The early days at the Mississauga Canoe Club
Upon John Wood's passing, a flood of memories come to me on a very
personal basis.
It was in the very early days of the Club - early to mid 1960’s
when I was a young Canoe paddler (C-2) and had recently competed at the World
Junior Canoe Championships in Essen, Germany (1962) with Dale Sharpe when my
coach Bill Collins and his C-2 partner Jim Renton approached me about coaching
school kids from Riverside Elementary School.
The school was directly across the road from the club and Jim was the
principal. They believed it was a great way to introduce young kids to the
sport and recruit athletes for the Club. I was attending Port Credit High
School and would come to the club on my off classes and early mornings to
introduce these young kids to this new sport of Canoeing. It just took off! So
many young boys and girls would come down to learn the basics of the sport.
Four young boys -- Brian Burton (the brute -104 lbs), Geoff Green, Ross
Rosier and John Wood -- would partake and I realized that they were all very
special. They quickly formed a C-4 and those early training sessions were
extremely entertaining as we all had a lot of fun during those practices and I
believe it was this experience that encouraged me to become a Physical
Education teacher and coach. Over the years that C-4 (eventually Scott Lee
replaced Ross) became one of the best C-4’s that has ever paddled our great
Canadian boat. They won national Bantam, Juvenile, Senior and of course the
infamous Junior (Black) titles for “Missy”.
What I saw in John as a youngster was an extremely motivated and hard-working athlete. Those early Juvenile War Canoes (we won 6 Canadian Titles in a
row) had wonderful young athletes like Mac Hickox and all the Oldershaw boys
(Dean, Reed and Scott), Boaz brothers (Bob and Tom), Terry Leswick, Rick
Temporale and my little brother, Chris, which gave us strong crews every year (I coxed 4 of those crews). One year I
dipped down and brought this young scrawny Bantam kid to fit in the “7th hole on the right”. Yep, it was John Wood, and he never missed a stroke and he never
looked back.
His success was also Missy’s triumph as the club would continue to grow
and to send athletes abroad and he showed us that Canadians could compete
internationally with the best in the world. Today we see many great canoers
from across the country doing well on the international scene and it was John
who first showed us how to set our goals and helped give us the confidence that
we could be as good as anybody in a boat.
John went on to greatness in Canoeing and eventually
Sailing as well as being a respected sport and business leader in Canada, but I
will leave it to others to expound on John’s accomplishments in those areas.
Over the years, many times I would run into John in airports, usually
with an entourage of “suits”. He would give me a big hug and introduce me as
his first coach and ask me how I was doing.
John’s legacy will live on
in Canadian Canoeing and his infectious smile will be greatly missed.
Frank Garner
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