Rower Archie MacKinnon helped usher in a golden age for his sport on Canada’s West Coast

OBITUARY Rower Archie MacKinnon helped usher in a golden age for his sport on Canada’s West Coast TOM HAWTHORN SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED 33 MINUTES AGO Open this photo in gallery: The Cinderella Four, from left to right Archie MacKinnon, Lorne Loomer, Walter d’Hondt and Don Arnold, in their Canadian strip on Lake Wendouree in Melbourne at the 1956 Olympics. JASON BECK/SUPPLIED COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Listen to this article Learn more about audio Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. Though the teenager had never once sat in a racing shell, Archie MacKinnon, a freshman electrical engineering student, tried out for the varsity rowing team when he arrived on campus. He later said he “thought it would be easy to make” the team, guided by Frank Read, the University of British Columbia’s legendary coach. As it turned out, he failed to win a spot among the coxed eights, the sport’s glamour boat. He and three other cuts were encouraged to continue as spares with the possibility one or two might be used as a substitute in case of illness or injury. The unheralded youths trained in a shell for four without a coxswain. A year later, the novices shocked the sporting world by winning a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics in Australia. The first-ever Olympic rowing championship for Canada helped launch a golden age for the sport on the West Coast, the effects of which linger to this day. Mr. MacKinnon, who has died at the age of 89, was the last surviving member of a student crew forever remembered in lore as the Cinderella Four. “They are the pioneering Olympic champions of Canadian rowing, one of the most important crews ever assembled in our country’s history,” said Jason Beck, curator of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, who is completing a book on the province’s rowers from that era. “As the bowman, he was responsible for steering the shell straight with his foot while stroking his oar in time with his crewmates for 2,000 metres at a pace that would bury most normal humans.” Open this photo in gallery: Archie MacKinnon and the Cinderella Four shocked the sporting world by winning a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics in Australia. BC SPORTS HALL OF FAME Archibald Alan MacKinnon, who carried the name of his paternal grandfather, was born on Jan. 13, 1937, in Cranbrook, a small city in British Columbia’s East Kootenays region. He was the first of two sons born to the former Ivy Elsie Marshall and Charles Eric…