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Naomi Trudeau Morris, Spent Her Life On The Water
From The Toronto Star, 2004.
by Cathernie Dunphy, Obituary writer
No one ever told Naomi Trudeau Morris what to do. And no one dared tell her what she couldn’t do - especially if it was because she was a woman.
At 12, she was winning paddling races at the Island Aquatic Club but getting no recognition or ribbons because of her gender. Still, that was the year she was chosen to stroke in the club’s war canoe. At 14, as a member of the Toronto Dolphinette swim club, she set a Canadian swim record for the medley relay. Only the war prevented her from going to the Olympics.
When she was in her mid-20s, she bought herself a snipe sailing boat so she and her sister Vivienne could join the Queen City Yacht Club. The fact that women weren’t allowed to be sailing members didn’t stop her, and in 1948 the Trudeau sisters became the first full-fledged female club members.
"Women sailed in those days but they couldn’t be full members of the club," recalled Vivienne Trudeau Doyle. At the end of that season they were third in racing points. And they won the club Sportsman Trophy. In 1953, Naomi Morris won the club championship flag in The Puffin, the dinghy that she bought because she wanted to go farther, faster. "Naomi was always the daredevil," said her sister. "She had to wear leather gloves to keep the wind from whipping off the sail. She loved speed."
So of course, one year after the World Masters Games premiered in Toronto, which was when the Canadian Masters program started up in the city, she was down at the Balmy Beach Canoe Club ready to sign up for masters paddling. It was 1986, she was 64 and she was also almost legally blind.
Russ Dunn was the man in charge of the Masters paddling program there. He was skeptical about Mrs. Morris’ ability."Usually paddlers don’t last long. You kneel on one knee when you paddle and after five minutes your knee starts to hurt," he said. "You have to be strong and it’s hard to keep in stroke."
And usually master paddlers were closer to 30 - the minimum age then for the Masters category. (Now it is 25.) But Mrs. Morris had been working out at Alfie’s Gym. She was strong, she had perfect balance, and if they did tip, she certainly could swim her way out of trouble. Plus she had never quit anything.
Dunn didn’t know that, nor did he know she couldn’t see much out on the water, so he gave her a tryout. "She was quite a find." They paired up and paddled C2s (two person canoes) in regattas as far afield as Halifax. With other women in the club, Mrs. Morris paddled C4s (four person canoes), kayak 4s, kayak tandem and even kayak singles a couple of times. The Canadian Canoe Association has a trophy in her name. She may well have been the oldest woman in the world still paddling when she stopped at about age 76.
She and Dunn also starred in a Body Break television spot on the benefits of physical fitness. That commercial was on display along with a large tangle of racing medals, winning pennants, flags and photos from her long association on and in water at the Balmy Beach Canoe Club on May 9 at a celebration of Mrs. Morris’ life. She died at home April 12 with her daughter, Renee, and her guide dog, Juanita, by her side. She was 82. She wasn’t blind. She went where she wanted. Did what she wanted. She just couldn’t see," said karin larson, a publisher of a yachting magazine and one of Mrs. Morris’ oldest friends.
They met on the Toronto Islands, where Mrs. Morris grew up after her family moved there from the Beach area of Toronto. Mrs. Morris was swimming by age 5, canoeing and kayaking a couple of years later.
Yet her sister said she was sick most of her life. A 2-pound premature baby, at age 2 she pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove onto herself - and didn’t walk for a couple of years. A family maid mistakenly fed a 6-year-old Naomi deadly nightshade, which burned out the lining of her stomach. At 8 she was bedridden for two years with a very serious case of bronchitis that became pneumonia. "Then when she was 23, she fell into a stagnant pool. She developed a mastoid infection in both ears, meningitis, lockjaw and pernicious anemia a a result. The doctor declared her too weak for surgery, and predicted she wouldn’t make it." Her last illness left her deaf in one ear and with no reflexes. Her reaction time was always slow so that when the starting gun went off she was always last. But she always caught up.
"Noni worked hard. She was determined and always wanted to win. And she did," said her sister.
Some time after a brief first marriage that produced a daughter Linda, she met and married a yoyo salesman named Claude Morris and had two more children, Renee and a son, Andre, who died in 1995. An amateur artist, she taught crafts as a teaching assistant at Withrow Public School even after she was diagnosed with glaucoma at age 48. It didn’t hold her back. She used to ride her 10-speed silver Peugeot down to the Balmy Beach club when all she could see were vague shapes. She travelled to the downtown YMCA for aquafit swimming sessions three times a week. And she had her paddling.
"She steered the boat. She couldn’t see but she could steer and she was strong and we depended on her," said Mary Ellen Fyfle, who paddled C4s with Mrs. Morris.
In 1995, Mrs. Morris had a hip replacement and went to San Rafael, Calif. to meet and bring home Juanita, a chocolate brown lab guide dog who became her best friend. When her husband died in 2002 and she began suffering from Alzheimer disease, she and Juanita moved in with her daughter Renee and Renee’s husband, Larry Taylor. "Juanita allowed Mom independence and freedom. Now she is helping me get through this sad time," Renee said.
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1922 - 2004 (81 years)
Siblings
. André MORRIS, b. Abt 1963, Toronto, Ontario 
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