As a director of the Port Colborne Optimist Club I am involved organizing and running all our events, which this year included the 2024 Duck Race. The duck race took place during the recent Canal Days festival right here in Port Colborne. This is the first year the ducks have raced since 2019. The previous organizers passed the torch along to us to run things, as their own membership no longer had the commitment required to produce it. It’s a lot of work. So we happily (and optimistically) stepped in.
My own role is primarily to promote our events and raise awareness. Tickets for the duck race sold out prior to the event. I can’t take all the credit, our membership and sponsors did a lot. But I filled the walls around the canal walls with spectators. We pulled in an audience from across the region, and several Canal Days visitors from America that stopped by to watch. I think I held up my end.
As we Optimists are new to this, the previous organizers kindly agreed to show us the ropes. That included showing us how to get the ducks into the canal, stop them floating away, and get them back out of the canal after the race. I stepped up to be the guy in the boat, and learned how to deploy the boom and determine the winners. And load up the boat with ducks to haul them back up to the road. I think I drew the short straw. 🙂
This gave me a dilemma. I could not be in two places at once. I had planned to be ashore taking photos, but on the day I needed to be on the water monitoring ducks.
Years of event photography has taught me how to roll with the punches. Once in the boat I persuaded the owner to get us closer to the wall where the ducks were being released. We didn’t get as close as I would have liked. I wanted to be almost underneath and have them rain down on us. Sadly I was not the one steering the boat so that didn’t happen, but I was still able to make the video below from the action camera footage I shot as our ducks were released. We quickly scooted around to the finish line and waited. I was able to get the photos here as the ducks approached. Once the excitement was over we had to get busy with a landing net, scooping 3,200 plastic ducks into a couple of dozen bags ready to haul up to the road with carabiners. Side note: This is a young man’s game.
The event went very well. As alreadys said, tickets were sold out well ahead of the race. Interest was raised. Sponsors were happy. Winners were happy. Audience were happy enough to cheer. Funds raised will go toward future community projects. And I got some unique perspectives on the event, up close and personal. Nobody else has photos like these. That makes me smile.
