Corran Addison was the first guy to take a surf board onto the rivers around Montréal. After a year of solo riding Corran was joined by Jean-Louis. Jean-Louis first surf experience was on a home made board, that was constructed from foam and duct tape. Over the years these two riders have explored, pioneered, and promoted river surfing in Montreal. Currently there are between 200-300 riders in Montreal. Montreal now has a stable surf industry including several surf shops, several shapers and the only school dedicated to teaching people how to river surf.
Montreal’s biggest problem to date has been the lack of an organized voice for the community of river surfers. Unlike Munich and Calgary there is no organ to organize the river surfing scene in Montreal. However, over the last few years two surf clubs, Surf Montreal & SurfMTL, have surfaced in Montreal, perhaps this will be able to take up some of the responsibility of organizing river surfing in Montreal.
ELIJAH MACK AND THE WRSA.
“All I want to do is find a perfect wave. It is that simple. And when I find it I can ride it all day long.”(Elijah Mack). Eli, Mack, Elijah, is one of those peculiar people in the world who refuses to do as he is told and instead seeks out his own experience. I suppose in a way that’s the same spirit that all river surfers seem to share. We go out of our way to find something new to do, and a reason to get wet. Elijah grew up surfing in the hot bed of San Diego, a city where everyone and their mother are surfers and the rarest of occasions is solitude. In the 90’s Elijah left San Diego’s overcrowded, plastic, soulless surf for his own adventure.
Eventually ending up in Eugene Oregon the owner of Mos Faded barbershop (Elijah) began his spell on the rivers. What started as a curious idea in 1998 soon blossomed into a dedicated pursuit for that holy grail of surfing, the perfect wave. Elijah started to search out and pioneer a huge number of rivers in the Pacific Northwest and amongst his achievements is likely the first guy to surf such fabled river waves as the Lochsa Pipeline and the Skookumchuck Narrows. Elijah founded the World River Surfing Association with the expressed mission of finding, surfing and promoting river surfing in 2004. The WRSA was the first attempt to bring surfers from around the world together under one banner and in its hay day it did just that. Unfortunately the WRSA became defunct, mostly due to the neglect of the surfing industry.
"The hardest thing I find in the promotion of river surfing is that it has not been embraced by either the surfing or kayak industry. The kayak world knows about the waves but don't care about surfing them and the surf community knows nothing about the waves. There is no industry surrounding it. I am starting to poke holes into both. But in the end the blessing is that river surfing has more mainstream appeal than either of its two bigger sisters. It is extremely attracting to the layperson who has never surfed. To see a surfer surfing on a river is a channel surfer stopper and keeper. “-Elijah Mack WRSA-
One of Elijah’s crowning achievements was surfing the Zambezi rivers overland truck eater wave. This massive beastie is a barreling 6-8ft wave in the heart of Africa.