Article by: Gord Goble

The year was 2000. It was the dawn of a new century.

It was also the launch of a Penticton tradition. A tradition that involves 45-foot canoes and crews of 22. A tradition that would ultimately attract a couple thousand people annually.

A tradition called the Penticton Dragon Boat Festival.

Today the Dragon Boat Festival remains a huge late-summer draw. But it hasn’t always been easy, particularly in the past few years when it, like so many other Penticton events, has had to battle seemingly every natural catastrophe outside of locusts.

“I was talking to someone yesterday,” laughed Festival race director Don Mulhall this past Saturday at the outset of the 24th annual edition. “And you know, we’ve had landslides, power outages, windstorms, wildfires, lingering wildfire smoke and even the [mid-August] travel ban of 2023.

“But we keep going.”

Mulhall, who with wife and event co-organizer Launa Maundrell runs Penticton Paddle Sports, is right. The Dragon Boat Festival is proving itself to be the Energizer Bunny of festivals.

It just keeps on ticking. Even, barely, through COVID.

“Technically, we even raced that year,” said Mulhall. “COVID shut us down and stopped people from coming, but [Festival admin manager] Thyra Carroll and I socially distanced, paddled the course, and declared ourselves the winners just so we could carry on the tradition.”

The situation wasn’t quite so dire this year. But it wasn’t smooth sailing either. The blanket of wildfire smoke covering much of the province last week was, explained Mulhall, concerning.

“We’re managing the smoke today,” he said prior to the opening of Saturday’s schedule. “We’re following federal guidelines regarding air quality and will modify as needed.”

Luckily, the smoke show had dissipated somewhat by race time and the event went ahead with just a single modification—distances were cut in half, from 500 meters to 250.

Chalk up another win for the Energizer Bunny.

“We had one year where you couldn’t even see the mountains on the other side of the lake Friday night,” said Mulhall. “But by Saturday morning it was blue skies and gorgeous. It changes very quickly and we recognize that.”

The break in the smoke couldn’t have come at a better time. The event pulled 2,100 athletes and 82 teams this year. Those, according to Mulhall, are pre-COVID numbers for the first time since the pandemic.

And they all wanted to get out on the water.

“I think the furthest participant today came from Saskatchewan,” he said. “And we have many from Alberta and across BC, and of course a bunch from the Okanagan.”

One of those athletes was Vancouver’s Lawrence Derlago, a member in good standing of the cleverly-named “Kitsch ‘N Sink” Dragon Boat Team.

“We paddle out of ‘Dragon Zone’ in False Creek,” said Derlago. “We practice twice a week all year long. Even in December when we have enough people.”

Derlago, now in his 14th year in the sport, loves it for its physical challenges but perhaps even more so for its camaraderie.

 “The culture of it brings people together,” he said. “Everyone supports everyone else. We’re competing, but everyone cheers everyone on and it’s just a great atmosphere. That’s unique to dragon boating.

 “We have so much water on this planet, why not get out and play in it?”

It was Kitsch ‘N Sink’s first competition in Penticton and the squad happily posed for a pic before their first race.

“We heard a lot about Penticton from other people,” said Derlago. “And we wanted to try a bit of the traveling thing, so we came.

“And it’s absolutely beautiful. I arrived two days early. Doing the wine tours and having fun. And the venue looks fantastic. Now we get to see what it’s like to paddle on.”

Hint: It was flat and fast.

For more info on the Penticton Dragon Boat Festival and organizing body Penticton Paddle Sports, head here.