Dr. Don McKenzie
Dr. Don is a highly qualified sports medicine doctor. In December 2021 Dr. Don was appointed to the Order of Canada, one of Canada’s highest civilian honours, for his expertise in sports medicine and his seminal research on the effectiveness of exercise as an intervention for breast cancer patients.
For a detailed history of why this award is so well-deserved check out:
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/11/30/sandy-smith-mckenzie-harris-frost
What follows is a summary from this article of how the BCS paddling phenomenon all started.
It all began in 1996 when Dr. Don and a group of 24 women who were breast cancer survivors, founded the very first breast cancer dragon boat team in the world called Abreast in A Boat in Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Don describes these women as “incredibly courageous” and the reason is simple. They were prepared to go against prevailing medical wisdom and the advice of their doctors to help Dr. Don prove that the prevailing medical view was simply wrong. In those days women diagnosed with breast cancer were told that any repetitive upper body motion; even raking leaves or cutting vegetables could cause a condition called lymphedema, a swelling in the arms of breast cancer survivors who have had lymph nodes removed.
Dr. Don had been a physician for Canada’s national canoe team but knew he needed a stable boat for this project. He decided to recruit 24 women to volunteer to paddle in a dragon boat that Dr. Don would steer. Putting that original group of women together was of course not easy and a number of Dr. Don’s colleagues questioned him for fear those women would get lymphedema.
Dr. Don was helped by a colleague who also believed in the project - Dr. Susan Harris, a UBC physical therapist. She came on as a researcher and paddler and helped recruit other women as well. At that same time, Jane Frost from Vancouver was celebrating 10 years of being cancer-free. Jane did not consider herself an athlete and her only paddling experience came from a few outings in a little rowboat. Nevertheless, despite some nervousness, Jane along with the other “originals” had faith in Dr. Don and joined the project.
The project was to last six months, starting with training in a gym and then on the water, paddling as a team. Dr. Harris and another physical therapist took arm measurements throughout. At the end of the project, none of the paddlers had developed lymphedema, which from Dr. Don’s perspective was a “hugely positive finding".
In June of 1996, Abreast in a Boat raced for the first time as a BCS dragon boat team at a dragon boat competition in Vancouver. When they hit the finish line at the end of their first race thousands of people were cheering for them. Abreast in a Boat started to attract a lot of media attention and every single padder on the team wanted to carry on. There are still “originals” on the team who continue to paddle to this day.
In 1998, Dr. McKenzie wrote about the ’96 Abreast in A Boat team in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, noting, "We did not see the cases of lymphedema we had been warned about." In 2000, Dr. Harris and her colleague Sherri Niesen-Vertommen published the results of the measurements they had taken during that first season in a journal for surgical oncology. Dr. McKenzie and others have followed up with many more studies that have come to the same conclusion. Even more importantly, the research by Dr. Don, Dr. Harris and others has proven that exercise like paddling a dragon boat is good medicine and cannot only improve a paddler’s mental health but also reduce the risk of recurrence of breast cancer!
If you read the full article (linked above), you will also learn how and why we now have so many BCS teams all over the world and the huge role that Sandy Smith and Jane Frost have played in that development. Sandy Smith joined Abreast in a Boat in 1997 and became the first Global Liaison, to spread the message all over the world that breast cancer survivors can paddle in dragon boats and have an amazing time while doing so. Jane Frost provided the drive and leadership that made BCS dragon boat festivals grow in popularity around the world.
Jane was responsible for the 10-year celebration of Abreast in a Boat in Vancouver, which led to the formation of the International Breast Cancer Paddlers Commission (IBCPC”), in 2010, with Jane as its first president. Pink Crusaders and BCS teams from around the world are members of the IBCPC. Since the first IBCPC participatory dragon boat festival held in Peterborough, Canada, in 2010, participatory festivals organized by the IBCPC are held in different locations around the globe, typically every four years. The Sandy Smith Global Finale is a race that is held at these festivals to celebrate her life and achievements followed by a huge flower ceremony attended by hundreds of BCS paddlers-an amazing experience.
Jane Frost was also the inspiration behind the formation of Padders Abreast Canada (“PAC”) in 2021. Pink Crusaders and all of the other teams in Canada with BCS members are members of PAC. Dr. Don continues to attend BCS Dragon Boat Festivals. He attended the Concord Pacific Festival in Vancouver in June 2022, where sixteen BCS teams including a Pink Crusaders composite team participated. Tragically Jane was not able to experience her accomplishment from all the hard work she and others put in to forming PAC as she passed away shortly before that Festival. The Dr. Don McKenzie Breast Cancer Challenge Race (in which the Pink Crusaders team was honoured to place first) and the Flower Ceremony at that Festival were dedicated to the memory of Jane Frost.
Dr. Don is a board member of the IBCPC Trust and is still involved in outreach to various countries to help with the establishment of BCP dragon boat teams. There are now over 310 IBCPC member teams from over 37 different countries!
If you want to learn even more about the first 25 years of breast cancer dragon boat paddling read the book “Internationally Abreast – Exercise as Medicine” authored by Michelle Hanton and Eleanor Nielsen, published in 2021 by Dragon Sisters.