At the tender age of seven, Dean Oldershaw was handed a paddle for the first time by his father, Bert, with hopes of also handing down a talent for canoeing. A year later, he won his first canoeing competition and the rest is history – and what a spectacular history in this most Canadian of all Olympic sports.

     He went on to win a grand total of 62 Canadian national championships and 18 North American medals in various single and double-blade categories, a feat that became a Canadian record for the sport and is destined to remain so for a long time. Since that day when his dad – he himself an outstanding paddler in his own right who has represented Canada in three Olympic Games – introduced him to canoeing on Toronto Island, Dean has mastered both the paddle and the ability to share his special gift.

     Soon after the Oldershaw family moved to Mississauga, Bert founded the Mississauga Canoe Club (“Missy” as it has become known over the years). An old shed served as the first “clubhouse” at the mouth of the Credit River and Dean became the club’s first competitive member. In the ensuing years, Dean helped the club to 12 national championship burgees as both a paddler and coach. Dean captured his first Canadian gold in 1962 and his 62nd nearly three decades later in ‘91, an impressive record for any athlete in any sport.

     He started out primarily as a single-blader, winning his first national title in Juvenile Men’s C-2. In 1966, he struck gold on his own while setting a Canadian record in the Senior Men’s C-1 and adding a couple of war canoe laurels to help “Missy” win its first national team championship crown. Dean won six Canadian championship titles In 1969, a record that has been equalled, but not broken. Internationally Dean represented Canada at the world championships in singles kayaking and made the finals, finishing seventh in back-to-back years in 1970 and ’71.

     His best showing at the world level also stands out as a cherished memory. In 1977, a year after he represented Canada in his second Olympic Games in Montreal, he teamed with his youngest brother Scott to finish sixth in the K-2 world championships. Dean and his brothers Reed and Scott (three quarters of Canada’s outstanding K-4 quartet with Alwyn Morris, who later became Olympic and world champion, being the forth) had high hopes for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but Canada and much of the western world boycotted the games and they never got their chance.

     “Nineteen-eighty might have been the chance for all of us to compete in the same Olympics,” said Dean.

     Dean also made his mark as coach of the Mississauga Canoe Club, using his expertise and experience to develop some outstanding talent. Nationally, he was elected to the Canadian paddling committee in 1987.

     He was inducted into the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame for 1984.