Halifax maritime museum moving ahead with planned boat school

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is hoping a new boat school will allow it to dramatically expand the boat-building and watercraft-operation workshops it offers to newcomers to Canada and at-risk youth in Black and Indigenous communities.

Eamonn Doorly, the museum's shipwright, says the existing boat sheds have worked well for the Building Boats, Changing Lives workshops, but the sometimes cramped space has limited the number of people who can take part.

"The demand for the programs that we've been running far outstrip what we can provide," said Doorly, who is looking forward to a stand-alone boat school. "I think it's going to be really wonderful."

The province issued a tender to build the boat school on July 11. The tender closes on Aug. 15.

Syrian-born Midya Hamo has taken part in the workshops and, as a YMCA employee, now brings others to the waterfront to learn the skills she learned.

"It was a happy experience and also giving me a chance to try something I'd never tried," said Hamo, after returning from an afternoon on the water with a group of newcomers learning to pilot one of the museum's powerboats.

"Some people don't get a chance to try certain things, and I think with this activity, they bring us here, they give us the opportunity to try something new."

Once terrified of the water, Hamo said she's now comfortable being in or near the ocean.

"It's not scary for me like it used to be," she said. "It's fun and I feel like it's more like a happy place for me."

Doorly said beyond learning new skills, the workshops are designed to welcome people to the waterfront and make them more comfortable in a marine environment.

He said a measure of the success of the workshops was the number of participants who returned to the museum to revisit the boats they've had a hand in building.

Doorly has the kids sign their names somewhere on those boats.

"First thing they want to do is, after they say hello, they want to see where their name is," said Doorly, recalling a recent return visitor. "They had to crawl inside one of the boats with their buddies and look up under the seat just so they can see their name.

"You don't do that if you haven't connected with the space, or you don't do that if you haven't liked the program."

Expansion could boost program attendance

John Hennigar-Shuh, president of the museum's foundation, said the expansion would allow for a dramatic increase in the number of people taking part in the museum's programs.

"On typical years we do between 50 and 90 kids, and we're hoping that with the new facility we'd be able to, both in boat-building and the on-the-water experience programs, serve between 800 and 1,000 kids a year," he said.

He said he was "incredibly excited" at the prospect of being able to meet the growing demand for the program.

He pointed to a workshop planned for this week that could only serve a fraction of those interested in attending.

"We could accommodate 12 and there were 54 who applied to be part of it, " said Hennigar-Shuh. "That gives you some sense of the fact there's lots of demand."