Qu’s connection goes like this: He had been banished from his state of Chu by a corrupt king.  Then he learned of the impending invasion of Chu by a neighbor state.  This was too much for him so he tethered himself to a rock in a river to commit ritual suicide as a protest against the invasion. The good people of the kingdom rushed into the water in their fishing boats to try to save Qu, but it was to no avail.  So, they beat drums and splashed water with their paddles to keep evil spirits from his body.

Ultimately Qu Yuan’s legacy in China ended up being commemorated century after century on an annual basis by boat races that take place on the anniversary of his death.  The boats are traditionally long and narrow canoe-style vessels decorated with carved heads and tails of dragons, which are held to be the rulers of the rivers and seas.

The Comox Valley Dragonflies at practice. The Dragonflies are one of six teams in the Valley.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

Eventually the dragon boats spread beyond the confines of China and the races have now annual events in some 40 countries.  And, as many Comox Valley residents—at least those that ever find themselves near local waters—know, dragon boating is very much a facet of the local scene.

In British Columbia, dragon boating is part of the legacy of Vancouver’s Expo ‘86.  At that event the Chinese delegation brought with them six teak dragon boats.  From that grew the Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival, the first of its kind nationally, thanks to the efforts of David See Chai Lam and Milton Wong.  This was the first dragon boat race/festival outside of Asia, created as a showcase of Vancouver’s growing cultural diversity and to promote racial harmony and cross cultural understanding.

A decade later Dr. Don McKenzie of the University of BC, in conjunction with physiotherapist and breast cancer survivor Dr. Susan Harris, formed the first breast cancer survivor dragon boat team in Vancouver.  Their intention was to prove that upper body exercise has a large role in recovery from breast cancer and lymphedema because it can improve the range of motion, reverse muscle atrophy, stimulate the immune system and activate skeletal muscles.  The only criteria for becoming a member of a breast cancer survivor team is having had a history of breast cancer.

Since that time dragon boating has grown immensely in popularity, with breast cancer survivor teams being a part of all festivals. In the Comox Valley the breast cancer survivor team, and the first dragon boat group on the local scene was Hope Afloat, which was formed in 2001 in conjunction with the Comox Recreation Commission.

In the case of Hope Afloat a group of women in a support group were discussing full-time return to work after having completed their cancer treatments.  It was at that meeting the topic of dragon boat racing came up.  As it stood, the nearest option for getting involved in the sport was in Nanaimo.  This was hardly practical for women who were working.  As it turned out, four local women were involved with the mid-Island team. They were contacted and the wheels were set in motion.  Within a few months, thanks to the support of Valley businesses, service clubs and individual donations, enough funds were raised to purchase the Valley’s first dragon boat.

From that first purchase the concept of dragon boating took off in the Valley.  Hope Afloat gifted their boat to the Comox Recreation Commission, which agreed to make it available to other groups who were interested in getting into the sport.  The rest of the tale is, as they say, history.

There remains, however, says Christine Saunders, Comox Valley Dragonflies team manager, a widespread assumption that dragon boating is still confined to breast cancer survivors (though they remain integral to the sport).  Many teams, like the Dragonflies, are strictly recreational.

The Dragonflies team (the oldest in the Valley after Hope Afloat) was formed in 2002.  The Dragonflies compete in approximately four to five events through the racing season, and primarily compete as a mixed competitive team.  However, they have also raced in a number of women’s festivals through the years.  The Dragonflies are one of six teams in the Valley, including the original Hope Afloat team.

Going back to the beginning for the Dragonflies, and for Saunders, it all came about due to an ad placed by Comox Rec in which they asked if anybody was interested in a dragon boat, as the Hope Afloat boat was now available for other user groups.

“I phoned and then went to a meeting in January of 2002,” she says. “There were a good 40 people there and I became a member of the first team.  We had a 6-16, which is the standard dragon boat worldwide.”

Part of her personal motivation, Saunders says, was that she felt she needed to get involved in some sort of a sport, mainly because she needed the exercise and wanted to do something that appealed to her.  Since she was raised by the sea, she felt that something to do with the water would work for her.

“I’d never been particularly active in sports,” she says.  “I like to say I’m a great spectator, and when my kids were growing up and playing baseball or soccer I was always out there to cheer them on.  But, I wanted and needed something for me.”

Right from the beginning she found it to be a fine fit for her.  It was a good group of people to be with and the sport demanded team solidarity in that all must pull together.  People get tight with one another—figuratively and literally—in relatively short order.

“For us it’s basically recreational,” she says. “There is the competitive aspect and we have achieved a considerable degree of success, but essentially we go out to be on the water and to have fun.  One of our biggest challenges is to get more men involved.”

A further misconception about dragon boating (the first being that it is confined to breast cancer survivors) that Saunders would like to set straight is that it is not exclusively a female endeavor, but decidedly calls for gender mixed teams and they are, she says, always trying to attract men to the sport.

