Some Notes About The Waterfront Festival
By John Swartz
It’s taken a week to decide how best to portray the unfolding of two events that are part of the Chamber of Commerce’s annual Waterfront Festival. Owing to the inherent nature of one of the events, and the outcome of the other, looking back with a humourous eye seems to be in order. After all, the whole point is to have fun, so here we go.
The annual Cardboard Boat Race which usually happens at the Port of Orillia is a microcosm, maybe a reflection of Orillia. There may be many who would think, ‘only in Orillia,’ or, ‘of course in Orillia.’
First, who would ever, even on a hazy evening, even come up with, ‘hey let’s build boats out of cardboard and see if they float (they do, but not for long).’
Second, finding one other person who would think the idea is good enough they feel motivated to make a boat and give it a try is just outside the realm of reality.
And yet, it happens, with regularity. There is one other aspect, it’s fun, for spectators for sure, and likely for the participants (as in they appear to be having fun despite being in the drink and having to swim their way to safety), especially when taking apart a competitor’s ‘boat.’
So on August 11, six teams tested their boat building capabilities, and one returned (more below). A couple hundred people witnessed the affair. Both are lower numbers than previous years. Since COVID the number of teams has been lower and the organizers, the Orillia District Chamber of Commerce, and spectators have had to contend the last few years with the obligatory moratorium during that valuable time we all spent alone, and construction.
Some of the boats are quite elaborate in design (many of the boats are designed by Evan Devine, and indeed this year 4 of the 6 were), considering the fate. These people put a lot of time in for their 2 ½ minutes of fame. Somewhere along the line the crews started to dress up for the part.
Councillors Dave Campbell ( a veteran participant), Jay Fallis and Jeff Czetwerzuk looking like a bunch of rogues on their way to an evening of debauchery, were doing the heavy lifting, taking their cardboard boat to water, which prompted asking to no one in particular if were they early for the Labour Day Weekend Pirate Party.
One of them, I forget which, said, kind indignantly, it was a gondola, which it did kind of resemble, and they were gondoliers, not pirates. With the new information they did have kind of have costumes.
Theirs was the first boat to break in half, right in the middle, and true to form of crews Campbell has been part of in past years, they immediately started to swim after and try to scuttle their competition (you have to watch Campbell at this race each year because he’s usually the first to attack other boats)
I passed by one character in a Mario costume on my way to the race. An aside, the race was moved this year from the basin by the Port building to the small beach next to the government pier by Terry Fox Circle.
When the crews started moving their boats from dry dock in the pavilion to the beach Mario said, “Hi John,” catching me by surprise. The hat, fake moustache and makeup caused me not to recognize Nate Mills. So I asked, “What the heck, what are you doing in town?” which in hindsight is kind of a stupid question, but the answer rose, or sunk to the moment.
“Toronto does not have, sadly, a cardboard boat race and this is one of the only places I can get my cardboard boat race fix, and I need it annually. Luckily Orillia provides that annually for me. So that’s what brought me here, the love of wet cardboard, dragging it out of the water at the end, that’s what I’m here for,” Nate said. It turns out this was not his first race.
“I’ve been flying under the radar at the Orillia Cardboard Boat Race for years. My Uncle Evan’s (Devine) been a contributor for the better part of 20 years. I regularly do it and then drive back to the City.” I suspect he was always in disguise because I couldn’t recall seeing him at previous races.
“I’ve also been in some of the Santa Claus Parade floats and stuff he puts in, but I’ll behind something, working a lever or making an elf move up and down,”
So he was here but nobody knew it?
“Yeah, that’s the way they like me,” Nate said.
Many of you know Nate is the bandleader of Run With the Kittens, an accomplished musician and songwriter (he creates tunes in many genres), an incredibly talented frontman on stage, and along with Tyler Grace the creator of the world famous Orillia Song video (which has 245K views).
During COVID he produced a number of hilarious videos, almost weekly, I was sure not to miss. Those videos featured a captive character, DJ Minbot, who was always contained in a highchair. Minbot is his daughter Minnie. She was first mate on the boat. It wasn’t a large boat; in fact it won the Smallest Boat award.
