Rona Collingwood

This past week, Rona opened a new store in Collingwood, Ontario. Rona sponsors 100 Canadian Athletes through their "growing with our athletes" program. I'm pictured here with Rona president and CEO, Robert Dutton. It's incredible that the president of the company makes it out every store opening. It was a great opportunity to meet and say thanks to the good people of Rona.

Rona is a great 100% Canadian home and hardware store, which manages to carry over 90% Canadian product. It's great to see a Canadian company doing so well in such a competitive market, and incredible to see how committed they are to Canadian amateur sport. A big thank you to everyone at Rona for all that you continue to do for Canadian Athletes.

(photos: Richard Galloway, isisphotography.ca)

Creemore Springs Brewery

The good folks up at the Creemore Brewery let my friends and I come up and tour their old fashion brewhouse this past Tuesday. Their slogan is "100 years behind the times", and they make my favourite beer. Pictured here left to right is Mark Oldershaw, Gabriel Beauschesne-Sevigny, Me (check my new Creemore Hockey Jersey! thanks cj), Scott Fisher, Scott Oldershaw, Adam Oldershaw, Craig Jobber and Brady Reardon.

Their beer is made from only 4 ingredients, with no preservatives. Everyone who drinks Creemore knows how great it is on tap, that's because Creemore delivers it's own beer fresh to every bar that carries it, and cleans the taps and draught lines every time a new keg is tapped.

A big thanks to Lily and Charlie at the Cedar Pond Bed & Breakfast and to everyone at the Creemore Brewery. We had a blast!

2007 - A Good Year

Looking back on 2007, I have got to be thankful. I graduated from University, won all the ICF World Cups, had my best World Championships yet (Gold in K1 500m, Silver in 1000m), set a new World's Best time in the 500m (1:36.279), and had more fun at Nationals than I've ever had. Burloak coming in first and second in Senior Men's War Canoe will go down in history, our Men's K4 200 and 1000 keeps getting better, and the atmosphere with Burloak is as positive and motivating as ever.

The Mazda Knockout was a huge success, thank you so much to Mazda, and all the athletes from around the world that came out to make our event so successful. I hope you enjoyed Canada, and are anxious to come back!

So after a nice break, it's almost time to get back in my K1 and train hard. I just bought a new Cervelo road bike which is ridiculously fast and an awesome way to get in some extra training... thanks to Cervelo and Gears Bike Shop for setting me up!

So check back here for updates and rants... and send me an email if you've got a question or comment!