Sean Ridgeley
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Telegram
Jerome Canning has been building boats since his father taught him to in the mid 1970s.
The Master Builder and Boatbuilding Instructor at the Wooden Boat Museum in Winterton since 2009, he started off his work life as a teacher. Influence from his father and the Placentia Bay community in general, however, led to he and his brothers adopting a love of fishing.
The experience was made all the more memorable because it was done in the way of those who came before: hauling everything by hand.
“We knew exactly what we were getting into,” he told The Telegram. “Fishing was really hard, but we were all sort of physical types. We love the outdoors.”
“We loved it, every minute of it. And working with each other, two other brothers and my father, was one of the best things in my life.”
It was an unlikely profession, however, because his generation was encouraged — in his case by his mother, described as the “strength of the family” — to favour education over fishing, which led him to his teaching stint.
“I was a university boy back then, and became a teacher for a couple of years,” he recalled. “But I sort of knew that I wasn’t ready for that. I was ready for more adventure.”
From fishing to boat building
The transition from fishing to boat building was one of necessity as the family required a larger boat to do cod fishing. Canning took it on himself to learn how to build one, thanks in part to courses at what was then The College of Fisheries. He also learned skills from people who had been resettled from smaller isolated communities into Placentia.
When Canning and his brothers began building their first boat, people would come by and provide advice.
From there, the family built sheds, shacks, wharfs, and anything else they needed.
Eventually, Canning was building more boats and started selling them. This combination of fishing and building carried him through to the early 1980s, which saw a fishery boom.
During that era, the College of Fisheries hired him where, in combination with doing more courses, he learned a great deal about boat design, architectural principles, and how to draw boats.
“That was a big thing for me. It really combined everything I knew about building, which was still ongoing, now with a more professional approach in terms of understanding the engineering and boating dynamic,” he said.
Following that, he began designing his own boats, before moving to the mainland to find work in Montreal and Toronto. When he returned to Newfoundland in the 1990s, wooden boat building, as a business, was no more. Hired again by the college which by then had been renamed the Marine Institute, he found himself amidst a transition from wood to fiberglass, with the former used as a composite material.
“Once I hit fiberglass, that’s when I left boat building,” he said. “I didn’t want to work it. It’s unhealthy, and I didn’t gravitate to that type of (work). I still like woods and our old boats. The boats were becoming totally naval architecture design — professional designers, who are all good. But a community aspect of it was gone. And I sort of didn’t like that.”
Fast forward to 1997: Canning got a job in public boat building with the Craft Council of NL.
“I realized then and there that there could be a small future with public boat building and representing our old small shapes,” he said.
With a few such jobs on his plate, and his day job as a carpenter, he made his living that way until he landed another job as an advisor for the Marine Institute, where he organized community school courses on navigation and other topics for fishermen. Keeping up with public boat building, he constructed a Norse Faering and French Chaloupe, among other boats.
In 2009, he’d finished up with the Marine Institute, and was asked by the Wooden Boat Museum to be their Master Builder and Boatbuilding Instructor, where he’s been ever since.
The trouble with doing what you love
Once Canning’s family made some money from its initial venture into fishing, they invested it back into their boats and machinery, after which things got easier. Still, it’s been a life filled with challenges.
“The problem is that sometimes the thing that you love doesn’t give you very much money,” he said.
Canning talks about his boat building craft as musicians in NL often do, which is to say it can be a struggle to make a living at it due to the combination of a lack of demand and affordability. High quality boats like the ones he and the Wooden Boat Museum are known for would ideally sell for $14,000 – $18,000 US, but he says you’d be lucky to sell it for $6,000 US.
The Boat Museum makes it work within a $8,000 – $10,000 US range, thanks to its workshops and similar ventures, otherwise relying on fundraising — something it’s currently struggling with — and a gift store, among other offerings, to sustain itself.
Canning has managed over the years by filling in the gaps with carpentry work and stints at his alma mater: the Marine Institute, where’s he’s currently teaching a boat building course. Working seven days a week helps, too.
Does he have any regrets about the route he chose?
“Absolutely not.”
Sean Ridgeley is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter.
Supplied photo.
Jerome Canning has been around boats his entire life, and still works seven days a week at it.
