News about Showboat

Spirits fell in the winter of 2023 when the annual Beavertail Ice Boat Race was cancelled due to poor canal conditions. But one team didn’t let it get them down when the race — which features large, canoe-like boats and crews using poles to push the vessel across the ice — was called off. Members of Showboat, a recreational co-ed paddling team from Ottawa’s Chinatown neighbourhood, are known for their high energy and positive attitude toward every competition season. Last year’s disappointment, when the Rideau Canal remained closed for skating all winter for the first time since the skateway was launched in 1971, didn’t get the team down.  Read More…

For Team Chinatown Showboat, it’s less about what happens on the water during the Tim Hortons Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival and more about what happens year-round on land. 

The team of paddlers, made up of residents from south Ottawa, Nepean and west Ottawa, have generated $200,000 since their inaugural year on the water in 2002. This year, the team has so far raised more than $12,000 towards its $20,000 goal in support of the festival’s many Ottawa-based charities.

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As snow covered the Ottawa landscape earlier this year, thoughts of warm summer days, with dragon boats racing through the still waters at Mooney’s Bay, were probably the furthest thing from most minds. But, in spite of the season, a dragon boat team was hard at work, setting up partnerships to support fundraising. That team is Chinatown’s Showboat.

Dragon boating has an early beginning. More than 2000 years ago, Qu Yuan, an ancient Chinese statesman, was banished from his state after urging his king not to sign a deceiving peace treaty. Humiliated and tormented, Qu Yuan chose to end his life and committed ritual suicide in the Miluo River.