Up to 30 or more large sea-going canoes could be converging on Sechelt Inlet this summer in what organizers believe would be the first event of its kind in Canada.
Fred Stark of the Gibsons Paddling Club and Werner Hofstatter of SCC Properties Ltd. pitched the plan last week to District of Sechelt’s public works, parks and environment committee.
Dubbed the Great Shíshálh Inlet Canoe Race, the event is tentatively set for four days in late August and could draw hundreds of West Coast paddlers to Sechelt.
“To the best we could determine, there’s never been a big canoe race with only the large ocean-going canoes anywhere in Canada,” Stark said. “So I would like to stress that this would be a first.”
Stark said the idea has been floating around for a while in the local paddling community, “but we never had the facility or the site.” That changed, however, after he approached SCC, which last year purchased the 162-hectare former Silverback property north of Porpoise Bay Provincial Park. With areas for camping, parking and launching the canoes, “it’s absolutely the perfect spot,” Stark said.
“We’re 100 per cent behind Fred’s idea,” Hofstatter said. “We’ve talked to shíshálh Nation and they’ve appointed their director of culture to support us on this. I think it’s a great, exciting thing we can do this summer.”
As neighbours of the shíshálh, he added, SCC has been trying to find ways to “fuse this community together, and because of the strong cultural ties they have to these kinds of boats and because of our interest in actually partnering with them, it’s really going to be a wonderful opportunity.”
While SCC would supply the land, he said, a commitment of in-kind support from the community is needed before Stark can send out invitations.
Parks and public works superintendent John Mercer said the District could provide garbage cans, traffic cones, barricades, pins, dry wood, “a large tent or two,” meeting rooms if available, and could work with the organizers to obtain permits from the fire department.
CAO Bill Beamish, who has paddled in large canoes on journeys from as far north as Prince Rupert, said the race could be “a very big event for the community to have its name associated with.”
Coun. Alice Lutes said the race was “a very clever idea,” but she had one concern.
“You’re saying it will be a first. Will it also be a last? Will the property be available for this kind of event two, three, four and five years down the road, or will it have to be moved?”
Stark said he hoped the race could become a biannual event, alternating with the Howe Sound Outrigger Race in Gibsons, and if the SCC land was built on, efforts could be made to move the camping to the provincial park.
Hofstatter said the SCC waterfront “will never be sealed off from public access … [but] if we build a seaside village, as people have been asking us to, the camping, of course, will have to happen somewhere else.”
The committee recommended staff report back to council on the potential items that could be contributed by the District for the event.
Stark said organizers had “a network of literally hundreds of canoes that we can fan out to,” though he didn’t know how many would come.
“But if we can keep the cost reasonable, parking is good, the venue is good, the First Nations cultural [activities] will be great, I think we can bring a lot of these canoes up here,” he said.