Many men, Saunders adds, believe that dragon boating is strictly a female involvement, and at a certain level females must predominate.  There are no exclusively male teams, but in any of the major competitions in which they have been involved, such as Victoria and Nanaimo, the biggest section is the mixed group.  And, of the 20 people on a team, at least eight must be female.

As for the physical aspects of dragon boating, Saunders describes it as “a wonderful sport.  It’s whole body exercise,” she says.  “While it creates certain demands on the novice it doesn’t take long to adjust to the stresses of the sport.”

She notes that Fitness Excellence in the Valley offers dragon boat training and that it’s a good idea to take that sort of training, especially in the winter, before the season begins.

“Winter is definitely a good time to get started,” she advises, as competition season isn’t the best time to learn, so it can be a bit disappointing for the newcomer since the others on the team are more advanced.

Part of the allure, Saunders says, is the sense of solidarity that comes about from the experience. Everybody must be able to rely on everyone else in the boat.  There is no hierarchy in that regard.

“The speed of the boat comes about from everybody paddling as one,” she says. “Everybody must hit the water with their paddles at exactly the same time.”

While the Dragonflies initially used the boat made available from Comox Rec they have, since 2007, had their own boat—a boat with a special legacy and of which the team members are very proud.

It came about when team member Monica Greenwood and her husband, Mel, donated the boat in memory of their son, Stephen, who had died in a car crash four years earlier. The boat is a BuK, which is built in Germany and is a crème-de-la-crème craft of the sort that has been used in many international competitions.

But, the Dragonflies boat is even more than that, Saunders says. The boat has been enhanced by the talents of local artist Robert Lundquist, who endeavored—after listening to the Greenwoods’ story of their son—to bring his spirit to life as represented by the boat.  Appropriately, the boat is called Stephen’s Spirit.

Team solidarity is of course everything, and aside from having the boat that they cherish so greatly, the Dragonflies deck themselves out in T-shirts that follow the design of the boat.

“With our team we knew we needed a good blend of personalities, and that’s what we have,” Saunders says. “We have 20 people plus a drummer.  Once we join up we make a definite commitment, but we know that we all have other things going on in our lives, and that has to be respected.”

During the season they practice twice a week for an hour and a quarter, and in the winter, come rain or come shine, or sleet and virtually everything but heavy winds, they practice once a week.

There is a definite process that must be learned and a participant’s skill can only improve with practice, she says.  The paddlers in a dragon boat face forward (unlike aft-facing seated rowers) and use a specific type of paddle, which is not connected to the craft in any way.  They paddle canoe-style with a very distinctive paddle type.  The leading paddlers set the pace for the team and it’s essential that all paddlers be synchronized.  Each paddler, Saunders says, should synchronize with the stroke or pacer on the opposite side of the boat.  That is, if you paddle starboard side, you take your pace from the paddler on the port side.  Meanwhile, the two pacers in the bow set the pace for the rest of the paddlers.

“We truly have to be a team,” Saunders says.  “There are no star performers, just a group of people literally pulling together.”

Currently their team quotient is good, Saunders says.  A number of new members have come out, which is good since five or six members left within the past year.  And, as always, they are seeking more male participation.  As far as age is concerned, there is no upper or lower limit, though participants should be physically mature due to the strength demands.

“Right now I believe we range in age from about 30 to 70 years,” she says.

This fastest growing of water sports on the globe is seconded only by outrigger paddling, which uses the same strokes, and the teams are often mutually supportive, says Saunders.

“The primary difference would be that outriggers are suited for long distances, whereas our greatest distance in competition is 500 metres,” she says.  “CORA (Canadian Outrigger Canoe Association) held a competition in Comox Lake last year, and our team supported theirs in that competition.”

What appeals to Saunders and many others in the sport is that it’s not encumbered by regulations limiting the involvement of its members.  As an example, she will shortly be going to Victoria to race with another team and she observes that the teams change from one race to the next.  At the same time, competition, such as the BC Seniors Games (Comox Valley and Campbell River, September 15-18) and festivals like Nautical Days in Comox bring out the apex of team spirit.

For the Seniors Games, Saunders says, she’ll be on a mixed team, along with seven other members of the Dragonflies.  She further notes that for competitions in other centres they do not, due to difficulty of transport, take their boat with them.  Which, she admits, is too bad in one respect, but the logistics have to be respected.

“It all truly stirs the spirit,” she says.  “I’m looking forward to Nautical Days and the Seniors Games in the early fall.  We’ll be there and loving it.”

For more information on the Comox Valley Dragonflies visit www.cvdragonflies.ca.

For breast cancer survivors who would like to be connected with Hope Afloat, go to www.hopeafloatcanada.ca.

