t is hard for today's sports fan to appreciate the nineteenth century popularity of rowing as a spectator sport. Thousands turned out to watch rowing competitions. Rowers were featured on cigarette cards like baseball players and, in Britain, cricket stars. Canada's first sports hero, Edward "Ned" Hanlan, the Toronto "Boy in Blue," was famous among sporting crowds on both sides of the Atlantic and as far away as Australia. He was dashing, shrewd, and skillful, and had the nose for self-promotion that was necessary in the age when many athletes relied upon gambling revenues to make a living.

Legend has it that Ned began his rowing career by bootlegging liquor across Lake Ontario to his father's bar. By the age of 20 he had won the Ontario single sculls championship. When he took the Centennial Regatta in Philadelphia the next year, 1876, he became a hero in his home town.

The handsome young athlete quickly won backers who made sure that he raced for lucrative prize money. He did not disappoint them. In one race after another, he defeated the best rowers in North America. Then, in May 1879, he beat the best of Europe at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, in England.

Gambling was a large part of rowing's popularity at the time, and Hanlan attracted huge crowds and heavy betting. In this context, it was prudent not to make victory look too easy. Accordingly, Hanlan seldom won by a large margin. He would hold up to make the matches look close. In "best-of-three" competitions, he generally lost one of the races to ensure that the odds would not be too one-sided.

When the competition was real, however, Hanlan revealed his true prowess. In 1880, he faced the Australian, Edward A. Trickett, for the world single scull championship on the Thames. It was no contest. During the race, Hanlan blew kisses to the crowd, and stopped to chat with spectators, wipe his brow, and fan himself. At one point, he slumped over his oars as though exhausted. Then, when Trickett pulled alongside, Hanlan lifted his head, smiled to the spectators (who roared with appreciation) and easily rowed ahead, using alternate strokes of the oars. He may have insulted his opponent and violated every British rule of sportsmanship, but the crowd loved Hanlan's bravado and sheer cockiness.

Hanlan defended his world championship six times. When he finally lost it in 1886, he continued to race in challenge matches and to stage exhibitions of trick rowing. In all, he won over 300 races.

A foreign diplomat once said of Hanlan that "his victories have done more than all the advertising and immigration agents combined to make known the position and power of the Dominion of Canada." A statue of "the Boy in Blue" stands on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition, overlooking Lake Ontario, not far from the site of his father's bar, which supposedly gave the renowned oarsman his start.

efore Ned Hanlan became a star, a quartet of rowers from St. John, New Brunswick put Canada on the international rowing map. The year was 1867, only a few weeks after the Dominion of Canada came into being with Confederation, when Robert Fulton, George Price, Samuel Hutton, and Elijah Ross appeared in Paris for the World Amateur Rowing Championship, part of the Paris International Exposition.

The St. John Four did not present an impressive picture among the sophisticated Europeans. Dressed in flesh-coloured jerseys, dark trousers, leather suspenders, and bright pink caps, they were a comical contrast to their smartly-dressed opponents. What is more, their clumsy-looking green boat, described as "a curious old-fashioned outrigger" by a British newspaper reporter, outweighed the sleek European boats by 100 pounds (45 kg). The Canadians could not even row properly by European standards, employing an unorthodox style that used almost entirely the arms in quick short strokes. As a last straw, they did not have a coxswain to shout the stroke or steer the boat. Instead, they steered with a quaint foot-guided rudder. They were laughed off.

As in all good sports stories, the rubes from New Brunswick humiliated their haughty rivals. In the first event, the St. John team won the race so easily that George Price took the time to wave to the crowd as the boat slipped over the finish. In the second event, the Europeans were out for revenge and to salvage their pride, but the St. John team won again by a full three lengths. From then on the St. John Four were called the Paris Crew, and that is how they are remembered in sports history: the first international champions from the upstart country of Canada.

Maritime waters gave Canada another enduring sports legend, one that we can remember every time we look at a dime. The elegant ship on the back of the coin is the Bluenose, the fastest of the Nova Scotia saltbox schooners and arguably the greatest racing ship of all time.

he Bluenose story began in the offices of the Halifax Herald, when the editor, Senator William B. Dennis, read that the famous America's Cup yacht race would be suspended for the day because the wind was blowing at 23 miles-per-hour (37 kmph). A wind like that would hardly swell the sails of the fishing schooners that sailed the Grand Banks and returned loaded with salted cod. He decided then and there to start his own race: the Fisherman's Trophy challenge.

The rivals for the trophy were the schooners from Gloucester, Massachusetts, many of which were skippered by Nova Scotians. When the first race in 1920 went to the Americans, Dennis and his moneyed friends decided to build a ship that would win, and find the skipper to sail her. That skipper would be Angus Walters of Lunenburg. The ship's design would be by William Roue; when the Bluenose was launched in 1921, all agreed that she was a beauty. Though there was something a little odd about her proportions - a little longer than usual at the water line- the secret to her amazing speed is still a matter of debate.

By racing rules and economic necessity, the Bluenose had to work a season on the Grand Banks before racing. In that year and subsequent seasons, the Bluenose made a reputation as a working schooner. She once brought in a record 646,000 pounds (over 293,020 kg) of cod in a single haul.

But it was in the races that the Bluenose earned her fame. In her first Fisherman's Cup competition, she took the first race easily. The American had lost her fore-topmast, and Walters gallantly dropped his own ballooner to even the race, but still won handily. When Bluenose took the second race by three miles (4.8 km), the entire country celebrated the victory.

She won again the next year, and the following year the race was marred by controversy, with neither country taking the trophy. A few years passed, then the Lipton Tea Company proposed a race between the Bluenose and the Gertrude L. Thiebaud, the American champion. Walters reluctantly accepted, although the Bluenose was not in racing trim. Sadly, she lost. Canadians who had thought her invincible were shocked. A rematch was proposed, this time with the Fisherman's Trophy on the line. The Bluenose rose to the challenge and won.

By this time, the Bluenose had become a Canadian symbol. She was one of Canada's representatives at the 25th anniversary celebration of George V's reign in 1935. On the way back, she was caught in a terrible gale. She keeled over and stayed down a full five minutes, masts and all, then righted herself again - her legend now included rising from the grave! In 1937 she appeared for the first time on the Canadian dime, and has been there ever since.

Bluenose had one more moment of glory. In 1938 she faced the Gertrude L. Thiebaud again in a best-of-five series for the Fisherman's Trophy. The old Bluenose was showing her age. At the end of four races, the series stood 2-2, and the Bluenose had suffered damages in the gruelling, 40-mile-long (64 km) races. But as she rounded the last marker of the deciding race, Walters pleaded, "One more time old girl," and Bluenose responded, winning the race by three minutes. Her average speed over the course was 14.15 knots, the fastest pace ever recorded over a fixed course by a canvased vessel in the history of sailing.

The Bluenose's last days were sad. She went down in the Carribbean during the Second World War, and not a splinter of her has ever been found. Her memory lives on in the reproduction Bluenose II, whose home port is also Lunenburg, but the great schooner races, like the cod fisheries that gave birth to them, are events of the past.