Handbook of Sports Medicine and Science

Canoeing

Don McKenzie, Bo Berglund, Don McKenzie, Bo Berglund

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119097211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Sports Medicine

A new volume in the Handbook of Sports Medicine and Science series from the International Olympic Committee, this volume Canoeing provides an accessible and comprehensive summary of the topic.

• Provides a concise, authoritative overview of the science, medicine and psycho-social aspects of canoeing
• Offers guidance on medical aspects unique to the training and coaching of canoe athletes
• The only book on this subject endorsed by the Medical Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Canoe Federation (ICF)
• Written and edited by global thought leaders in sports medicine

Chapter 1
Introduction

Ian Mortimer¹ and Don McKenzie²

¹Canoe Kayak Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada

²Division of Sport and Exercise Medicine, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Introduction

Bodies of water, great and small, are a formative feature of the human experience on our blue planet. At every corner of the earth, people have been drawn to live near these sources of life. This connection between humankind and the seas, oceans, and rivers that we call home is reflected in a seemingly universal reaction to not just live by and immerse ourselves in water, but also find a way to float on its surface.

Simple watercraft, the technological step beyond swimming, are a fixture in the history of the human experience. Dugout canoes, reed rafts, framed boats covered with bark or animal skins, and simple wood‐plank boats exist in as many varied forms as the unique bodies of water they float on and the myriad tasks they have been built to accomplish. Be it carrying a passenger to a far shore, collecting fish on a flowing stream, navigating the swell of the ocean, or traveling great distances on a flowing river, simple craft of simple means have existed for millennia in cultures around the world. These simplest of boats all share a core concept: a buoyant craft, a paddler or group of paddlers, and their paddles, allowing people to travel where feet, wheels, or hooves will not carry them. There is a fundamental joy in conquering our natural inability to move across the waters' surface, a joy that never gets old. Paddlers of these craft the world over connect in this wonder, and most cannot help but smile at the sight of any type of paddled craft drifting into shore at sunset, shooting down a rapid in flood, or charging through an ocean swell.

The draw of the simplicity and universality of the paddle, paddler, and boat is an important part of the story of canoeing as a sport. However, the more specific story of competitive canoeing and kayaking traces its history through the canoe's part in the foundational myth of modern North America. Understanding the story of canoeing necessitates an understanding of the canoe itself as part of the protracted, and fraught, process of cultural contact between North American indigenous people and the European settler society. The names canoe and kayak themselves reflect this Euro‐centric mindset of “discovery” of these indigenous craft and their peoples, with the words we have today emerging through the process of European languages wrestling the indigenous names into European vernacular. Christopher Columbus is credited with first encountering the Haitian word canaoua as a name for the dugout‐type canoes of the island of Hispaniola, and bringing the term into Spanish as canoa, which came to the English as canoe, while the Greenlandic Inuit word for “small boats of skins,” qayaq, returned to Europe with the Danes as kajak, which became kayak.

From the earliest stages of cultural contact, the unique adaptation of indigenous paddle‐driven craft to perform in the waters of North America was quickly obvious to those who were arriving from across the ocean. This was especially apparent on the inland waterways of the continent, where the major rivers, now known as the St. Lawrence, Ottawa, Hudson, Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri, and their hundreds of smaller tributaries served as highways of canoe travel. It became clear to the European colonizers, explorers, and traders that adopting the light, repairable, and maneuverable canoes they learned to build and paddle from the Mi'kmaq, Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and others was the only efficient way to travel the expanses of the North American landmass.

The canoe became a critical feature in the life of any European looking to travel beyond the salty waters of their continent's shore, and indeed was a foundation in the process of exploration, expansion, and eventual domination of the North American landmass by European settlers. Canoes took Lewis and Clarke across the American cont...