PAUL VILLECOURT LOOKING FOR THE RIVER SENSE…
Paddle World: You have been involved in Paddlesports nearly your entire life, beginning with whitewater. What led to organizing a canoe festival?
“I love this idea: to live your life the way you really want; remember life is not all about working, but breathing and being happy.”
Paul Villecourt: The first 20 years of my paddling experience were dedicated to fun and adrenaline. In 1995, at 24 (I’m 47 today), I created the first French freestyle team and managed what we called “the rodeo” in France. In 1997, I moved to Canada and started to work with lots of top paddlers, such as Corran Addison and Ken Whiting. All this time was fun, but when I became a father at 29, things started to change. During days spent on the river banks, shooting freestyle events, I really felt something was missing. I wouldn’t say freestyle felt senseless, but I was craving a different paddling experience. If you want to take your kid to the river, you need to slow things down, so I started to paddle canoes. Around the same time, Ken Whiting took me to amazing places like Ontario’s Georgian Bay and sea kayaking photo shoots in Nova Scotia. The call of the wild started! In 2001, I moved back to France. I was still shooting a lot of river adventures, but I was not feeling good on class V. Getting older, my inspirations changed. I wanted to get rid of fear but didn’t want to lose my connection to the river. I’ve always had a very close relationship with nature and rivers, and I wanted to share this the way I once wanted to share the fun of freestyle kayaking. My whole life, if something I need is missing, I create it. And so, following a
