At age 10, Jack Guin already knows his way around a canoe – and a number of local whitewater runs, too, including the Class IV North Chick, a steep creek in Soddy-Daisy that intimidates paddlers twice his age.
But he doesn’t consider his on-water accomplishments to be that big of a deal.
“To me, it’s just another day,” says Jack, who was basically raised in a canoe manufacturing warehouse.
The son of Richard Guin, veteran open boater and vice president of Chattanooga’s Mohawk Canoes, Jack says his earliest memory is tandem canoeing the Hiwassee River with his father.
At age 7, he began boating solo after Richard modified an old Mohawk Maxim, shaving three inches off its sides to accommodate his small son.