It was love at first sight for St. Albert rower Carolyn Taylor-Smith
The co-recipient of The President’s Award from Rowing Canada Aviron was in her late 30s when she tumbled head over heels into the sport while meeting her future husband.
And it all started at the Edmonton Rowing Club in the middle of winter.
“I was going through a tough time in my life and a friend mentioned to me they were going to go learn how to row on Friday night and did I want to go. I may be blonde but I’m not stupid. It’s February and I know the river is frozen so that’s not possible. They said no, there is a wonderful indoor tank facility where you can actually learn to row,” Taylor-Smith recalled. “I sat there that Friday night thinking, ‘I don’t want to go’ then I thought ‘what do you have to lose. Drive out there, check it out and if you don’t like it so you wasted a Friday night. What else were you going to do?’
“It turned out that I just fell in love with it. The community, the friendships and the support was just phenomenal. I’ve never experienced that before so that’s how I got involved.”
It wasn’t long before Taylor-Smith tested the competitive waters.
“I raced my first serious race with the man who was going to become my husband (Tim), which I didn’t know at the time. He was a colleague at the rowing club and we actually won the race,” she said of the masters’ race at the Alberta championships in Calgary in the mid-1990s. “We crossed the finish line and we stopped and I said to him, ‘How come those guys are still back there?’ He said because we won the race. I went, ‘What? I won a race? That’s impossible.’ That was a big thrill for me to do that.”
Taylor-Smith, 57, described herself as “a late bloomer” athletically.
“Rowing was really my first sport, other than racquetball and things like that,” said the former president of the Edmonton Rowing Club. “When I was a kid in school, I was so clumsy that instead of actually having me participate in track meets they would give me the clipboard to hold to record the scores of everybody else. I had this kind of stigma attached to me that I could never be an athlete but just knowing that I can actually make that boat move was exciting.”
But it was her work behind the scenes in the sport at the provincial, national and international levels that culminated in the presentation of The President’s Award at the recent RCA banquet in Burnaby.
Taylor-Smith shared the award with Joe Lytall, a long-time rowing enthusiast based in Ontario, and the recipients were selected by Rowing Canada Aviron president Michael Walker.
The award recognizes significant contributions to the sport.
“It’s an honour. I didn’t expect to get the award,” said Taylor-Smith, who spent time as the ARC’s vice-president of recreation. “For the last 15 years I was on boards and commissions. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of exhaustion so what it meant to me to receive this award is that somebody actually noticed.
“But the one thing I’ve said all throughout my career of rowing and I’ll say it until I die: Nobody succeeds by themselves. I had a fabulous team that was with Rowing Canada. I had staff that did everything. I don’t ever understand why I get the credit for all the work they did. They were fabulous and I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Taylor-Smith was also a member of International Rowing Commission for the International Federation of Rowing and the Canadian representative to the Rowing for All Commission.
She was also instrumental in guiding the development of para-rowing in Canada.
“We started back in 2004 and that’s when it became official. Some clubs were getting disabled people in before that but it become more mainstream in my tenure as vice-president.”
Taylor-Smith also got the Edmonton Corporate Rowing Challenge off the ground at the Edmonton Rowing Club.
“With the support of many of my friends and colleagues we put together what was a very successful first year. I had scheduled a three-week vacation just before it and I spent that entire three weeks doing nothing but plan it,” she said. “The first 10 or so years it was in support of the Alberta Cancer Board and over that 10 years it raised around $1 million for cancer research. Since then, I’ve been long gone from the rowing club board but the program has been changed and it’s now supporting the Stollery Children’s Hospital and it has raised another $1 million for that charity as well as raising money for the rowing club.”
A variety of injuries have prevented her from rowing a boat.
“I have a goal of being back on the water this summer and I can’t wait.”
