Transcript:

Studying abroad

My name is Wayne Pommen. I am a third-year PhD student at the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge. I study the NAFTA agreement and North American economic integration. Prior to Cambridge I was at Harvard University where I studied sociology and French. Before that I did one year at the University of Victoria, where I am from. I am in my eighth year of university.

I started rowing in Victoria when I was in high school at Mount Douglas Senior Secondary. From there I went on and rowed for the University of Victoria, followed by Harvard University, where by the time I reached my fourth year I was captain of the team. It was a very good collegiate team in the U.S. Along the way I did some rowing with the Canadian national team. I was on a Canadian crew that won the Under 23 World Championships in 2001 in Austria. Some would say that that was the beginning of a very strong period for the Canadian national team that led up to last year’s Olympics.

Then I came to Cambridge, which probably has one of the best university rowing teams in the world. In 2004 I was President of the Cambridge Boat Race crew that beat Oxford by six lengths. Very few people know about this race in Canada, but it is a really big deal in the U.K. We had a U.K. TV audience of around nine million people on BBC.

I was also at the World Championships, rowing for Canada, in 2003. I was in the Cambridge Boat Race crew and 48 hours before the race we were in a big collision on the River Thames. I was sitting in the bow seat of the boat, which meant that I was first in the line of fire. I broke my wrist and had to sit out the race, after all those months of training. It was pretty disappointing. That motivated me to come back to Cambridge straight away, continue with the rowing, continue with the PhD and pass up the chance to row in the Canadian team.

The Boat Race is a really old and special tradition in Britain. Last year was the 150th race and the 175th anniversary of the first race. There has only been a handful of presidents of either Cambridge or Oxford boat clubs that have not been British. There has been one other Canadian at Cambridge, a fellow by the name of Brad Crombie in 1999. I was the second one and it was an honour to serve as President.