If you're going to dream, dream big baby...

I never met Randy Starkman, but when I first learned he’d passed away I felt as though I’d had the wind knocked out of me.  A Torontonian whose voice resonated vibrantly in print media for two decades, he passed away suddenly in early April.  His loss is being felt heavily among our nation’s athletes and their supporters alike. 

For the years of knowledge and in depth insight he provided to us in championing Canada’s amateur athletes, he is deserving of no less than the most sensitive, eloquent, and witty words that I can string together.    I shall do my best...

Let’s back up 40 years or so to a simpler time.  As my brother’s GI Joe went shirtless, wore cargo pants, plunged off of monkey bars into puddles, parachuted into backyards all over the neighborhood, then hopped into his all-terrain vehicle and drove up the front stairs into our house, I was somehow meant to be fulfilled picking out go-go boots to complete Barbie’s garden party ensemble, a garden party that she would no doubt attend with that starched ding-a-ling, Ken.

It’s no surprise then that I ran with a pack of boys in my early years, and soon discovered I could not only keep up but overtake them as we ran amok.  I became a stalwart goalie in our street hockey tilts, took swimming and skating lessons, eschewed tee ball for softball, and was determined to become a 200 average bowler.  I was six.  When I was seven I challenged my 15 year old brother to a foot race down our street.  I truly believed I could beat him; I would have bet my life on it.  Of course it was over quickly and I didn’t win, but I remember huffing, puffing, and stammering in a near delirious state that he’d be sorry when I was big.  My life path was defined that day -  after I recovered from my defeat, I was invigorated knowing that victory was already in me, and that all I needed to achieve it was to have a dream… even a somewhat crazy dream.

Although never competing at an elite level, sport permeated every facet of my life and formed the foundation for many of life’s lessons.  Over the years I have remained steadfast in my support of the amateur movement and its spirit; a spirit that infects everyone who pursues a life on that often dark stage. In Randy Starkman I found somebody - the only somebody - who brought the essence of the true amateur into our world every day. He lived among the amateurs when nobody else was even keeping an eye on them.  Having subsequently crossed paths with a few of Canada’s decorated Olympians I offer this:  He was perfectly equipped to communicate the stories of a nation of amateurs because deep down I suspect that in a way, he was one of them.  One can’t know that world or the people in it without first having deep connections to both, not only professionally but personally as well.  One can’t convey to the general public the nuances of the life of the amateur athlete without being a sensitive, eloquent, respectful, gifted writer, and one cannot be that kind of writer without being that kind of a human being. 

Prior to his passing, I knew nothing of Randy Starkman’s life outside of his published work.  But last week as news of his untimely passing spread and as he was eulogized so eloquently by many, most notably his 13-year old daughter Ella (who brought the house down), his personal biography unfolded in front of me.  As it played out, I realized that in fact I knew quite a lot about him.  As it turns out, his writing did not just speak to the athletes’ stories, but to his own.

He was a journalist of the highest integrity, but his journalism might merely have been the conduit by which he was able to share with all of us this often overlooked but startlingly simple wisdom:  no matter what your thing is, It all starts with a dream. 

A sailor's only daughter; a child of the water...

My nautical genealogy is hard core stuff:  Royal Canadian Navy.  Me personally?  My own nautical bio is a bit less auspicious but no less regal in its own way:  I am a rower.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, and while I have always been and shall always remain an Olympics junkie, this particular Olympic Games holds special meaning for me.  This is the twentieth anniversary of me being drawn into the fate of our Canadian Olympic rowers by virtue of the exposure of a horrific injury suffered by Silken Laumann just months before the games.

In as much as Silken's recovery and bronze medal performance were inspirational and somehow beyond belief, I was more mesmerized by the sight of our women's eight bombing down the 2,000m course en route to a gold medal.  I'd never seen anything as poetic and perfectly synchronous and beautiful as that race, not prior and not since.  I was hooked!  In a post race interview, Marnie McBean (a member of the Canadian Women's Eight) was asked how she got into rowing.  She replied that she wanted to learn how to row, and when she went to the phone book the first relevant entry she found was under the A.  Alas, the Argonaut Rowing Club became Marnie's home club.  I grabbed the phone book, found their number, and in the spring of 1993 I enrolled in a learn to row program at the very same Argonaut Rowing Club.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I'm as moved by the beauty of rowing now as I was on that day in 1992.  The only difference now is that I get to go out there every day and and feel the wonder of my boat's buoyancy as I push it along the surface of the water, usually as the sun rises just off my boat's bow or stern.

I have rowed with some wonderful people over the years, all of whom have become part of a lovely, tight circle of friends whose gatherings are nothing short of brilliant fun. Metaphorically if not literally, we will be joined at the hip in perpetuity... and Amen to that.  For the past three years I have rowed with a truly phenomenal group of women who represent The Toronto Sculling Club.  We have (twice, just sayin') won the Head of the Charles Regatta and have forged bonds both on and off the water that are as special as any I've known.  I'm truly blessed to be part of this crew.  One day I will write about the wonderful, full-circle connection between the 1992 Olympic Gold Medal winning women's eight from Barcelona and the Toronto Sculling Club women's eight from, um, The Humber River, but for now I offer this:

First row of the year tomorrow... always a magical thing. To mark this, I shall post a picture that I know the rowers among us will truly appreciate ;-)