GOLD MEDAL PLATES TORONTO

The first Gold Medal Plates event was in Toronto yesterday. I was paired with World Famous Toronto based Chef Jamie Kennedy. Our plate was a delicious Duck Liver Parfait, prepared by Jamie's team (he let me sprinkle the salt... I once worked a double shift). Other athletes in attendance included Tamas Buday Jr., Marnie McBean, Jenn Heil, Curt Harnett, Simon Whitfield, Kyle Shewfelt, Perdita Felicien, and lots more. Oakville's Ron Maclean helped make the evening a huge success by playing host for the evening. I'm attending three more Plates of Golden Medals dinners this fall in Halifax, Vancouver, and Calgary.

TURKEYBOWL 2007

Turkey Bowl 2007 was up in Ottawa over Thanksgiving, this past weekend. It's the 4th year in a row I've attended the training camp and fun long distance race, it's always a great time. A lot of the National Team guys and girls took part, which was awesome for the younger paddlers, we enjoyed going out in K2's (photo, click to enlarge) with all of them, we hope they enjoyed the experience too! Got in some great biking (road and mountain) as well up in Gatineau Park with the whole gang which was super fun and a nice change from all the paddling. Thanks to all the coaches and athletes who made it happen!

BIG FALL PLANS

I've got a very busy couple of weeks ahead of me. Starting this weekend I'm off to Halifax for the Canadian Coaching Conference, then a few Gold Medal Plates events in Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver and Calgary, as well as a two week training camp in San Diego with Anders Gustafsson, Rami Zur, and Jeff Smoke, followed by a week in Monrovia, Liberia with Right to Play as an Athlete Ambassador. Right to Play is an athlete driven, humanitarian organization which uses specially designed programs to foster peace and teach life skills to kids in countries affected by war, poverty and disease. This year at the Worlds I raced in a specially designed Right to Play boat to help spread awareness. Please visit their site, and consider what you can do as an athlete, or as an individual to make a difference for those less fortunate than ourselves. Once I'm home from Africa, I'll head to Florida to join our team for a month of training before Christmas. Check back to the site for updates on everything!

NEW CONTACT SECTION

Check out the sweet new contact section. This is the best way to contact me with feedback for the site, a quick "what's up?!", or to inquire about speaking engagements, booking an appearance or a school visit. Thanks to Geoff from Burloak for setting that up!

Rona Collingwood

This past week, Rona opened a new store in Collingwood, Ontario. Rona sponsors 100 Canadian Athletes through their "growing with our athletes" program. I'm pictured here with Rona president and CEO, Robert Dutton. It's incredible that the president of the company makes it out every store opening. It was a great opportunity to meet and say thanks to the good people of Rona.

Rona is a great 100% Canadian home and hardware store, which manages to carry over 90% Canadian product. It's great to see a Canadian company doing so well in such a competitive market, and incredible to see how committed they are to Canadian amateur sport. A big thank you to everyone at Rona for all that you continue to do for Canadian Athletes.

(photos: Richard Galloway, isisphotography.ca)

Creemore Springs Brewery

The good folks up at the Creemore Brewery let my friends and I come up and tour their old fashion brewhouse this past Tuesday. Their slogan is "100 years behind the times", and they make my favourite beer. Pictured here left to right is Mark Oldershaw, Gabriel Beauschesne-Sevigny, Me (check my new Creemore Hockey Jersey! thanks cj), Scott Fisher, Scott Oldershaw, Adam Oldershaw, Craig Jobber and Brady Reardon.

Their beer is made from only 4 ingredients, with no preservatives. Everyone who drinks Creemore knows how great it is on tap, that's because Creemore delivers it's own beer fresh to every bar that carries it, and cleans the taps and draught lines every time a new keg is tapped.

A big thanks to Lily and Charlie at the Cedar Pond Bed & Breakfast and to everyone at the Creemore Brewery. We had a blast!

2007 - A Good Year

Looking back on 2007, I have got to be thankful. I graduated from University, won all the ICF World Cups, had my best World Championships yet (Gold in K1 500m, Silver in 1000m), set a new World's Best time in the 500m (1:36.279), and had more fun at Nationals than I've ever had. Burloak coming in first and second in Senior Men's War Canoe will go down in history, our Men's K4 200 and 1000 keeps getting better, and the atmosphere with Burloak is as positive and motivating as ever.

The Mazda Knockout was a huge success, thank you so much to Mazda, and all the athletes from around the world that came out to make our event so successful. I hope you enjoyed Canada, and are anxious to come back!

So after a nice break, it's almost time to get back in my K1 and train hard. I just bought a new Cervelo road bike which is ridiculously fast and an awesome way to get in some extra training... thanks to Cervelo and Gears Bike Shop for setting me up!

So check back here for updates and rants... and send me an email if you've got a question or comment!