Annual Canoe Regatta Won't Be Held This Year

The Fair Lawn Canoe Regatta, postponed in June due to a lack of participants, will not be rescheduled this year.

The borough had previously hoped to hold the race in September, to coincide with a bike rodeo for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, but assistant borough manager Jim Van Kruiningen said spring 2013 is now the target. Van Kruiningen did not know how the additional postponment would affect the status of the bike rodeo, which was proposed earlier this year by three enterprising Milnes middle schoolers.

Van Kruiningen said this year's 1.8-mile canoe race, which starts on the Passaic River at Memorial Park and finishes at the Elmwood Park Marina, was a no-go without help from the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission.

In past years, PVSC employees helped load and transport the participating canoes back and forth in trucks at no cost to the borough. This year, however, the PVSC was unable to provide the service, Van Kruiningen said.

Without incurring additional costs or raising the cost to participate in the race, the borough would have been unable to perform the canoe transportation in-house.

Van Kruiningen said the borough has been asked to reach out to the PVSC again in early spring to see if the commission can send employees to provide assistance then.

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