Nearly all of these Born Today bios are based on Wikipedia, which has a page listing notable births for every day of the year. There are always dozens of well-remembered people who were born on any given day. Nobel prize laureates, heroes, national rulers, great artists and writers — they’re all there. But there are also often one or two whose memorable accomplishment can be a bit puzzling, at least at first. And today we’re celebrating Frank Amyot, who was born in Ontario on September 14, 1904, and became a…sprint canoeist.
Amyot’s aquatic accomplishments weren’t limited to sprint canoeing; when he was 29 he rescued two canoeists (regular canoe) from drowning on Lake Deschenes, which is a large (44 kilometers long) lake on the Ottowa River. There was a lot of publicity about it at the time, possibly because the canoeists he rescued were players from the local professional football team. That might have been the reason why, when Amyot decided to try out for the 1936 Olympic Games as a canoeist, a boating club in Ottawa raised money for him to travel to the trials in Europe. The Canadian Olympic Committee refused to help him or pay his way.
They might have scoffed at Amyot’s entry because not only had he never paddled in a sprint canoe race, at the time he’d never even seen a sprint canoe, which looks more like a kayak. Nevertheless, a canoe is, at some level, still a canoe, and Amyot was an expert canoeist. He paddled one for the first time in Germany during a training session. He must have taken to it pretty well, because he won the gold medal in the Olympics. It was the only gold medal won in 1936 by a Canadian. Whether the Canadian Olympic Committee reimbursed the boating club is unclear.
Amyot did not live a long life; he died at 58. An autopsy showed that he had died of cancer, which tragically had never been diagnosed. The Britannia Yacht Club, which is descended from the club that raised money for Amyot’s travel to the Olympics, still awards a Frank Amyot Memorial Trophy (for sprint canoeing), and you can find Amyot mentioned in the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame as well as Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
