The biggest garden party in the world, and the oldest sports event in North America
The Royal St. John’s Regatta bills itself as the oldest continuous sports event in North America and the oldest regatta in the world. With a date that slides and seats that don’t, it’s certainly the quirkiest. The course isn’t even a straight line—the boats go up the pond, turn at the buoys, and come back down again. But if there’s one thing that stands out about Regatta it’s the almost-mythic hold it has on the hearts of many Newfoundlanders. Spending the first Wednesday in August on the shores of Quidi Vidi Lake—known as the Pond—in the east end of St. John’s, is as much a part of summer traditions as cod fishing and boil ups on the beach.
Although it might not be strictly true to say that Noelle Thomas-Kennell was born at Regatta, she certainly seems to have spent a good portion of her life there. It would come as no surprise to learn that Pond water flows through her veins instead of blood. One of Noelle’s earliest memories is of riding in the horse-drawn carriage that carried the judges up and down The Boulevard, the road that stretches along one side of the Pond. Both her mother and grandfather served on the Regatta committee, a 50-member organisation that runs the event. So, it’s not surprising that when Noelle was 24 ,she also joined the committee, marking the first time that three generations of the same family served at the same time.
Thomas-Kennell is now the Regatta Committee vice-president and captain of the course, which means she’s the one in charge of making the announcement about whether or not Regatta will go ahead. It’s a unique spin on a unique sporting event. Regatta Day is a statutory holiday, but only for St. John’s. It takes the place of the holidays that land on the first Monday in August in other provinces. However, the day is not carved in stone. It depends on the weather. If conditions are bad on Wednesday the race is postponed to Thursday. If the weather remains bad it’s postponed until Friday. One year an entire week went by before Regatta could go ahead.
The racing shells are all owned by the Regatta Committee and are standardized with traditional fixed seats, unlike the sliding seats used in other events such as the Olympics. Photo credit Michelle Hickey.
A great deal is riding on the decision of the Committee. On race day the shores of the pond are lined with vendors and concession stands hoping to relieve some of the 40,000 attendees of their spending money. Food vendors prepare huge amounts of perishable items and are facing a considerable loss if racing day doesn’t go ahead as planned. Most of the other stands are run by non-profits and charities and a good portion of their annual income comes from the money they make on Regatta Day. Bad weather means fewer attendees, so it’s only natural they’d want the races postponed until the sun shines again.
Meanwhile the rowers—upwards of 600 people in 27 or so races through the course of the day—are pumped and ready but need still water to compete.
The committee gathers pondside at the crack of dawn and the captain, after weeks of studying weather patterns, reads out the hourly forecast. The entire committee then makes the decision, which is announced at 6:00am. “It’s not easy to say the race is cancelled,” Thomas-Kennell freely admits, “but the rowers’ safety is the first and foremost priority.” That means it could be teeming with rain but as long as there’s no wind to stir up the water the show will go on.
Vendors, rowers and committee members aren’t the only ones watching the weather. Because no one knows until the day whether there will be a holiday, another tradition has sprung up—Regatta Roulette. Assuming the weather the next day will be fine, people flock to the bars on Tuesday evening, hoping that the spin of the wheel will give them a chance to sleep it off in the morning. If the weather lets them down, they have to drag themselves to work and suffer through another Regatta tradition—Regretta.
St. John’s native Norma Cook remembers her earliest Regattas back in the 1960s. “I was probably four or five and my mother took me and my three-year-old sister by the hand, and we walked there down Water Street so we could wave to dad at work. It was the highlight of the summer. Our interest was the games and attractions. We had to have our spins on the games of chance. We were barely aware of the boats.”
She always hoped to win a bear but was more likely to come home with a Kewpie doll or a monkey on a stick. One memory stands out. “Mom won two dolls, good for me and my sister, and my uncle came by with his two daughters.” She chuckles. Of course, the cousins wanted dolls, too. “It must have cost him $80!”, a fortune at the time.
