Corkery earns some down time
Physician was driving force behind new home for Ottawa whitewater canoe club
MARTIN CLEARY
The rest of the summer belongs to Doug Corkery.
It doesn’t say that anywhere, but the family physician who devotes unthinkable volunteer hours to the Ottawa River Runners Whitewater Club needs some serious relaxation time.
He certainly deserves it, after coordinating two major projects as the club’s contributions to Canada’s 150th celebrations — overseeing the construction of a modern, boat storage venue and clubhouse and enduring all the heartache and joys of that 10-year ordeal, and playing host to the week-long Canadian canoe slalom championships, which ended Sunday.
For the first nine years of the past decade, Corkery and the club had many ideas on where to locate the three-season, boat storage building and what it would look like. But for one reason or another, their ideas never materialized.
But in the past year or so, the project began to take shape, and even when they faced challenging hurdles, Corkery and the 50 club volunteers got the job done, while facing the deadline of playing host to the 2017 national championships.
Corkery knew the three, old and ugly shipping-type containers, which dated back to 1995 and were jam-packed with a maximum of only 45 plastic and high-tech boats, had to be replaced, ASAP. He was hearing that message from the National Capital Commission, the owners of the condominiums on the other side of the waterway and club members.
What stands today replacing the metal containers is an environmentally friendly and eye-appealing, wooden structure designed by Hobin Architecture and built to hold all the club’s competitive and recreational boats.
“We had boats packed in there like sardines,” Corkery said of the metal containers, which were a nightmare whether it was the foul summer smells or someone wanting their boat, which was at the very back.
“But we also had boats off site at family farms and in backyards. We couldn’t use those boats because they were off-site. It left us in limbo.”
The $350,000 storage pavilion and clubhouse is just what the doctor ordered for the Ottawa River Runners, whose roots go back to the early 1970s, when they had no fixed address and trained and competed at various whitewater sites around the city. The club was incorporated in 1982 and moved to its present Fleet Street Pumphouse race and training venue site in the early 1990s.
The shipping containers are mere memories now, purchased by a gentleman in Embrun. Today, the almost 3,000-square foot pavilion can store up to 200 boats, has three change rooms, three locked rooms for paddles and a secondfloor loft, which serves as a meeting, all-purpose room and leads onto a balcony overlooking the race course.
“I’ve had really positive reaction from the club members,” said Corkery, whose normal paddling schedule of up to five whitewater and flatwater paddling outings each week has been greatly reduced this year.
“People new to (the club) will think this was the way it always was and they don’t have to suffer through the shipping-container years by changing in the rain and walking in the snow.”
The pavilion also will be fuelled by solar-panel power as part of Bullfrog Power’s community renewable projects program. The 1.04 kW solar installation is located on the club’s off-grid clubhouse roof, which also features eight large skylights. In conjunction with a battery backup, this project will provide the club’s necessary power.
Corkery was especially proud of this aspect for the new pavilion, which he called a legacy project.
“For decades, the Ottawa River Runners’ clubhouse will be generating clean, pollution-free electricity thanks to Bullfrog Power’s contribution,” he said.
And for years and decades to come, the club membership of 150 won’t have to worry about any mortgage or bank payments. The project is debt-free.
Since it took so long to construct the new storage venue and clubhouse, the club raised and saved $200,000 over the past 15 years. It also received $20,000 in private donations.
But what kick-started the project was being awarded the maximum $150,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s capital works program in late 2015.
“Now, this is an integrated facility. Before, it was on a shoestring,” Corkery said.
“My ambition is to get back to paddling. I haven’t done as much this year. But there’s a satisfaction to it (completion of the pavilion). We’re always a sport that’s been, how should I put it, a second-class sport. We don’t have the numbers, but this could take it to another level.”
Meanwhile, home-course advantage played a key role in helping three members of the Ottawa River Runners win titles at the Canadian canoe slalom championships on the Pumphouse course.
Cameron Smedley was a twotime champion, winning the senior men’s C1 and canoe double mixed with sister Alison. Smedley defeated Spencer Pomeroy by 0.72 seconds and his third-place brother Liam, the U23-race winner.
While Lois Betteridge was runner-up to Calgary’s Haley Daniels in the women’s C1 class, she also was the U23 gold medallist. Betteridge teamed with Ben Risk for the canoe double mixed U23 title, and was K1 senior women’s runner-up to Florence Maheu of Salaberryde-Valleyfield and the race’s U23 champion.
John Hastings edged two-time OIympian Michael Tayler by onetenth of a second for the senior men’s K1 title. Andrew Musgrave was the U23 winner.
SHAYOK SHOCKER
Ottawa’s Marial Shayok is whetting the appetite of university basketball fans in Iowa. After spending three years at the University of Virginia, the former St. Patrick’s High School student/athlete has transferred to Iowa State University for his senior year, but must sit out a year to play the 2018-19 season. Shayok was looking for “a different style of play,” and if his performance in the high-level, summer YMCA Capital City Basketball League in West Des Moines, Iowa, was any indication, he could be an explosive offensive force for the Cyclones. In nine regular season and playoff games, Shayok averaged 45.8 points and was named the MVP. His Sparta Waste Services team won the league playoffs, but Shayok missed the final because of a “slight wrist sprain.” Probably took too many shots. He had four 50-plus-point games.
They don’t have to suffer through the shipping-container years by changing in the rain and walking in the snow.