Betty and David Findlay were lifelong members and supporters of the Carleton Place Canoe Club. They married in 1950 and spent their entire lives in Carleton Place, raising their family and participating in many local organizations and causes.

 

Dave joined the canoe club as a paddler during the 1930s and over the years assumed many leadership positions. He always had a vision that CPCC athletes, despite their small-town background, could compete at the highest levels. During the 50s and 60s he filled his car with paddlers and drove with boat trailer in tow to regattas throughout eastern Canada and the United States. He believed that advanced coaching principles were the key to improved performance and introduced year-round training activities to members during the 1960s. Many former paddlers still recall the cold winter Sunday afternoons when they were dropped off in groups along Highway 7 and left to run back into town, and the early spring war canoe runs up the Mississippi to Innisville and back. In the late 60s he worked with two world leading institutions in innovative coaching techniques – Toronto’s Percival Fitness Institute and the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Health Sciences - to test and design training programs for a group of local paddlers.

 

He was a strong supporter of the National Coaching Certification Program and encouraged senior paddlers to enroll in their courses with him. He often invited coaches from other clubs to come to the club and share their knowledge and was an early proponent of videography for paddling technique analysis. During the early 70s, the CPCC was the first in Canada to hire a full-time coach for the summer months and local paddlers quickly responded by rising to national and international levels. A few years later the club hired the first full-time year-round coach in the country and since that time has provided a regular stream of paddlers to provincial and national teams.

 

By the late 60s, racing boat technology had begun to evolve rapidly with the introduction of new composite materials. Using his engineering skills and his creativity, he partnered with local tradespeople to come up with several notable innovations including the first fiberglass racing canoes in the country. A shortage of funds limited new boat purchases, but this did not deter Dave - he had special seats, designed and built to convert a C4 to a K4, thereby expanding members’ racing opportunities. During his tenure he also spearheaded efforts to build two new larger clubhouses in order to provide more training and storage space.

 

From his early involvement, Dave was a believer in gender equity and ably led the Canadian Canoe Association to increase competitive opportunities for women, watching with satisfaction as they continued to achieve parity in the sport. He could not have been happier when his granddaughter chose to compete in canoe rather than kayak events in the early 2000s, something that would not have been possible even a few short years earlier.

 

Dave was appointed Canadian Canoe/Kayak Team Manager for the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games and accompanied the team on several European tours in subsequent years. With Betty’s support, he assumed various leadership positions at the national level and in 1987 was awarded the R. Edgar Gilbert Award by the Canadian Canoe Association for his contributions to sprint canoeing in Canada. Despite his travels and accolades Dave never forgot the CPCC and during their later years, he and Betty spent many enjoyable hours sitting on the banks of the Mississippi watching local kids training, competing and above all having fun on the water.