On October 22, 1921, the American fishing schooner Elsie, just arrived from Gloucester, massachusetts, lined up in Halifax Harbour beside a new, untested schooner from Lunenburg, ready to race over a 40-mile ocean course. The Elsie's skipper had beaten a Canadian boat decisively the previous year to win the first International Fishermen's Cup race. The new challenger wat the Bluenose, set to begin a series of heated and often acrimonious races over the following two decades that left her bruised but unbowed, turning her into an icon whose image still shines on the Canadian dime more than eighty years later.