Backyard History: The 'strange' men in the hot pink hats

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As a huge crowd of well-heeled European royals and elites watched, formidable rowing teams from the great nations of Germany, France and Britain gathered on the Sienne for a famous race. They were joined by four “strange” New Brunswick men in pink hats representing a brand new country called Canada which had only been formed a week earlier.

The Manchester Guardian newspaper wrote: “Among the strange-looking people whom this regatta has brought together not the least strange were a certain crew of four sturdy New Brunswickers … With their flesh-coloured jersies [sic], dark cloth trousers, leather braces, and bright pink caps, they were in striking contrast to their neat competitors.”

Since the four New Brunswickers’ arrival in Paris, a veritable lake’s worth of ink had been spilled by European newspapers commenting on their signature hot-pink hats, which today we would call toques.

It wasn’t just their fashion choices that befuddled the Europeans though – the four Saint John men beneath those pink hats were unlike their rowing competitors. The European racers were virtually all aristocratic elites drawn from top universities like Oxford.

The New Brunswickers, by contrast, were distinctly working class. Three of the rowers – Robert Fulton, Samuel Hutton, and George Price – were fishermen. The fourth, Elijah Ross, was a lighthousekeeper, a career that surely must have seemed impossibly alien to the Parisians.

The four men were in a strange situation themselves. They had departed the colony of New Brunswick. While they were in Paris, their home became a province in a brand new country called Canada.

Eight days after Confederation, on July 8, 1867, the four New Brunswickers became the first to represent Canada on the international stage.

Fulton, Hutton, Ross and Price were already locally famous in Saint John. While they had already competed as far away as New England, they weren’t exactly considered global players on the rowing scene by any stretch of the imagination.

They had been pushed to compete in Paris by ordinary Saint Johners, who had fundraised a whopping $4,000 for their trip. New Brunswick’s pre-Confederation colonial government, in one of its final acts, also kicked in a further $2,000.

And so they sailed for the 1867 World’s Fair. It was hosted by the French Emperor Napoleon III who bragged in a press release: “There is no place like Paris for such a meeting. Whatever other city may lay claim to the title of metropolis of the world, none can certainly dispute Paris the vaunt of being the capital of Europe.”

The French emperor was watching the race alongside, as the New York Times phrased it, “an extraordinary concourse of crowned heads. Crowned, and turbaned too.”

This would have been a very different audience than the crew were used to back in Saint John, where rowing was considered a distinctly working-class sport, with something of a reputation for attracting bettors.

As the four men from Saint John got into their boat on the day of the big race, the Paris crowd murmured concern. The boat was a style they’d never seen before. It looked precarious and flimsy. It was so low to the water that there was genuine concern the Canadians might actually sink if even they hit even a small wave.

The spectators’ concerns weren’t unfounded. The New Brunswickers’ boat had been specially constructed to go exceptionally fast over flat, calm water. If it had been windy, they almost certainly would have been in trouble.

However, the day of the big race was completely and entirely windless.

The big race didn’t exactly have a Hollywood photo finish.

From the moment the race began, the New Brunswickers used their “strange technique” of short fast rows to instantly pull well ahead of the other teams.

Their low boat zipped over the calm water, pulling far ahead of their competitors.

As they neared the finish lines, the other teams were so far behind that the New Brunswickers let go of their oars and – in possibly the most egregious insult to the Parisian fashionistas – took off their “strange” hot-pink toques that had been the subject of so much comment and waved them to the crowd.

They then crossed the finish line, entering the history books as Canada’s first winners of anything.

The scale of their victory was such that the same reporter for the Manchester Guardian who had called the New Brunswickers “strange” went so far as to write that “either English oarsmen or English boatbuilders should reconsider the first principles of their arts.”

It took 10 days for the news to make it across the Atlantic to the citizens of the brand-new Canada. The Toronto Daily Mail wrote that the win was “hailed with enthusiasm from one end of the newly created Dominion to the other.”

The Toronto Globe wrote that the win “thoroughly brings home to the broad mass of our people that our bold Maritime friends are now our fellow countrymen in name and fact. It is a glorious responsibility that is upon the Paris crew. To be the first to uphold the strength, skill, pluck and honor of our country’s athletes.”

Americans, meanwhile, seemed offended by the Europeans’ shock at the Canadian win, with The New York Times penning a front-page editorial declaring: “Canadians lead the world in boating, and their triumph on the Sienne is only a repetition of those they have so often won in their waters and in our own. They come down to ‘the States’ only to easily overcome our best clubs, and then tell us, sometimes, for our satisfaction, that they have better men left behind.”

When they returned to Saint John, “The Paris Crew,” as the winning team was nicknamed, received a hero’s welcome.

The city’s enthusiasm was two-fold. Naturally, Saint Johners were proud of their hometown lads’ winning Canada’s first victory at anything. Secondly, though, recall that rowing was primarily a sport Maritimers bet money on. Many ordinary Saint Johners had bet on the Paris Crew’s implausible win and had suddenly come into large sums of money.

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