Saint John Times Globe - Wednesday, March 6, 1996

Not-So-Instant Replay

Renforth hopes its recreation of a dramatic 1871 rowing race and a week of events will attract 10,000 people this summer

By: Mac Trueman

Times Globe staff writer

They’re talking baseball tournaments and tennis tournaments, an across-the-province canoe race, golf and the area’s biggest-ever sailpast.

When Renforth residents and their neighbors stage the 125th anniversary of the Great Boat Race this August, this quiet riverside village hopes to bring in some 10,000 participants for the week-long program.

"It's going to be the biggest event that has ever been hosted in the Kennebecasis Valley in the last 100 years," said former mayor Greg Zed, who is organizing chairman for this year's Renforth Regatta, dubbed "Regatta 125."

But he added that this year's anticipated crowd of 10,000 people would have been dwarfed by the throngs who lined the Kennebecasis shores 125 years ago to watch the grudge match between Saint John's Paris sculling crew and the four-man team from the River Tyne in northen England which had beaten them the previous year in their world-class match.

At the climax of this race, Tyne captain James Renforth collapsed from a heart attack. He died a few hours later.

One newspaper estimated that there were 15,000 people on hand for the race, but other papers suggested 20,000 and 25,000 spectators, Mr. Zed said.

"The regatta in 1871 was bigger than what we currently know as the Superbowl, and bigger than the World Series."

By May of last year, when Mr. Zed stepped down as mayor of Renforth (he did not reoffer for the post), he had already been working for two months on organizing Regatta 125.

Now he is negotiating with the captain of the Tyne Rowing Club in Newcastle-on-Tyne to bring over a 1990s version of the team that the Saint John crew took on. He also has a line out to Pauline McCallum, in Bedford, Tex., who is the great-grand-niece of James Renforth.

Among the Renforth events which Mr. Zed hopes to tie in with Saint John's Festival by the Sea are a Kennebecasis Valley baseball tournament, being organized by Softball New Brunswick. The Renforth Golf and Country Club is will into planning for a regatta golf tournament as well, he said.

"I've talked to the golf pro Jim Connolly, so it's just a matter of firming up dates and things of that nature."

Mr. Zed's group is also making plans for swim meets, a pancake breakfast, beer gardens and other events which will go through the week ending on the Saturday on which the August 23 anniversary of the Great Race will occur.

For the Newcastle-on-Tyne club, "I don't think money is the hold-up," Mr. Zed said. Renforth has offered to pay all their expenses. "They want to talk to the membership and see if they can put together a competitive crew."

When Mrs. McCallum visited Renforth in 1994, he said "I took her on a tour of the village, she and her husband William, and presented her with a lapel pin and an ascot, and a shield of the village, and indicated to them that plans were in the works for 1996.

"At the time she indicated she was going to make her vacation for next August."