To tell my story properly, I think I have to start with this statement: I’m a paddler with two distinct histories.
The first history centers primarily around my teenage years; fully able-bodied and choc-a-block with youthful energy.
The second history starts after I was involved in a life-changing industrial accident, barely an adult, at age 20, wherein I watched helplessly as a saw blade sheared off four of the five fingers on my left hand.
But first things first, briefly. I came to flatwater sprint as a gangly 10 year-old, essentially pressured in to trying the sport by an older brother who had caught the canoe bug. Long story short, I liked it. I was drawn to Sprint Kayak. I did all the usual things as a kid in the sport. Went to local regattas, trained before and after school with my team, competed in the Provincial games, went to National Championships, made it on the team that went to Canada Games when I was 17 (that was 1997, just to date myself a little). I was never all that good, but I was in love with the sport, and I always enjoyed the spirit and feeling of competition, win or lose. I think that was what led to my staying in the sport past my high school years, when a lot of kids drop out of flatwater and move on, to concentrate on college, or try different things.
At that age, it seems like one of two things happen with paddlers. They either say ‘I’m done’, or they say ‘I’m going all they way’, and they push to make it onto the world stage.
Me, I was atypically in the middle, simply saying ‘I like where I’m at.’
And that was my first history. An active participant, training and racing with no expectation of significant outcome (I should also mention that I was multisport, and played college volleyball after high school, another reason that I never viewed kayaking as ‘all or nothing’, I had other things going on). That history, in any case, ended in December of 1999 when I got hurt at my part time job in a small sawmill. I will spare you the details, but in the end, like humpty dumpty, I couldn’t be put back together again.
All of a sudden, I faced a new reality: I was a paddler, with no real way to hold on to a paddle. So began my second history with paddle sport.
I spent a little over a year outside of paddling, rehabbing and getting used to life with a bunch less fingers. Then I spent some time working with a prosthetist to create an ugly, rudimentary prosthetic that at least let me hold on to a paddle again. The next couple of racing seasons I would rather forget. My technique had to change, the prosthetic hurt, and squeaked awkwardly against the paddle. I was not in the right shape for the sport and I even had some paddlers, coaches and parents suggest to me that I shouldn’t be able to race in their circles because my prosthetic was some sort of advantage.
There was no Para circuit at that time to fall back on. I faded out of racing after the 2004 season. Where my return to paddling and racing after my accident felt like a personal triumph, I went away from it a few years later feeling misunderstood and demoralized.
I can’t say that I suffered any sort of identity crisis at that time. I still paddled, fleetingly, over the following years, but just to keep my itchiness to be on the water in check. Life developed in other ways that left me little time to think about not racing. Marriage, kids, more university, establishing a career path, other sports. There’s no hard feelings here. I’m glad it all turned out this way (my family would be especially glad to hear that!).
During those years I had turned away so completely from the real meat of paddling, I was left unaware that a Para track had in fact sprung up in sprint canoe and kayak: a Para class kayak discipline, and a va’a class (rudderless outrigger, for the uninitiated).
In 2010, the first World Championships to include Para sprint canoe and kayak took place. Canadian Christine Sellinger took gold in the Va’a, in 2010, and set a record in 2011 when she won again. Canada was leading the way in Para paddling. I didn’t even learn about this until 2012.
All of a sudden, the water felt like it was calling me back.
I made a slow, cautious re-entry to the sport. Inquiries before action. After all, I had a full-time job at this point, a wife, and two small children, and I also knew from past experience how the canoe-kayak world can work, and what it takes to immerse yourself in that world again.
So, inquiries. Tons of them. Looking into rules, and classifications, and equipment, and qualifications processes, and potential time commitments, and ultimately, discussions with family about what it could all mean.
Finally, though, the clincher: the Para class was going to be debuting in Rio at the 2016 Paralympics. It was time for action.
