That might be true, but I'll bet any of those regular river guides would have buried us in a straight out race. I found their river running fairly consistent with current Canadian styles. Lots of draws and cross bow draws. My understanding is that Americans prefer bow pries to crossbow strokes. Indeed, the last flat water level A course I saw, Cross bows never even made it to the lake.The paddling technique then was indeed inefficient. Emphasis was on the "push" delivered by the upper hand, with no apparent thought of torso rotation. Recently someone here shared a link to a book about canoeing and camping 100 years ago. That upper-hand-push method was described in detail.