It seems that every year, I have one housemate who sneaks out of the house at 4 a.m. to join the rowing team for their notoriously early morning practices. It’s always left me wondering why anyone would put themselves through such a grueling schedule, and so I found myself signing up for the Varsity rowing team’s Intro to Rowing course this first weekend of May to discover what all the fuss is about.
The U of T Varsity team rows out of Hanlan Boat Club. Unreachable by TTC, the bike ride from U of T takes you through the heart of downtown, past an industrial patch where freight ships dock at the port lands canal, and finally to the quiet waterfront nearby the Leslie Street Spit.
The Hanlan Boat Club consists of two corrugated steel hangars and is named after Ned Hanlan, who invented the sliding seats found in all racing shells and who was the first head coach of the U of T Rowing Club in 1897.
“Hanlan was a legend back in the late 1800s,” states men’s captain Mike Braithwaite as the course begins.
A dozen students gather around four ancient rowing machines behind the hangar and look on as the experienced Varsity rowers show us the catch, drive, recovery, and finish of the rowing cycle. Their strides kick up dry dirt as the machine flywheels hum with power. We try our hand at the rowing machines next; dead birch leaves lazily blow around the new green grass as we feebly prepare for the water.
Once the novices get the hang of the rowing technique, Lauren Brown, the women’s captain, leads the group into a hangar. The boathouse’s mossy skylights cast a mottled light on the neatly stacked oars and shells. Commands are issued and we lift the $50,000 carbon fiberglass shells above our heads and out of the hangar, cautiously maneuvering our way to the dock. Head coach Rob Watering touches on the challenges of the aging state of their gear. “Our major expense is the equipment, which wears out over time,” he says.
U of T shares the Hanlan Boat Club with Havergal and UCC, and as we head to the dock, the private schools are christening a new purchase with champagne—a shell that raced at the Beijing Olympics. There’s a faint buzz as onlookers engage in polite conversation and the occasional cheering. Dogs jump off the dock to fetch deadwood branches.
Two shells are gingerly lowered, still intact, into the water. We push away from the dock and those 4 a.m. wake-ups suddenly become so clear.
“I row for the romance of it,” Caro Kronlachner says, looking out across the water.
We heave and we ho through the coruscating water. Our muscles burn. It’s hard to put your finger on what exactly it is about the water that moves us so greatly, but Walt Whitman touched on it when he wrote
To leave this steady unendurable land
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses
To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship
To sail and sail and sail!
Surrounded by water, the faint cry of seagulls wheeling high above the lake, you begin to feel like Whitman’s sailor “bound for all ports.” Rowing west of the Leslie Street Spit, the Toronto skyline comes into view—a sudden, breathtaking juxtaposition.
The afternoon of the second day ends with a race between two boats of novices. The thrill of the close race, where the power of every stroke counts, leaves me with a strong desire to pursue the sport, as well as a strong sense of the depth of teamwork it takes to succeed here. “Typically if a rower learns that they must pull harder for their crewmates than they pull for themselves, they will be successful,” explains head coach Robert Watering.
Summer is the perfect time to think about joining the rowing team. Hanlan Boat Club offers a Learn to Row course in June—a good way to ease into the novice program.
“Unlike a lot of sports, rowing is late entry: you can come in at university without a long history of athletics, work hard and you’ll find that you can progress fast,” Kronlachner explains. “I can’t think of another sport where the amount of effort you put in correlates as directly with positive results.”
The rowing team has been preparing for this upcoming season throughout the winter, and there is a unanimous sense that this year looks promising. “The team has put in a lot of work over the winter, and I think other schools should be looking out for what U of T will be bringing up to the starting gates in the fall,” says captain Lauren Brown. Kronlachner adds, “it seems ill-fated to predict the future, like the Scottish play, best not to refer to victories yet to be won, but we’re still a team to watch.”
It’s all of this: the camaraderie, the calm morning lake, and the drive to overtake the competing team that brings our rowing team back each morning, once more to the lake.
