Almost 50 years after making a bold move to relocate to Montreal and learn a new martial art, Dave Jackman is still getting his kicks out of practicing and teaching Chinese kenpo karate.
Jackman, from St. John’s, recently received his ninth degree black belt, a far cry from that September day in 1969 when he arrived in Montreal eager to train under Jean-Guy Angell, the founder of kenpo karate in Canada.
Angell is a 10th degree black belt, the only person in Canada with that kenpo designation. Jackman and another Quebecer, Gilles Demers, are the only ninth-degree black belts.
The first five degrees of black belts in karate are based on skill, with the remaining degrees awarded on a numbers of factors, not the least of which is years of service as a competitor and teacher.
After returning from Montreal in 1970, Jackman began teaching kenpo karate at Memorial University. He hasn’t stopped since.
“It’s basically been a lifetime devoted to the art,” he said.
Now 67, Jackman operated his own kenpo karate schools for years, and was well-known in the media for his Kenpo Corner columns in The Telegram and Newfoundland Herald, along with a television program on community cable.
Today, he is teaching at Rock Athletics in Mount Pearl.
He began toying with martial arts as a young boy growing up in St. John’s, even though there were little or no martial arts taught in the city at the time.
“I wanted to have that self-confidence, and I suppose I wanted to be able to stand on my own two feet.
“There was a time,” Jackman says with a chuckle, “you couldn’t go into certain parts of town. If you did, you ran, or you made sure you were with a few buddies.”
At age 16, he began studying judo under Yves LeGal at Memorial University. Two years later, he moved to Montreal where he achieved a brown belt in short order.
“I trained hard, and I trained a lot,” Jackman said. “That said, the browns today are better than they were then.”
Kenpo karate, according to Jackman, is perhaps best described this way: Taekwon-do involves mostly kicking; the traditional Japanese form of karate – which is an Olympic sport for the first time in 2020 – mostly involves hand techniques (though there is certainly kicking); kenpo is a combination of hands and feet.
Jackman, who credits his father, Robert Jackman, as his first coach – “He boxed and wrestled. At 75, he could show me how to use a boxer’s speed bag” - says he has no plans of slowing down.
“I’m very lucky,” he said, “to have found what I needed to do, and loved doing it the same time.”
