Team Canada’s breast cancer paddlers (BCP) won five gold medals and two silver medals for the 17th IDBF World Dragon Boat Racing Championships’ first BCP division in Germany.
Some of their members, Vanya Chan and Sherri MacCallum, started as paddlers for the West Island Dragons, a dragon boat race team based in Montreal’s West Island.
After overcoming breast cancer, Chan was convinced by friends to try out for the West Island Dragons, which she joined last summer.
For MacCallum, she has never tried dragon boat racing before joining the West Island Dragons.
“I actually saw an advertisement for it at the hospital where I was doing my treatments,” said MacCallum. “I thought, ‘If I make it through this, I’m going to try something new. And I’m going to try dragon boating.’”
After the announcement in January, Chan and MacCallum decided to audition for Team Canada’s first BCP team.
Twenty were chosen from all over Canada for its standard boat crew and trained up to four times a week for the international championships since February. Team Canada BCP also has a small boat team of 10 breast cancer paddlers.
“There’s girls from Vancouver and Calgary and Winnipeg and all over the place. We’ve never met each other before, so we needed a few days to learn to paddle together,” said MacCallum. “We can now bench press more than half our body weight.”
“You have 20 people at different levels, paddling exactly at the same time to go to the same goal,” Chan explained.
Chan noted the camaraderie shared across the entire BCP division at the IDBF World Dragon Boat Racing Championships.
“We’re competing against them, but once we finish, the support that we have between those teams, it’s incredible,” said Chan.
“We get off the water and hug each other,” added MacCallum.
Chan chuckled, “It’s a hug fest after the race.”
Even the drummer, helm, and one of the coaches for Team Canada are breast cancer survivors.
“Dragon boating is actually very similar to the whole cancer detour that you have to take when you get breast cancer, because you kind of just got to do what people tell you,” said MacCallum. “Just keep going and just keep doing it until you reach the finish line.”
Chan noticed the same support she experienced in dragon boat racing from when she was undergoing breast cancer treatment, reiterating what her coach once told her, “You are a lot stronger than you think.”
