One of things that I am most proud of when it comes to Deep Cove Kayak and Deep Cove Outdoors is the many ways that we support our community. You may be familiar with some of the activities we support, but in the week that we are going to the North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards as finalists for the Community Contribution Award, I wanted to highlight some of the aspects you might not be familiar with.
Each year on January 1st, thousands of people gather in Deep Cove for their annual chance to experience hypothermia on a large scale (!) The plunge is a Deep Cove tradition, but for the last few years we have been organising it and raising funds for, originally The Seymour Art Gallery, now for North Shore Rescue. This is a great event and hilarious opportunity to shake off the New Year’s Eve cobwebs.
Deep Cove Daze – Cardboard Kayak Race
The end of August heralds Deep Cove Daze, a celebration of the community of Deep Cove which includes a cardboard kayak race which we organise. Kids and parents take part in this highly competitive event where engineering skills are tested to the max to see who can make the mot of two large sheets of cardboard, an exacto knife and a roll of tape.
A few years ago, Bob ran into Len (one half of Jackets for Jasper) and offered him retail space at Deep Cove Outdoors to sell the fantastic down jackets that they sell to raise money to sponsor children’s education in Nepal. Since then we’ve never looked back and this year hosted a fundraiser in our car park where we raised over $10,000 for the earthquake appeal. We are so happy to help them with their crazy Open House days that we even put on coffee and bring out the good cakes 🙂
Paddling Events
As well as helping support events and charities for our community, we also organise activities that aim to increase awareness and give ease of access to paddling. In Deep Cove we don’t run our busy nights of Tuesday Night Racing and Women on Water to make money, we run them to enable people to come together and paddle.
Two years ago, Bob created the Canadian Surfski Championships – putting the little known sport of surfskiing on the map. This year we attracted even more international and local paddlers to Squamish, increasing local participation in the sport and encouraging people to visit and next year is looking even bigger.
The five Dragon Boat Teams that practice in our Dragon Boat are also vital to our operation. Each week these awesome women come out and come together and participate in local and national competitions. We couldn’t be prouder.
There are SO many more events that we take part in and support throughout the year, too many to list out here, but I hope that this gives you a sense of how involved we are with our community and how proud we are to be so. We are incredibly excited to be a finalist for the Community Contribution Award tomorrow night, and will post an update as to how we do. Whatever the outcome, we will still be out there supporting paddling, our local community and our wider community for years to come. Thank you!