"It is with much sadness that I am informing you that Jim Morris, a long-time member and whitewater mentor/instructor of the WCA passed away on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 in Orillia.
Jim will be remembered by many current members of the WCA.
Jim taught the Whitewater beginner’s course at Palmer Rapids for some 20 years. During that time he was instrumental in starting over 400 WCA members on their whitewater adventures...."
One particular story was his involvement in the early days leading up to the exploding growth cross-country skiing. In the late seventies, most of us had seen almost a decade of PARTICIPACTION commercials reminding us about the fitness of the average 70 year old Swede compared to a 30 year old Canadian. A friend of Jim's started up classes to teach cross-country skiing and needed a hand to cope with a large turnout of people wanting to participate in an upcoming weekend...in part due to some recent x-skiing articles in the papers. Jim's answer was
A few minutes later, he offered
Though we had just met Jim the night before, I think everyone knew before he looked up, glanced around, smiled comically, and said
He was a natural leader in comfort of the outdoors and gravitated towards these sorts of activities.
This year's "race" was run a smidgeon of competitive fire. Of the three rivers that run into Lake Ontario (others being Humber and Don river), the Credit river is the most pristine. I've seen a bald eagle on it and many fly fisherman practice their craft in the spring. The water was flowing fast and eddy behind the rock was smaller than normal with flow of 3.07 m3/sec at the 1pm launch.
Have a look at the write-up of the final results...there are a couple of names on it that will surprise you. For more info on the river rescue, have a look here at Jeff's first hand account.
Oswin reminded me of this "chance" to run the Credit River the night before the annual race held on Saturday April 5, 2014. My hesitation in answering were due to the forecast for cold weather that morning...I actually saw dusts of snow around 8am the morning of...brrrrrrr! The decision to meet at the bottom of the run was changed about 1/2 way to a rendez-vous, by a call, to save time we would meet at the top of the river: Retrieving our boat was a matter for after the finish.
The first time in the water is always fun but the trick is to not get cold and that means NOT UPSETTING. We found ourselves to me the last crew to line up for the launch. Ahead of us were two other boats with one just about to launch: Oswin ran down to have a look and I followed to scout the first section: Superstion and old habits rule. About a 100 yards a diagonal wave sent the boat off at about a 45 angle to the left bank. Another 80 years was a bend that funnelled current to the left of the apex located under the bridge. We were to find out about 10 minutes later that this boat would upset (see river rescue link, above).
Our friend, Jim Mark, was found to be there in the midst of a boat extraction. Things seem to be in control but we later found out that the boat took 1/2 an hour to remove from a clump of weeds/roots that had attached to the boat from below.
There were a few bends in the river that were handled by having us renew out ever counter-intuitive "back paddle" and the pointing of the boat at the thing you are trying to miss. Unlike years before where we peeled behind sizeable rock to get the "feel" for "tilt", we opted to not try this It was looking more like a race than a tune-up. manouveur until the takeout at the very end. It was looking more like a race than a tune-up.
Have a read of the "pdf" link, above, before clicking to find our FINISH result. A pic of traditional the award table shows one couple with golden results: In the photograph, you can see the mixed C-2 winners, Michelle and Matt, in matching orange ...their time would have given them silver in the men's C-2 grouping.
Spoiler Alert:
We missed the silver by 45 seconds...4 sets of back paddling will do that!!!
(p e a k r c h a u @ y a h o o . c a)
