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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis class Shady Banks — the Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet combined with the national flag of Canada
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — The Bastion in Nanaimo, A small free-standing octagonal wooden tower of three tapering storeys, whitewashed timber with red-painted trim and a shingled conical roof, standing alone on a grassed rise at the corner of Bastion and Front Streets directly above Nanaimo's Inner Harbour. Two black cannon point down the slope toward the water; behind it the modern downtown blocks rise, in front the harbour, floatplanes and the low green mass of Newcastle Island
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — Nanaimo Court House in Nanaimo, A heavy grey stone public building of rough-dressed masonry on Front Street, with deep round-arched openings, a broad arched entrance recessed under a stone porch, and a squat corner tower with a pyramidal roof. It sits on the slope just uphill from the harbour, its stonework noticeably rusticated and shadowed compared with the smooth modern buildings around it
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — Saysutshun (Newcastle Island Marine Provincial Park) in Nanaimo, An island of second-growth Douglas fir and arbutus lying a few hundred metres off downtown Nanaimo, reached by a small passenger ferry. Its shoreline shows pale honey-coloured sandstone cut into flat benches and sheer worked faces where quarrying stopped, with round weathered hollows in the rock. Near the landing stands a low, wide-eaved wooden pavilion with a broad open hall, set on grass among tall firs
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — Swy-A-Lana Lagoon, Maffeo Sutton Park in Nanaimo, A rounded saltwater basin set into the downtown waterfront, ringed by a paved walkway and low stone retaining edges, with grass and young trees on the landward side and the masts of the harbour marina beyond. At low tide the water spills out through the narrow ocean opening in a short set of falls; at high tide it is flush with the harbour, and the Bastion and downtown blocks stand on the rise behind it
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — the Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet combined with the national flag of Canada

Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet

Nanaimo, Canada  ·  Racquets > Adult

Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet

This one is sandstone, run out a little further. Length is leverage: a 104 in² Blade hoop on 27.5 inches, 290 g, wider sweet spot, real help on the serve. It will call the stroke round Nanaimo first: Bastion, court house, quarry island, tidal lagoon. Soft hands. Long finish.

↓   Tour Nanaimo, Canada

Four stops before the checkout

Nanaimo, Canada
01
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — The Bastion in Nanaimo, A small free-standing octagonal wooden tower of three tapering storeys, whitewashed timber with red-painted trim and a shingled conical roof, standing alone on a grassed rise at the corner of Bastion and Front Streets directly above Nanaimo's Inner Harbour. Two black cannon point down the slope toward the water; behind it the modern downtown blocks rise, in front the harbour, floatplanes and the low green mass of Newcastle Island
Stop one

The Bastion

Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet: Names first, because for once we actually have them. Jean-Baptiste Fortier and Leon Labine, two French-Canadian axemen, are credited with building this. Not the Company. Fortier and Labine, with axes. The Hudson's Bay Company ordered it up between 1853 and 1855 to guard the coal workings it had opened at what was then called Colviletown, on land it held under a royal grant over the entire Colony of Vancouver Island, which is a very comfortable arrangement if you happen to be the one holding the grant. The method is piece-sur-piece: horizontal timbers tenoned into grooved vertical posts, cut and fitted by hand, and it is still standing. Oldest building in Nanaimo. Last free-standing Hudson's Bay Company bastion left in North America. It has been shifted from its original position more than once as the waterfront was rebuilt, and it is now a designated municipal heritage site operated by the Nanaimo Museum. The Company got the grant, the coal and the credit. Fortier and Labine got the blisters. Say the names.

02
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — Nanaimo Court House in Nanaimo, A heavy grey stone public building of rough-dressed masonry on Front Street, with deep round-arched openings, a broad arched entrance recessed under a stone porch, and a squat corner tower with a pyramidal roof. It sits on the slope just uphill from the harbour, its stonework noticeably rusticated and shadowed compared with the smooth modern buildings around it
Stop two

Nanaimo Court House

Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet: Built between 1895 and 1896 to designs by Francis Mawson Rattenbury, the architect who dominated public building in British Columbia at the turn of the century and who also did the provincial Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria, so the man was never exactly short of work. Richardsonian Romanesque, the manner then favoured for major public works. It replaced an earlier wooden court house and it was deliberately expensive, because the province wanted a permanent statement of authority in a coal town that was becoming the regional centre for central Vancouver Island. Now look at the stone rather than the drawing. Every one of those blocks was rough-dressed by a mason, hauled up this slope and set by hand, and the whole point of that finish is weight, is to look like something you would not argue with. Men walked past this on their way to a shift underground. One name is on the building. It is not theirs.

