very temperamental boat trailer, help with some coaching, and keep all our equipment in top shape. Dave's experience driving the trailer back the first year was not a very positive one; a left turn in Sacramento involved closing a six-lane divided highway by the local highway patrol. On another occasion a short break for lunch at a truck stop turned into a lengthy exercise of getting even larger tow trucks to extract the 60-foot loaded trailer from a trailer park, which refused to give the Suburban's four-wheel drive the respect it normally commanded. The Jim and Gerry Road Show was not going to get a lot of competition for the honour of driving that trailer! Those who do remember the Jim and Gerry years will no doubt be saddened to hear of Gerry's death after a very short illness in February 2005.

Other San Diego memories include early morning “Chariots of Fire” style runs along the beach, the unfortunate fascination of some for the doubtful culinary delights of Taco Bell, the breakout of dyed green hair, the bruises on the back of Robin “black and blue” Black courtesy of a timing-challenged crewmate, the disappearance of Ian George just hopping out of the boat for a bathroom visit near the shore in an unexpectedly deep 15 feet of water.

The UK visit in 1992 was a memorable affair with a week in student rooms at St. Peter's College followed by a week of bed and breakfasting in Henley. It did however get off to an inauspicious start when Olly Linsley arrived at Vancouver airport clutching a heavily bandaged hand, which he had cut with a carving knife while preparing a last minute snack. Nevertheless, on the water it was a successful trip. The heavy 4+ won two events at Reading Regatta. At Egham Regatta we defeated a South African crew in the final. In the first round at Reading, it was surprising to be drawn against local BC rivals Shawnigan Lake School in the first round. In fact, there were a lot of Canadian crews in the UK that summer of 1992. The opening day of Henley despite falling on July 1 was anything but successful for Canada. Shawnigan, Brentwood, and Saints went out in the first round. The Saints 8+ was not straight at the start and promptly hit the log boom lane divider while the previously successful 4+ had the misfortune of losing their steering while leading in their heat. However, it would have to be a far greater disaster than that to take the shine off the three sets of pewter tankards they had already won.

Off the water in the UK there was some excitement we could have done without. One of our coxswains, Brandon Lee in attempting to demonstrate his agility and leaping prowess, brought down a Victorian cast iron shop awning on to the head of one of his crewmates, Graham Zink. Graham subsequently enjoyed a far more extensive tour of a British hospital than he anticipated or would have wished. His sympathetic crewmates made good use of their time practising their racing strategy with the help of vacant wheelchairs before being invited to move elsewhere. Other UK memories include the trip to Stratford and the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Measure For Measure. Half way through the performance, Drew Hungerford had to seek medical assistance for a nasty case of hives (a not uncommon effect of Shakespeare on some students). Then there was the infamous punting expedition during which coxswain Brandon Lee had nefariously schemed to get me in the river; he eventually succeeded and David was a rather damp and dishevelled member of our riverside pub dinner party. On the return, our flotilla of punts lost its way and did not arrive back at the punting station until well after dark and closing time, which cost us a late fee not much less than the total replacement value of the punts in the first place.

Memories of these early regattas include a novice crew running aground on the way up to the start at Brentwood. Crossing the finish line with the crew in a rescue craft and the shell in tow behind was an unorthodox approach to racing, which thankfully has not been repeated (and to save embarrassment the unfortunate coxswain's name will not be repeated either!). Then, in 1993, also at Brentwood, Kiran van Rijn and Olly Linsley, after winning the senior heavy pair, picked up the boat to find a substantial amount of Mill Bay cascading over their heads. In 1990, the BC Championships at Shawnigan Lake Regatta went down as the most memorable arrival of any Saints crew. In order to accommodate seniors wanting to go to the Crofton Grad the night before, Clark Olson's father flew them in. Having half the crew delivered to the dock in a float plane raised more than a few eyebrows. At the end of the regatta, the announcer had a little fun in announcing that the St. George's crew should head straight to the outdock for check in, as their flight was about to board!

Today and in the Future, 1997-2006

In 1999 Craig Pond, the UBC Women's head coach, became head coach and a working relationship with UBC began to evolve. Now, UBC supplies advice and university-student assistant coaches to our program.

By 2000, the number of our students involved in the rowing program gradually increased, so now we own some 20 shells and coach boats and, there are 70 boys rowing in both fall and spring terms, with up to 50 rowers on the water after School on any afternoon!

After a number of years with excellent competitive results in the smaller boats at the national level, we are now having success at the senior level in the larger boats and are closing in on the more established rowing programs. Our success in the high school national championships is a true measure of our progress. In the last two years we have achieved tremendous results. As we strive to reach our potential over the next few years, it is realistic to expect even better competitive results from our team at the national championships. Needless to say, our future looks bright indeed. In addition, the number of Saints rowers who have gone on to row at the university level and for Canada continues to increase with every year.

An exciting new chapter in the history of rowing at Saints is about to begin. Under a partnership agreement between St. George's School, University of British Columbia, and the City of Richmond, a new boathouse was constructed on the middle arm of the Fraser River and this facility opened in the spring of 2006. This is the future home of the Saints' Rowing Program. This concludes more than a decade of coaching from a False Creek open-air parking lot, which requires beach launching.

One of the measures of how successful rowing itself has become an established school sport is how over time a greater number of rowers began to be recognized as among the School's top athletes. When this is combined with an unmatched record of placements at prestigious US universities then it can be seen that the program has really come of age.

Saints' Rowers Strike Gold at Nationals in 2004, 2005, and 2006

Every year in early June a St. George's School rowing team is selected along with 2,500 other competitors from some 150 schools to spend a week in St. Catharines, Ontario to compete in the three-day Canadian Secondary Schools Rowing Championships.

In 2004, our team of 13 rowers won one gold, two silver, and two bronze medals, earning 71 points to place third nationally in men's total points. Our seniors won the Senior Double event, finishing six seconds ahead of the second place boat, and placed second in both the Senior Coxed Four and Senior Eight events. The latter race was one of the fastest and closest races in many years. Our junior rowers placed third in two events.

In 2005, our team of 20 rowers won two gold and one silver medal along with three respectable fourth place finishes, earning 81 points to place fourth nationally in men's total points. Our seniors won the Senior Double (again) and the Senior 72 kg eight event in impressive fashion, finishing four seconds ahead of second place UCC. A mere two hours later, five boys from this eight placed second to a well-rested E.L. Crossley crew in the Senior 72 kg Coxed Four event.

In 2006, our team of 29 rowers won gold medals in four Senior Men events - the Lightweight Eight, the Lightweight Coxed Four, the Quad, and the Lightweight Pair. When the team points were tallied, Saints had earned 100 points, good enough to place second nationally in boy's total points and sixth in combined boy's and girl's points.