On Saturday, April 11, the 53rd annual Raisin River Canoe Race takes place. It started as a impulsive early morning phone call. “Hey! The Raisin’s up, let’s run it!” It has evolved into a highly organized competition, with a date fixed and announced early enough to allow paramedics, fire department volunteers and traffic-directing OPP to be on hand. Churches prepare a pre-race breakfast and a post-race awards dinner. Participants are locals, but they also come from Quebec and New York State. Some are set on winning, others are just hoping to clock in at their best ever time, and some are absolutely determined to just make it to the finish line in Williamstown.
I’ve seen two overweight newbies attempt the race in a 14-foot canoe. Knowing zip about paddling technique, they try paddling on the same side. Realizing that’s not working, they both switch to the same side on the opposite side, resulting in equally comical and inefficient results. Their track is much like a that of a WW II Liberty cargo ship trying to evade a U-boat’s torpedo.
At the opposite end of the livery and fitness spectrum are the super fit paddlers in narrow 19-foot Kevlars. They skillfully and simultaneously switch paddling sides with a “Hup!”, umpteen times a minute.
As a paddling participant in the Raisin Race seven times, as a photographer and reporter several times, and even once observing it from a Bell 206 Ranger helicopter, I know the river’s 30-kilometre race course intimately: several sets of rock-strewn rapids, an ox-bow bend that invites the paddler to make a portage and a spectator-pleasing dam to run.
April’s weather vagaries can range from rain showers to snow flurries, with balmy sunshine sometimes in between. The vagaries of winter snow accumulation and unpredictability of the spring run-off can result in water-level treacherously high to so meagre that one year’s race course had to have a start and finish-line at Williamstown, with a downstream U-turn near Lancaster.
Luck plays a big part in the race. The strongest and most experienced paddlers can dump at a set of rapids whose run-route had been scouted with precision. Their intended path path can be blocked by one or two upturned and broadside canoes.
Have fun, eh!
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