03
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — Saysutshun (Newcastle Island Marine Provincial Park) in Nanaimo, An island of second-growth Douglas fir and arbutus lying a few hundred metres off downtown Nanaimo, reached by a small passenger ferry. Its shoreline shows pale honey-coloured sandstone cut into flat benches and sheer worked faces where quarrying stopped, with round weathered hollows in the rock. Near the landing stands a low, wide-eaved wooden pavilion with a broad open hall, set on grass among tall firs
Stop three

Saysutshun (Newcastle Island Marine Provincial Park)

Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet: Right, this is the one that gets me. The island is the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, and their name for it, Saysutshun, is the name the park now carries. Its sandstone was quarried from 1869 until 1932 and shipped out for the United States Mint in San Francisco, the New Westminster Penitentiary, and buildings in Nanaimo, Victoria and Vancouver. Sit with that supply chain a moment: quarrymen on a small island cut the stone the American mint is made of. Then in 1931 the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company bought the place and turned it into an excursion resort, with a pool, picnic grounds and a dance pavilion built over a sprung floor. And the sprung floor is the good part, because a sprung floor is a working person's luxury. You build it so people can dance all night without wrecking knees that have already done a week. The pavilion is the only resort building to survive; it was restored in 1984 and now serves as the park's visitor centre, and its floor is the only one of its kind left in British Columbia. Quarried out, danced on, still here.

04
cardio tennis class Shady Banks — Swy-A-Lana Lagoon, Maffeo Sutton Park in Nanaimo, A rounded saltwater basin set into the downtown waterfront, ringed by a paved walkway and low stone retaining edges, with grass and young trees on the landward side and the masts of the harbour marina beyond. At low tide the water spills out through the narrow ocean opening in a short set of falls; at high tide it is flush with the harbour, and the Bastion and downtown blocks stand on the rise behind it
Stop four

Swy-A-Lana Lagoon, Maffeo Sutton Park

Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet: Public waterfront. Say it with me. Swy-A-Lana is Canada's only man-made tidal lagoon, constructed in the 1980s as the centrepiece of Maffeo Sutton Park during the reclamation of Nanaimo's industrial waterfront, which is to say somebody took the working shore back and handed it to everybody. And they did it properly. It was engineered to fill and drain with the natural tide so that it would develop a real intertidal marine habitat rather than a static ornamental pond, and the shallow margins are used for shoreline biology teaching. Somebody fought for that specification in a meeting, I promise you, because the cheap version was a concrete bowl. It forms the mid-point of the four-kilometre Harbourfront Walkway, which runs from the downtown harbour and seaplane terminal, over the pedestrian bridge past the Nanaimo Yacht Club, and out to the BC Ferries terminal at Departure Bay. Note the wording there. The walkway goes past the yacht club. It does not stop at it.

The Nanaimo, Canada track

Wilson Blade 104 V9 Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Length is leverage. That is the first thing you learn sitting in the stern of a boat you are not rowing: an inch further out on the blade is worth more than any amount of shouting, and I do plenty of shouting.

The Wilson Blade 104 V9 is the Blade with its oars lengthened. A 104 square inch head instead of 100, an extended 27.5 inch length instead of 27, and 290 g / 10.2 oz unstrung — slightly lighter than the standard Blade, because extra length adds swingweight all by itself.

Read together, that is a frame for a player who loves the Blade's feel but wants more forgiveness and more free reach: the bigger head widens the sweet spot, and the half-inch of extra length gives you leverage on the serve and on wide balls.

It keeps the 16×19 pattern and Wilson's FORTYFIVE° construction, which is what produces the long dwell time and connected, plush response the line is loved for. It is still a control racquet, not a cannon. It just forgives more and reaches further than its 100 square inch sibling.

Nanaimo has a hundred and seventy years of arguments about water. Swy-A-Lana in Maffeo Sutton Park is Canada's only man-made tidal lagoon, built in the 1980s as the centrepiece of the reclaimed industrial waterfront and engineered to fill and drain with the natural tide, so that it grew a real intertidal habitat instead of an ornamental pond.

The rest is worth the walk. The Bastion was built by the Hudson's Bay Company between 1853 and 1855 to guard the coal workings at what was then Colviletown, raised by two French-Canadian axemen, Jean-Baptiste Fortier and Leon Labine, in the piece-sur-piece method.

The court house of 1895-96 is by Francis Mawson Rattenbury, who also gave British Columbia its Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel. And Saysutshun, traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, had its sandstone quarried from 1869 until 1932 and shipped out for the United States Mint in San Francisco.

You will get use out of it everywhere from a wet municipal court in Nanaimo to an indoor hall over on the mainland, and the extra half inch never once feels like extra work. It is also perfect for a lap of Swy-A-Lana at low tide, because a frame this light is one you can carry the whole length of the reclaimed waterfront and still have something in the arm for the return leg.

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