Bathtub race to return to Vancouver, with event off Kits Beach

The Nanaimo-to-Vancouver bathtub race used to be a big deal, summer’s counterpoint to the mass insanity of the Polar Bear Swim on New Year’s Day.
Nanaimo’s flamboyant mayor, Frank Ney, would haul out his pirate costume and run around like Long John Silver. A couple of hundred people would spend countless hours in their garages or backyards building their own tub-boats. Thousands would show up at Kits Beach to watch the tubbers make landfall and race up the sand to ring the bell