A lesson to remember: Sask. class builds and sinks 2.75-metre model Titanic

When Glen Smith joined the staff of Lucky Lake School 32 years ago, he never thought he'd end his time as a teacher standing knee-deep in leech filled water, literally trying to keep a ship from sinking.

But Smith says he wouldn't have it any other way.

Smith is the practical and applied arts teacher at Lucky Lake, but he calls himself the shop teacher. Smith also teaches science and arts.

He said he really wanted to "push the boat out" for his final semester at the school. That "boat" is really a model of the ship that history knows as the Titanic. Over the past five months, Smith helped his homeroom grade 7/8 class build it.

About four years ago, Smith had a student that he calls a "Titanic fanatic." The student gave Smith the idea to build a replica of the iconic ship. The build didn't happen that year, or for a few afterwards. Then this February, when Smith told his students he planned to retire in June, his students recalled the plan.

Smith and the Grade 7/8 class have been working on the project for the better part of the past five months. They tackled the wood and metal working in shop class. They learned about buoyancy in Smith's science class. In art class, they studied the design of the ship and intricately painted the hull to match the famed boat.

The Titanic nearly became the 20th classmate. Smith said that at one point in the winter one of the students in his class contracted COVID. The entire class, including the teacher, was sent home to self-isolate for two weeks. Smith took the Titanic home with him to work on the challenging aspects of the assembly. He took pictures of the progress and distributed them online to the students.

A couple of students complained.

"They missed the Titanic," said Smith, laughing. "They didn't miss anything else — just the Titanic."

Smith said it started as a plan for a pretty rough vessel, but one thing led to another and it ended up becoming a highly detailed model with windows, lights, smokestacks, staircases, anchors and ladders.

"It's not completely to scale," says Smith "it's what they would call a stand off scale model — that's 1:100th of the actual boat."

In the end, they built a 2.75 metre long ship. Once the metalwork and ballast were added it weighed 61 kilograms.

Smith said the plan was always to put the Lucky Lake version of the Titanic in the water and try to replicate how it started to submerge.

They did that three times in the town's reservoir.

The final submerge and retrieval came on Saturday evening. That's when they nearly lost it forever.

Wiley Bascom, a Grade 7 student has been aboard for most of the journey.

Bascom student moved to the Lucky Lake area from Alberta late in the semester. He said he was puzzled when he realized the class was building a model of the Titanic.

"I was confused at first," he said.

But Bascom was all in and was present every time the Titanic was on or under the water, including on the final day, when their Titanic was nearly lost to the reservoir.

"It was kind of scary, because you didn't know if things were going to break apart," he said.

Smith said it was a panic.

"We did not intend to have it sink, we just wanted the front of it to go under the water."

They had added a valve on the front to simulate where the iceberg would have struck, so that it could take on water.

"It was taking too long, so we opened the valve all the way, and closed it just as it was at the point we wanted it to stop," Smith said. 

By then it was almost too late, because the water was overtaking it. 

Both Bascom and Smith ended up in the water, trying to keep the Titanic from going down completely. They managed to get it back to dry land. Smith said they dumped out what seems like 600 pounds of water. Then they took it back to the school, took the whole thing apart and dried it all out.

Projects like the Titanic come as no surprise to Lucky Lake's principal, Terry Hall.

"[Smith] has got a very creative and innovative mind," she said. "He's someone who can take an idea and bring it to life and there are lots of things that he just does that are outside of the classroom that are going to be missed."

Smith said that as he looks back on his 32 years, there are a lot of things he will miss. His projects are one, but the main thing is the kids.

"As you'd see the kids get engaged, you'd put even more into it."

And what of Smith's ship of dreams?

It's been dried out after its near demise in the reservoir and will live on as a display at the Lucky Lake school.