North America’s largest dragon boat festival wraps up in False Creek

Teams took to the waters for over a hundred races over the course of the weekend for the annual Vancouver Dragon Boat Festival.

Hundreds of racers from around the world gave it their all in False Creek this weekend for the annual Vancouver Dragon Boat Festival—the largest event of its kind in North America.

In total, 222 teams from nine countries participated in more than 100 races Saturday and Sunday.

“Despite the rain, everyone’s in high spirits because this is what a lot of teams train an entire year for. They’ve flown in from around the world to race here,” said Dominic Lai with Dragon Boat BC.

He explained that dragon boating made its Canadian debut at Expo 86, when members of Vancouver’s Asian community brought the vessels over from Hong Kong for a demonstration race, and the sport took off. The first Dragon Boat Festival was in 1989.

Sunday’s festivities included a specialty cup competition for breast cancer survivors.

“I think most of us joined because we wanted to sort of get back into shape after breast cancer, but also to change the face of breast cancer, (show) that we can be active,” said Debra Chelsey, a member of a team from Calgary.

“We’re living and we’re strong, we’re getting healthy,” said her teammate, Angela Reither. “We have such great spirit and we’re thriving. It shows our strength.”