Junior racers Amanda Wakeling and Jordan Duncan get in some practice time on the streets of the Comox Valley.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

While out and about on the roads and trails around the Comox Valley, you might want to take special note of some of the two-wheeled blurs that flash past—there just might be some champions in that pack of cyclists.

And some of those blurs may very well be members of the Comox Valley Cycle Club (CVCC).  “The Comox Valley Cycle Club is excited to be able to offer programs and support to the cyclists of the Comox Valley,” says CVCC Time Trials Coordinator Andrew Brown, “but we are especially excited about a few of our junior members who are already showing amazing promise.”

“Although Amanda Wakeling, Jordan Duncan and Nigel Ellsay have only been racing for a year, all are regularly competing at the provincial level and winning.  Amanda and Jordan are both are currently the Provincial Time Trial Champions in their age group.”

The Comox Valley Cycle Club is active in road racing and recreation, holding regular group rides, time trials, and an annual series of road races.  Road races are for riders of all ages—the current membership ranges from 10 to 70.  Formal time trials are conducted weekly.  The club also hosts the BC Masters Cycling Association, regional play-downs for the BC Seniors Games, and special events for province-wide junior racers.

Former and current club members include provincial, national and world champions, regular competitors on the international circuit, and Olympians.

The club has been involved formally in competitive cycling since 1986.  “The CVCC has a long history of supporting cycling and bike racing in the Comox Valley,” says Brown.  “Olympians and former National Champions Kiara Bisaro and Geoff Kabush are both past members.”

One of the long standing senior members of the Club, John Bernard, describes the success of the junior training program.  “A couple of years ago John van der Vliet started organizing a training program for juniors—mainly because his son wanted to learn how to race, and his son had some friends who wanted to learn to race.  Amanda Wakeling,  Jordan Duncan and Nigel Ellsay are involved in that—all are about the same age. Altogether there are about six junior riders.”

While the young cyclists are relatively modest about their achievements to date, Bernard says, “John took them to some provincial level races last year, specifically the time trials, and they walked all over everybody else!  They were really impressive.”

Junior members have always been a focus of CVCC, says Bernard, depending on who is organizing the riders, and last year was a particularly good year.  “We did have talent, but not just that—the talent that started it out encouraged other talent to come along too!  And it built on itself.  It was attracting other people, other kids into it.

“We have about 50 members,” adds Bernard, who is also in charge of membership for the CVCC.  “At one point we had more—when we were involved in mountain biking as well, which was a success at that time mainly because we had the parents involved and the grade schools involved.  But when the kids grow older and drop out, the parents drop out, and without the parents it’s extremely difficult to keep going.  Our club is not strictly involved in mountain biking any more—it has started up again under a different organization in Cumberland—though a lot of our riders do mountain biking.”

The CVCC, he says, is basically a road racing club.  “This year we’re doing four race weekends locally—three of those are one-day events, and one is a two-day event with three races in it. The first one is mid-May, then one a month after that ending up in August.”

Bernard considers himself a recreational cyclist.  “I don’t race!” he says, “I can’t keep up with them! Their speed averages in the low 30s I think, for 1-1/2 to 2 hrs.  Right now they are doing a group ride Sundays, and eventually probably three or four organized group rides every week, depending on how keen people are.  They don’t care what the weather is like—they’ll even go out in snow!  Those are basically training rides.”

Most racing in the Valley is on Sunday mornings when the roads are fairly quiet.  “Routes are chosen partly because the traffic is light.  We try to be as careful as we can about the way people race.”

They also offer a “good time trial series,” once a week starting in August. “We have a course that starts at Piercy and Condensory, goes up to the highway, up the highway to Dove Creek Road and back,” says Bernard.  “They do that once or twice around—that’s very popular.”  Bernard notes that some improvements such as road shoulders or smoother pavement would be welcomed by the cycling community.

That community includes the junior members and their families.  “I’ve always liked to ride a bike,” says 15-year-old Jordan Duncan, whose father Kent is vice president of the CVCC.  “But when I first met John van der Vliet, he really got me into cycling as more of a sport rather than just something fun to do.  I was in Grade 6 at the time, about four years ago.  John is the dad of one of my best friends from elementary school, Jake. Jake introduced me to his dad, who grew up here, moved to Australia and turned pro, then raced in Holland, moved back to Australia, married there and then moved back here to the Valley.”

Amanda Wakeling, also 15, got into cycling as a kid to keep up with her brother.  “We ride to school pretty much every morning with my dad,” she says.  “Then a few years ago I got a cyclo-cross bike from Jeff at Trail Bikes, and that just started me road cycling, which got me into the club meeting different people, and got me into racing more.”

Adds Duncan:  “She’s the mountain biker and I’m the road cyclist.”

“But we both do cyclo-cross,” says Wakeling.  “We do all three.”

