By John Allaire O n one of my surf vacations, I started to see stand-up paddleboarding at some coastal destinations,” Pilon explains. “The paddling I’ve done in Ontario around Collingwood, I would kayak out in Georgian Bay. Those days when the winds would pick up and you get three-or- four-foot swells, I’d grab my sea kayak and take full advantage of the conditions.” The wheels started turning. The prospect of a paddle board that you could both stand on and catch waves, should con- ditions become favourable, became attractive to Pilon. “My first SUP experience was in a small Mexican town. The next year I went to a surf town in Chile and met a fellow surfer and a board designer who would design boards as a hobby, just for himself,” Pilon points out. That particular trip was supposed to be a three-week surfing getaway. It turned into a six-week discover, as Pilon began to think seriously about designing new boards specific to the Canadian experience. Even for those of us unfamiliar with SUP and surfing, it seems obvious that the designs of the boards would have to consider conditions and varying uses. Pilon explains that his unique designs account for such variances. “There is definitely a distinction between a board you would use on flat water in a small inland lake versus a board you would use to surf an ocean. Shorter boardsthat look more like a performance surf board are designed for waves and more of the typical surfing conditions. Flat-wa- ter boards tend to be longer and narrower with more of a pointy nose on them. More like the look of a kayak. We call them ‘touring boards’.” “If you can surf in the Great Lakes, you can surf anywhere.” Pilon also points out that there is a category of board design that does a bit of everything. “There’s a board design in the middle which we call ‘all-rounders’ and they are just what you’d assume them to be. They are made for a variety of conditions. So a 10-6 or 11-6 all rounder, you could use on flat water or to surf small waves.” “The really interesting thing that many people don’t realize is that, the Great Lakes are basically inland seas. In certain conditions they feel very much like an ocean. Great Lake surfinghas grown in popularity over the last decade. And stand-up paddleboarding has brought people into sort of a surfing culture, and has spawned an interest in Great Lake surfing. SUP has brought this culture to more people.” So what about the surfing conditions in Central Canada?
Unlike ocean surfing in destinations like Hawaii and Mexico,
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • APRIL 2018
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