The best ways to improve and grow the Montreal DB scene.
Have more than one facility to paddle indoors for the winter.

Have a race league between the teams who train at 22 dragons and the MIDBRF

Maybe have the sport introduced as a High school and CEGEP school sport

- All festivals need DBC sanction and licenses to operate
- One type of boat is used for all festivals (BUK)
- Judges have final word on rules, not organizers - last year's wash riding in Montreal by Thunder was ridiculous, they were flagged and nothing happened
- Choose a better site other than the basin or make a new one like TO
- Get younger people involved
- Get Health Canada or Sport Canada involved

I like the idea of a race league.
Canal vs Bassin.

Have a race league between the teams who train at 22 dragons and the MIDBRF ....

Why even bother.... just look at the results for every Montreal festival.
The 22D teams dominate!!!

The Montreal Chinese Restaurant Association as organiser of the event? There is no chinese culture anymore, they have no clue how to run a festival, they are rude to corporate teams and insist on using garbage boats for races. They are there for one reason only to line there pockets, not for offering a quality event to teams who pay too much for 4 races.

The festival is extremely well run and the volunteers great. Why slam them? I love BuK boats the best but the reality is that there are different manufacturers out there. SRS boats are getting better and they are learning how to keep the seats from flying off. The Montreal course is not perfect and they could reduce the cement content a bit but no course is perfect except maybe Welland. There really is not that much to complain about and without the Chinese communitee there would be no dragonboat racing in Canada. Show some respect. No I am not Chinese.

I dont' think the guy was bashinf the Chinese community, but the orgnazation who runs the festival.

"no course is perfect except maybe Welland"

I admit Welland is nearly perfect but try racing there when it is windy. Outside lanes get hit more from the prevailing wind that goes from lane 1 to 6

"they have no clue how to run a festival"

The regatta side of the festival was EXTREMELY well run. I was pleasantly surprised. My experience is that usually something always goes wrong in Montreal, some whacky turn of events that spoils an otherwise perfect weekend, but this year there was nothing. Well run from start to end.

I think we have been rather lucky this year. All of the major festivals I have heard about or attended have been professionally handled and a joy to participate in.

2005 sort of sucked due to the heat, low water levels and weed problems on almost every course. This year will be remembered as an excellent year for fair racing and professional serviced regattas.

Enjoy it while you can.

Two biggest improvements:

1. The festival should not allow old Chineese men to walk around the basin and shit all over corporate teams. My team was harrased by a director of the festival because we had a Nike swoosh on our shirt. He wanted our team to hand him $5000 for corporate exposure. At first we literaly thought it was a joke but he was not kidding. Things got heated and fianly he went away...

2. Better boats. I don't want to bash SRS but their first generation boats are crap. I hear they are making much better boats now. I hope that next year we get to use the new SRS boats.

The festival has significantly improved form last year to this year, however:

1) The festival tries to do too much at once, everything from team parades, speeches by old people you cant understand, paper fireworks, a dragon dance, freaky mainland Chinese dancers, and let us not forget the Chinese opera..yikes.. it all comes off as terribly amateur and low quality, subsequently, few people are interested in any of it. Instead, cut out some of the fluff mentioned above and focus on important things like enthusiastic, understandable announcers who pay attention to the races behind them

2)Awards ceremony occurs at the END of the last race. That's at 6pm when 90% of the teams are gone. I dunno about you, but as an out of town team in Montreal, we got better ways to spend time then sit through it all. Why not announce the awards throughout the day like at TIDBF,?

3)The Olympic Basin has a freaking score board thingy that can show the results for the heats! How cool would it be to have the score board reveal the results minutes after the heat? In its current state, about three out the hundreds of bulbs that make up the score board actually work. Someone get on that sh*t already and put some new bulbs in!

fix the board...got some more cash???

They used to use the scoreboard to show race results (this pic is from 2003):



I don't know why they didn't use it this year. Maybe teams were complaining when their actual times didn't match the unofficial ones on the board.

"2)Awards ceremony occurs at the END of the last race. That's at 6pm when 90% of the teams are gone. I dunno about you, but as an out of town team in Montreal, we got better ways to spend time then sit through it all."

Do better and the awards will be right after your last race.

^^^Great idea genius, but not everyone wants or cares to be in the premier A finals. Not everyone involved with DB is elitist.

Don't want to be in the A final, but still want the shiny? So you can say you won, eh?

This festival is joke. The corp teams get shit on. I heard BMO got the same treatment as the Nike team. WHO EVER HEARD OF ON-THE-SPOT MAINTENANCE FOR A BUK? No one, just these shitty SRS junkpots. The announcers are useless, the times, well, are they up yet? The volunteers are the only good part of the event. The people who run the festival , especially those nasty old thugs from the restauarant association, should never be allowed near these events again.

Rain, rain go away...

Does anyone remember when the announcer tried singing that? It was Horrible!!!

Everyone heard it. She sang it twice unfortunately because the first time didn't work.

It just made the Saturday worse for everyone.

"1) The festival tries to do too much at once, everything from team parades..."
We were lucky enough to have a family member attend as a fan. These components were in fact her favourite part of the weekend. She was very impressed by the festivities on stage. If dragon boating is to widen its appeal, this is a good way.

"2)Awards ceremony occurs at the END of the last race..."
Actually, this year, they were handing them out all day. All you had to do is go request them after your race and you were invited on stage for a medal presentation. Wish we'd known that before we waited around for the ceremony though.

"3)The Olympic Basin has a freaking score board thingy..."
It was awesome when they used to do that. I'd happily put up with the "unofficial" times.

As with GWN, it would be nice to have seedings recognise which lanes were fastest. Having the last seed in lane 1 was a little silly.

As per the boats, I saw them repaired twice, but the organisers dealt with it quickly and professionally. Kudos to them. Great weekend!

"As with GWN, it would be nice to have seedings recognise which lanes were fastest. Having the last seed in lane 1 was a little silly."

Actually it was the second last seed in Lane 1. The last seed was in Lane 6.

I say let the teams pick their own lanes in seeding order.

FIrst off, I'd like to give my biggest, warmest confratulation to the Volounteers. There's so many that things get done in a hurry !
Second thing... which seems to be the most common and acknowleded fact : Sunny... GREAT FREAKING GOOD ANNOUNCERS ! ! !
As weird as this may seem, we like to know what's happening on the water, the history of the teams, the results of those teams that are fighting for best position. Getting a story in there may actually bring interest of spectators in the race :
" Race #54 we have team x , w and z . Those teams are among the elite teams of mtl. This season team w has had the upper hand of it's competitors, bla bla bla. " Isn't it more interesting this way ??
THIRDLY : Too many pple in the board of directors, directors and so forth. I've looked at the program and there must be like 12 pple on the board, plus about 8 directors. Hell, I know some corporate companies that operate on a smaller personnel. Wouln't addidtions of competent SPORTS or EVENTS ORGANIZER make a fine addition ?

USE the giant screen. It works, use it !
And yes, faster posting of time is a DAMN good thing. I mean, why should we wait over 30 mins to know the race results ?
You have so many volounteers that are dying to help, make them run around by posting the time. They'll enjoy the exercice out of it !