OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). This letter is in response to recent articles about new public art initiatives.
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"I am the greatest!"
Few athletes in any sport can honestly make this boast.
Muhammad Ali, the incomparable heavy weight boxing champion was telling it like it was. Wayne Gretzky, arguably hockey's most phenomenal player, could have made the same claim.
Ted Williams, one of few baseball players to bat over .400 in a major league season, certainly is an all-time great.
Pele in soccer, Wilt Chamberlain in basketball and Tiger Woods in golf inhabit the stratosphere of athletic accomplishment.
No one from the obscure burg of Orillia has ever stood at the absolute height of their sport with one exception that I know of — world champion rower Jake Gaudaur.
The local lad trained in The Narrows and beat the best rowers of his day at a time when sculling champions were international heroes, lauded by royalty and awarded purses of gold for their victories.
Gaudaur was world champion from 1896 to 1901, out distancing all comers. His record time in the three-miles-with-a-turn, single scull race set in 1894 has never been broken.
In 1892 he and American George Hosmer won the world doubles championship on Lake Couchiching, a feat witnessed by thousands, many standing on top of railway coaches that brought them to the event.
I would dearly love to see Samuel de Champlain finally return to his perch in Couchiching Beach Park, whether or not he is joined by the controversial First Nation figures below.
At the same time a sculpture memorializing Jake Gaudaur would be a perfect addition to the Orillia waterfront. I picture a life-size rowing shell on a high pedestal with Gaudaur aboard, his oars winging him through the air.
If the whole sculpture could pivot with the wind like a giant weather vane, it would be awesome.
I am writing now because the city is looking for input for downtown art installations.
A statue of the greatest oarsman of his day and a native son to boot is something I believe could really fly. Let's do it.
Colin McKim
Orillia
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