Mrs. Mothballs was my piano teacher. Once a week for an hour I’d sit beside her on the bench stabbing at the keys, working on scales and butchering Hot Cross Buns. Every week before my lesson I’d cry to my mother, until finally, after two months, I was allowed to quit.
It was my idea to take piano lessons. I wanted to be Jerry Lee Lewis, Burton Cummings or even Billy Joel (keep in mind I was only 10 and it was the ‘80s). But that’s not the way old Mothballs and the Royal conservatory taught music. They were all about grades, progression, theory and proper technique. I didn’t sign up to peck at scales and trace treble clefs in a workbook every night after supper.
My inspiration for music was flattened and playing the piano, as it was presented to me, was stupid.
Thirty years later I’ve picked up the guitar. This time I’m approaching music much differently.
I’m picking songs that I want to play and figuring out the chords and enough of the rhythm to strum along. This time I’m just having fun playing music. I’ve even joined a band of like-minded, but much better, musicians known as the Rapid Palmers (a tribute to our paddling town, Palmer Rapids).
After six months at the guitar I’m now going back and diving into theory books, learning to read music and thinking about proper technique. I’m even planning on signing up for formal lessons. Now that I’m hooked on playing music, I want to learn to be a musician.
This spring, Rapid Media is putting together the Canadian Whitewater Instructor Conference. My objective is to bring together whitewater instructors from across the continent from different organizations, clubs, paddling schools, colleges and camps to share ideas and answer important questions like: why do more than 90 per cent of paddling school students never paddle whitewater again? And, what can we do to turn more of these would-be paddlers into lifelong enthusiasts?
“We need to inspire them to paddle,” a young instructor said to me when she heard about the conference.
A light bulb went off in my head, “no we don’t!”
The thousands of students taking paddling courses are already inspired. They’ve dreamed of paddling, found a school or club, booked a course, paid their money, and have driven into mosquito country for the weekend.
They’re inspired. Our job as paddling instructors is not to kill it. They are inspired like I was inspired to take piano lessons, before Mothballs killed it. She bogged me down in theory when I just wanted to play Great Balls of Fire.
Maybe the reason so few whitewater students don’t continue to paddle after their first course is because they come to us dreaming of adventure and shooting rapids and we bog them down with stroke progression, drills and complex river morphology lessons. Maybe we should just teach them a couple chords, the rhythm of the river and then let them play.
This is just one idea I hope is discussed at the Canadian Whitewater Instructor conference and on chairlifts, in bars and wherever you gather to talk about paddling and get ready for spring.
If you plan on attending the Canadian Whitewater Instructor Conference, stick around for Palmer Fest and catch the Rapid Palmers, they promise no Billy Joel.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.