Tamara Smith used to row for her high school team in Ontario. When she came to St. John’s as a graduate student at Memorial University she was asked if she’d be interested in helping to start a MUN women’s rowing crew. She’d attended Regatta the previous year when she first arrived in the city and thought it sounded like fun. She knew the racing would be different from what she was accustomed to but adapting to the fixed seats of the shells was a bigger shock than she’d expected. “That moment when I looked at the seat was one to remember! How do I slide on this thing I can’t slide on?” she wondered at the time.
She had every reason to wonder. Most regattas (which are distinguished from plain boat races by the fact that they are open to anyone who chooses to compete) use a sliding seat, rather like the ones on rowing exercise machines. This is what you see at the Olympics, for example. The St. John’s Regatta, however, maintains the tradition of fixed seats. Although today’s boats, which are owned by the Regatta Committee, are now standardised racing shells, the concept of the fixed seats is reminiscent of the dories and other small boats that were used for racing in the early days. Every once in a while, someone starts a campaign to replace the fixed seat boats with sliding seat ones, but it never gets very far. One concession: those sliding seat enthusiasts are allowed to strut their stuff in an exhibition race at lunchtime, and share the pond for practise the rest of the year.
Whatever the condition of the seats, rowing in Regatta isn’t for sissies, which can come as a bit of a surprise to other athletes. In a lead story from the St. John’s Telegram in August 1987, hockey veteran Zane Forbes talked about taking up rowing to stay in shape over the summer. He gave it up after one year because the regimen was just too gruelling.
Similarly in August 1998, boxer and former president of Boxing Newfoundland, Mike Summers, told the Telegram, “I used to consider boxing the toughest nine minutes in sports, until I sat in the boat and rowed for nine minutes here on
the Pond.”
Nonetheless, any modern display of physical prowess pales in comparison to the exploits of a rowing crew in 1877 who were dubbed the Placentia Giants. They were six fishermen all over six foot tall who walked to the Regatta from their home in Placentia, carrying their boat over their heads. It would have been a distance of 131 kilometres if there had been a road, which there wasn’t at the time. They walked through the woods on a rough trail. When they arrived, much to the consternation of the “townies” of St. John’s, they handily won their race. After receiving the ten-dollar prize and a gold sovereign each from the governor, who was impressed by their “pluckiness”, they hoisted their boat back up and walked back home again.
It’s quite possible that no one knows Regatta history as well as Jack Fitzgerald. A prolific author, Fitzgerald has written four books about the race as well as countless newspaper and magazine articles. He knows what years the races were cancelled, who the fastest rowers and best boat builders are and, no doubt, how many drunk and disorderly charges have been laid over the years.
And although the Regatta Committee declared 2018 as the 200th anniversary, he holds the controversial opinion that Regatta’s Bicentennial Anniversary shouldn’t be celebrated until 2024.
“In 1818 it was a one-off,” he maintains. “I spent 20 years researching this and there were no races in 1819 to 1823. The first was in 1824. The committee has done a lot of things but in respect to starting dates, they’ve been out to lunch.” (On hearing this, Thomas-Kennell holds firm that 2018 marked the special anniversary.)
One of the beauties of Regatta is how it means different things to different people. Norma Cook hasn’t been able to attend Regatta for the last five years or so and she still feels guilty about it, although she laughs at herself for doing so. But her father always insisted, “You got the day off to go to Regatta, so you go to Regatta!” and that early childhood training is hard to overcome.
Looking back, it’s the camaraderie that Tamara Smith recalls most fondly; the many potluck dinners the crew shared, the hours of practising they endured and the way they would pump each other up before a race. She also appreciates the historical importance of the event.
Jack Fitzgerald, who attended his first Regatta in 1948, still makes his way pondside every year. “I never missed a Regatta. In the past few years, I’d walk around the pond and then come back, but I have to be there.”
It’s an attitude ingrained in the people of St. John’s—Regatta Roulette players excepted, of course.