Talk:Canoeing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Water sports Portal This article is within the scope of the Kayaking WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Kayaking. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

This article is part of the "Olympic events" set of articles nominated for Version 0.7. Discuss this nomination, or see the set nominations page for more details.

[edit] Accuracy

"Canoeing is the recreational or sporting activity of paddling a canoe or kayak." As far as I know, paddling a kayak is called kayaking... However, I do not know whether or not the word kayaking is used in the UK... Could anybody please clarify this? --JJF 05:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

As the third sentence of the article says, "Confusingly, canoeing is used as a generic term for both forms." As evidence...

From [1] "The New Zealand Recreational Canoeing Association is the national organisation representing recreational whitewater canoeing and kayaking in New Zealand."

From [2] "The Canadian Recreational Canoeing Association (CRCA) was conceived in 1971 as a result of the perceived need that recreational paddling enthusiasts from across Canada required a national body to co-ordinate the efforts of those involved in non-competitive canoeing and kayaking."

From [3] "The American Canoe Association: Dedicated to helping people enjoy the outdoors using kayaks, canoes and rafts since 1880."

See also Canoe#Ambiguity over the word Canoe "Confusingly, the sport of canoeing, organised at the international level by the International Canoe Federation, uses the word canoe to cover both canoes as defined here, and kayaks..."

Admittedly, a more sensible generic term for canoeing and kayaking is "paddle sports". But this is the reality, as far as I can tell, so I'm going to remove the disputed tag. -- Mwanner | Talk 18:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification :) --JJF 19:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I have changed some things around in the first paragraph to correctly indicate the difference between kayaking and canoeing. obviously there are many examples of kayaks being reffered to as canoes, but as per the oxford english dictionary and all kayaking professionals (such as myself) the correct term for kayaking is kayaking, not canoeing. Although the terms are commonly misused, I have changed it so it is correct (remember this is a NPOV encyclopedia) whilst still outlining there is much confusion. Bennyboyz3000 08:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've tried yet another version for the canoe v kayak thing. Benny, I know you and many others prefer to use the word kayaking but I dont think you can say it is exactly incorrect to say canoeing includes kayaking, given that the ICF, ACA, BCU etc all use the word canoe/canoeing in their titles to include all forms (canoe/kayak/dragon boat, etc). At worst they are alternative uses rather than one being right and one being wtong. Personally I think that if we are to be NPOV we should give preference to the official name rather than what the participants say. especially as that seems to vary from place to place. But we've been round the houses on this so many times before it is probably impossible to satisfy everyone! Jameswilson

A kayak can be seen as a special kind of canoe -- like a canoe is a boat, but a boat is not a canoe. When exactly a canoe can be called a kayak is difficult to determine, and often arbitrary. Nevertheless, I think it is the best workable way to look upon this matter, in my opinion and experience. Kanoniem 11:51, 22 July 2007 (UTC) (Dirk Barends)

polynesian canoes need to be bought into the mix. some of the great sea adventures involved polynesian canoes. they also involved the use of sail[4]Tundrabuggy (talk) 23:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Why the confusion? Canoe is the descriptor of a generic hull-shape meaning "pointed at both ends". Canoe is the species. The confusion occurs when the same word is used as name for a specific type i.e. North American Canoe. Solve the 'Canosion" by inventing a distinct word for the North American Traditional Canoe, and the problem will go away. We in Europe have Canoeing as a sport that includes boats of the classificaion of hullshpes that are pointed at both ends. The Americans don't like the term "Canadian" canoe that is used by the ICF to mean "Boat, classification 'C' for Canadian, paddled with single bladed paddle, kneeling".Hence we now have to have the ugly terminology "kayaking and canoeing". Even the professionals in the British Canoe Union have forgotten the meaning of the word that describes completely, their sport. The Football Association of England have the same confusion as they classify their (Soccer) sport as "Football", when in fact there are many types of 'Football' apart from 'Soccer'. (Rugby-football, Australian Rules-Football, American-Football etc). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.66.73.81 (talk) 19:21, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Double Ended vs Flat Ended

the statement that canoes are "pointed at both ends" is false. there exist canoes with one end flat for purposes of small motors. In fact when selling a canoe it is recommended to advertise whether or not it is double or flat ended canoe because the audiences are different.Tundrabuggy (talk) 13:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Canoe?

Lots of information on the Canoe article relates to the act of Canoeing. We could try to make a distinction, and move such information to the Canoeing article here. But do we really need both as separate articles?. In the past we also accidently created dupllication with a Kayaking article distinct from Kayak article, but decided to merge 'kayaking' into 'kayak'. Should we do the same here? -- Nojer2 09:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

This article discusses the activity of canoeing as a sport and recreation, whereas the Canoe article discusses the boat itself. No merge is necessary, except for the portion in the intro on the different canoe types (I'll do that soon). -- P199 21:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Well that's a pretty decisive answer. I'm not so convinced. There's now a whole big section called Canoe#Use Use of a canoe is... Canoeing isn't it? Increasingly I'm thinking it's not sensible to develope Canoe and Canoeing articles in parallel. I understand that the words mean different things, and so we can try to create distinct articles, but I think it would come together more effectively as a single article.

Just a thought. I dont feel very strongly about it. I'm a Kayaker after all! :-P -- Nojer2 17:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I'd like to have two separate pages for recreational canoeing and the competitive sport, ie move any sport stuff on here to Canoe racing. Jameswilson 23:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

This article is generic, meaning it covers all aspects of canoeing activities. It is therefore appropriate to make mention of the sporting aspect but the specifics of the sport are dealt with in Canoe racing. Looking at all the links, there are several articles already that deal with the various aspects of canoeing. I would suggest therefore to leave this article as is, since it links to all the other canoeing articles, making it a handy reference. -- P199 14:33, 5 April 2006 (UTC)