“We have a pretty lean crew, just me and DJ Minbot, and I think we’re going to be able to do it. I’m planning on circling Big Chief and making my way back, that’s how confident I am in this boat and my abilities.”
It was a nice plan.
“It was fun, the other people sank our boat,” Minnie said after returning to shore.
One of the boats wasn’t so elaborate and also only had a two person crew.
“We only had one day to build it. We ran out of time to paint it. We were going to do cow prints, so then we just had to spray paint Cow on it so everyone would know clearly that’s what it is.” said Nicole Berdusco.
Like the multitude of primer-grey trucks and cars that are slowly taking over the streets, their boat was also mostly grey, Duct Tape grey. That was on the outside, inside it looked like they ran out of tape, which may be why it too sank and won the Titanic Award for the best, most spectacular sinking. (note, in last week’s column I said it was, “the top prize being Best Sinking, or Most Spectacular Sinking (it’s one of those), which, of course, was wrong, but somehow is in keeping with tone of this race of misadventure).
“We had more (tape) we just ran out of time,” Nicole said. There’s a lesson in there for teams entering future races.
The aforementioned Evan Devine built two boats for Paper Plane Play Café. One had a crew of four and won the Largest Boat award. At least it was the largest when the race started, we never saw it in one piece again.
The other one Evan crewed by himself. His boat was almost the smallest, but still managed to get halved at the turning point. Somehow the front half managed to stay afloat. As Even reached shore, first, I quipped something like, “does it count if you have to push it?”
“The Pokeymon took me out. I legally paddled that,” Evan said.
One boat made it out to the turning marker and back almost in the same condition it left. That may be because the rudder was absent, or the compass broke, or the lone occupant didn’t know how to paddle.
Maureen Kallai of Severn was the sole occupant of the boat, Granny. She’d probably agree – owing to the long, torturous journey to the turning point, which saw all the other boats leagues away and battling each other instead of her – saying she was the crew would be stretching things.
But she did make history. In all the years of witnessing the race, this is the first time a boat made it to the end in the same condition it started. She and husband, Charles, who was doing the best performance of character on scene for moral support the race has ever seen, picked up the award for Longest Floating and Best Dressed Crew.
“It was her idea, let her do it,” said Charles Kallai, who still managed to get his trouser legs wet pushing his wife out to battle.
The latter award was for wearing the Dress Mess uniforms of a navy of unknown origin, all white to match the colour of the boat. They looked like they were off to an afternoon tea at court, rather than the potential of soggy muffins and weak tea. I’ve already discussed why they picked up the Longest Floating award. Not to bad a haul for their first time entering the race.
“Last year it looked like so much fun, we thought we’d do it ourselves,” said Maureen. Both were surprised to learn they had the first entry to ever survive the race.
“Really? That’s amazing.”
Then It Went To The Dogs
At 3 p.m. the same spot by the lake was the scene of what has become the annual Dock Diving Dogs contest. The premise is simple, dogs take a running leap off the dock to follow some thrown object, and hopefully it floats, for retrieval.
In past years there have been some spectacular running leaps into the water. Not so much this year. The first contestant actually turned tail on each of three tries and ran back down the gangway, promptly falling into the shallow water.
A couple of the other dogs also essentially fell into the water because they failed to realize the next step was not on the dock, but in the air, before realizing their mission was to swim to the thing thrown and bring it back.
One dog owner had to get in the water herself and rush toward the object she threw before her dog got the hint.
Two dogs made leaps of some type of quality. One named Nuckie was declared the winner by audience applause.
The crowd was not as large as could have been. The list of events the Chamber of Commerce published did not show the contest running both Saturday and Sunday, so I suspect many did not realize it was happening. That said, I also suspect most who did show up didn’t realize they were going to a comedy show instead of an exhibition of diving talent.
In past years, people have cheered quite loudly for great dives. This year there were more aww’s, giggles and chuckles. Poor things didn’t know what they were supposed to do.
In the end both events are a great time and next year don’t miss them
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia) Main: The carnage that is the annual Cardboard Boat Race.
