Almost all the tents had been taken down and paddlers had moved on to different rivers to enjoy the last day of the Victoria Day long weekend. Palmer Fest, Ontario’s largest whitewater paddling festival, was a huge success by all accounts, except one.
As the event organizer I’d been running on only about three hours of sleep, sleep I had caught after the second band finished their second encore and we drained the last keg, sleep I had snuck in before 5 a.m. when I got up to cook pancakes for 400 people, before getting on the water to teach my morning clinic. Looking back on it, I might have been feeling a little sharp and not in the mood for her constructive feedback. However, I did ask if she had a good time at the festival.
She said I should have facilitated a framework for better communication. She told me that she didn’t meet anyone at Palmer Fest and that as the host I was missing a wonderful networking opportunity, that I was really only halfway to really connecting paddlers. I told her it sounded like she wanted me to organize a children’s birthday party.
I couldn’t image a better way of connecting paddlers than hosting Palmer Fest. We hired 30 of the friendliest instructors to teach clinics. We invited an alleyway of paddling schools, boat companies and clubs to share information and skills. We put on a supper, a breakfast and a sat- urday night party. There was even free day-care so parents could get out on the water. We even partnered with a non-profit co-operative paddling school to host the event.
I walked down to the late-night bonfire by the water and saw bongos, guitars and some dude drumming on a blue barrel while others danced crazy dances around the largest white-man fire I’d ever seen. The social scene at paddling fes- tivals is like an extended family reunion—we know we are all related but are too busy having fun to figure out how exactly.
The ease with which paddlers strike up con- versations about rivers and form instant bonds with each other is the reason I’ve built my life around paddling.
Paddlers don’t “connect” in boardrooms and don’t need to play name games to get to know one another; no, we’re more like cowboys. I remember sitting at a roadhouse establishment in Hamilton. It was 1996 and the Edmonton Eskimos were playing the Toronto Argonauts in the 84th Grey Cup CFl football championship. In walked two cowboys, real cowboys, with worn boots, saddle coats and stetsons. There was the usual hush as the locals eyeballed the new guys. The cowboys didn’t sit down alone in the corner waiting for the bartender to ask them to share their names and their favourite flavour of ice cream with everybody in the bar. no sir, they were in town for the game and were surrounded by like- minded football fans. They walked up to the bar: “Howdy, I’m Troy and this here’s my brother Bob. We’re from Alberta, and we’re here for a good time.” They shook hands with everyone, sat down and ordered 50 long necks for their new friends. By halftime they knew everyone in the joint by name. We all had a great time.
With a firm handshake, I promise you can walk up to any group of paddlers at any festival, in any campground, around any campfire, at any put-in and you will have your connection. You could try and put a label on it, call it a positive, mutually- supportive communication between contributing members of a similar community. or you could pull up a log at the fire, introduce yourself and discuss who’s running shuttle in the morning.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.
