Bert Oldershaw often used to joke that he owed his Olympic career as one of Canada's most decorated paddlers, ironically, to the sport of football and Canadian Football League Hall-of-Famer Annis Stukus.
Two days after Oldershaw died suddenly at age 84, his son Dean recalled that paddling wasn't the only sport at which his dad excelled.
"He was an excellent football player and he played for Balmy Beach a couple of years after they won the Grey Cup," said Oldershaw, an Oakville resident who, nevertheless, vows that, "I'm still a Port Credit boy regardless of where I'm living."
His dad was playing defence for Balmy Beach when "Stuke," who played 12 different positions in his long CFL career, ran over him.
"Stukus' cleat went through my dad's shoe and he lost the middle knuckle on his second toe because it was so badly smashed," said Dean. "And that's what really got him into canoeing."
It's hard to know what brought Oldershaw more glory - his stellar Olympic career in which he reached canoeing finals in three consecutive Games in 1948, '52 and '56 — or his stellar work founding and building the Mississauga Canoe Club and sending new generations of paddlers on to Olympic glory.
Of course, his own sons Dean and Reed and Scott, were among that lineage.
Things weren't looking so bright at the end of Oldershaw's Olympic days when Hurricane Hazel wiped out the Toronto Island Canoe Club in 1954 and then, two years later, the government expropriated the property on Centre Island where Bert had been raised and learned to paddle.
"He got in the motor boat and went all along the waterfront, east and west, looking for property," recalled Dean. He ended up buying the former Timothy Eaton Estate just west of Port Credit. He had the 15-acre property subdivided and the family lived on Balboa Dr. from 1956 to around 1980.
It ended up being a magnet for the paddling fraternity, of course. That's what happens when you convert your swimming pool into a paddle pool where everyone can practice.
Oldershaw founded the canoe club at the mouth of the Credit and was its first coach. He was "adamant" the club be named for the Mississaugas. When it came time for the public to choose between the names of Mississauga and Sheridan when the new town was created in 1968, he lobbied hard for Mississauga, to match the canoe club moniker.
His father always felt a strong affinity for native Canadians and the culture that created canoeing and gave the world the sport he loved best, said Dean.
"He always used to say Canada is the only country that has a sport named after it," said Dean, 59. "Of course, the sport of canoeing is divided into kayak and Canadian canoe. He'd always say 'C1, C2, C4: It's not canoe, it's Canadian.'"
Undoubtedly as a result of his childhood on the Toronto Islands, Oldershaw also had a passion for lighthouses. Before he died he'd been working on restoring the Burlington Canal lighthouse and the keeper's cottage.
Asked how he'll remember his father best, Dean Oldershaw pauses for a moment.
"As a loving father, of course," he says, "but also as a promoter and a hustler, right to the end. In the last year, he'd been trying to get canoeing going at the Six Nations Reserve," said Dean.
His sons will spread their father's ashes at several of the places he loved the best, including on the Toronto islands where it all started and on Burlington Beach where he had his cottage.
Naturally, the vestiges of Oldershaw will also float again on the waters of the Credit.
"That river was always dear to him," his son said.