Cyclo-cross, as a diversion from their other competitive racing, includes all trail surfaces such as pavement, wooded trails, and grass—but notably features steep hills and obstacles, requiring the rider to quickly dismount and carry the bike while navigating the obstruction, then quickly remount.

“Cyclo-cross is kind of crazy,” says Wakeling with a big grin.  “It’s kind of in-between mountain biking—you get up and run over barriers, run up stairs, crazy stuff!”

The bikes, adds Duncan, are similar to road bikes but with wider and more knobby tires for off-road riding.  “You can do it anywhere, that’s the coolest thing about it,” says Wakeling.  “It’s competitive—fast races, like a half hour or 45 minutes.”

Cyclo-cross is what they do when not competing from September to November.  “It’s kind of an off-season, fun thing to do,” says Duncan.  “Keep the fitness level up, but don’t get disappointed if you don’t do well.”

“Kids that are drawn to compete in cross-country skiing already come to me with very strong ‘Type A’ personalities,” explains Battison. “These are smart, athletic young people. Most of them are A+ students in school, and they possess a strong desire to achieve in everything they do. I actually have to make a determined effort to de-motivate them from training too fast and too long! My role, as their coach, is to teach them how to harness that energy with control and skill.”

There is no doubt that the group of more than a dozen teenaged cross-country skiers I meet at the Nordic Centre on Mount Washington one Thursday evening are full of enthusiasm. Despite the fact that the wind is blowing, it is snowing hard and it will soon be dark outside, these young men and women are eager to hit the trails with their coach and mentor.

Battison rounds up his group and heads outside, leaving me to chat with four members of his junior racing team. I am immediately captivated by their wide smiles and positive energy.

Comox Valley girls Sylvia Watkins, 17, Brett Trainor, 17 and Andrea Lee, 19, along with Campbell River resident Freya Wasteneys, 18, tell me they have all been active in cross-country skiing since they were three or four years of age. With the on-going support of their families, they have progressed through the Ski Canada Skills Development Program, advancing from “Bunny Rabbits” to “Jack Rabbits” and are now proud to be members of the Junior Racers team. Their involvement with the sport has enabled them to travel across Canada to compete in various national events, including the Canada Winter Games, the BC Winter Games, the North American Cup and the National Championships.

The girls explain that their team skis at least five times during the week and twice on weekends, logging up to 30 hours weekly on the trails at Mount Washington’s Nordic Centre. In addition to this, they work out regularly at the gym and run. When the snow melts off the mountain trails in spring, they practice on the glacier or take to roller skiing on the roads. It is a grueling schedule they stick to from May through March each year—taking only the month of April off for a well-deserved break. They do all of this while balancing schoolwork with training, travelling and competing, yet still manage to earn top grades at the same time. I am fatigued just listening to them!

In an era when many parents can’t get their kids to put down their cell phones long enough to join the family for dinner, I asked the girls what keeps them so motivated. Why are they hooked on cross-country skiing?

The girls exchange quick glances and smile at me sympathetically, as if the attraction to the sport is so blatantly obvious I shouldn’t have to ask.

“Most people think that cross-country skiing is an individual sport, but it’s not,” says Lee. “This is a team sport and, because we have been working together for so many years, our team is like family to us. When things get really tough during a practice or race, it is that connection to our team that keeps us going.”

“For me, it is about the challenge,” says Trainor. “When I am truly focused on racing, I almost go into a state of autopilot. I strive to work harder and harder to increase my speed, improve my technique and do better than I did in the last race.”

Wasteneys agrees, adding: “It is also about being physically fit and having fun,” she says. “I find that skiing and being fit makes me feel good about myself.”
Watkins loves the fact that they get to travel a lot and, because of the nature of the sport, “get to see Canada from a different perspective than the average person. There is something extraordinary and invigorating about being alone in the forest or skiing across a glacier!”

Having competed at every major Nordic facility in Canada over the past few years, the girls know they are privileged that their home training base is one of the nicest lodges in Canada—Raven Lodge on Mount Washington. And they are grateful for the amazing people who work there. The great facility, mild temperatures, ample snow and more than 55-kilometres of world-class cross-country ski trails at Mount Washington are all much appreciated. Being able to wear shorts to cycle in the morning and go skiing in the afternoon is a perk that few (if any) of their co-competitors across Canada get to experience. The coldest temperature on Mount Washington is about -7 degrees C. Skiers in other parts of Canada often have to train in temperatures well below that, and they are required to come in out of the cold when it is -20 degrees C or more.

But what really motivates these girls, the rest of the kids in the club, and their parents, is the team’s leadership. The Strathcona Nordic Ski Club (SNSC) is managed by a dedicated volunteer board of directors, all of whom depend on coach Battison to not only teach these kids to ski, but to build their confidence as well. While winning at national events is the main goal, fostering a life-long enjoyment of physical activity and the outdoors is of utmost importance, too.