With my family’s blessing, I jumped back in, full of ‘try’ again. I finally got a classification in late 2014. It took a while, but I bought the appropriate Para class kayak (there weren’t any just ‘laying around’ in BC)—the first flatwater sprint boat I have ever called my own, this in itself a dream fulfilled since I first sat in a boat as a kid in Kamloops. I started training again, had new, better prosthetics made. Through my re-ignition into paddling, I even went to my first Florida training camp (after 20 years of hearing people talk about the camps down there, what with all the dolphins and manatees and warm waters, it was my turn!).
It was during that training camp that a new blow to my paddling “life plans” came along: the International Canoe Federation (ICF) made the decision to de-classify kayak paddlers with upper limb impairments, and as such, paddlers like me would not be able to try for the Rio Paralympic debut in 2016.
I try to take these things in stride. I was still going to race in my kayak, but I also picked up va’a, where upper limb impairments were still accepted (Va’a would not be making a debut in Rio, but it was at least a viable Para option for me). More squeaky prosthetics would need to be made. I should note here that domestically, Canoe Kayak Canada is still encouraging of kayak paddlers with upper limb impairments—there’s some “it’s complicated” relationship status there with respect to competing at the CCA championships, but on the whole, the idea is to include, not exclude.
Happily, for my classification, I won gold at the 2016 Canadian Canoe Association Championships in Para Va’a: some 26 years after getting into a flatwater boat, I had my first CCA medal. Man, it tasted sweet. For a young man with an early history of just being happy in the sport, and never finding his way on to any sort of significant podium, this felt HUGE for me.
In this year, 2017, I repeated that win. Also in 2017, the ICF announced that in 2018, upper limb injuries or impairments will not be considered for Para va’a international competition. Excluded once again. In almost the same breath, Para va’a was announced for inclusion in the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo. Talk about a rollercoaster. Tokyo was, frankly, the last carrot I could see dangling in the future, that maybe there was an opportunity there worth pursuing. But no longer. Not for me, anyway. That will be a carrot for someone else to take.
SO, you’re up to speed on my history now. The rest of it is the future. Despite the roadblocks put in my own Para highway,
I. Love. Paddling.
Just as I always have. I still love competing, against other Para paddlers or against able-bodied folks (who, in this day and age, are a little less ridiculous with their opinions about what an “advantage” a prosthetic is). I get a high from being on a start line that I feel nowhere else. You’ll know me on the start line as the guy wishing everyone luck, and you’ll know me in the race as the one with the rhythmic ‘squeak, squeak, squeak’ of my prosthetic as my paddle shaft rotates against my plastic hand.
I love the community, the diversity of age groups and backgrounds, the lifelong calling to pure sport that comes with canoe and kayak. As a “mature” paddler, I also give back. I am the athlete representative in BC to the Provincial canoe and kayak board, and I am the chair of the Canoe Kayak Canada Para committee. I love being a part of the policy side of this sport, as geeky as that sounds and as frustrating as it can be at times. I am especially hopeful for the Para committee, and building Canada’s program to be a force on the world stage (hint: we have some great young guns, but we have work to do). On a personal level, I hope there will be an eventual 180 on the decisions to remove upper limb impairments/injuries from Para paddling (would you tell a runner with no feet that they cannot compete in a track event?), and in the background, off the water, I’m going to be chipping away at this issue, mark my words.
But in the meantime, I can be happy for others, and try to build them up in their own pursuits. A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say!
There you have it. I turn 38 this year, and my passion for paddling is as piqued as ever. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: paddling is one of my churches. It will always be so. It has not been without challenges, clearly. I fully expect there will be more, but my faith is strong these days, so as long as I can access a boat, and a paddle, you’ll probably see me on the water, putting in one blade stroke after another. Squeak, squeak, squeak.
Stuart Chase, Para Paddler in False Creek, B.C.
Anyone in sports and fitness who would like to share their voice, please submit to hank@hankfittraining.com.