Featured Projects

The power of our Building Boats, Changing Lives workshops inspired Maritime Museum staff to dream of creating an exciting new Boat School at the Museum to provide expanded capacity at the Museum to do hands-on boatbuilding and sail training workshops focused primarily on serving kids at risk from the Mi’kmaw community, the African Nova Scotian community, the immigrant and refugee communities and young women.

The Boat School Dream captured the imagination of Museum managers, the Board of our Foundation, and the folks at Develop Nova Scotia. As our Deputy Minister, Justin Huston, put it: “Your dream for this Boat School is golden.” This is the way that a dream becomes a plan.

Develop Nova Scotia helped us to create a concrete visualization of our dream. Support from the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage and ACOA enabled us to hire consultants to create a feasibility study and business plan for the Boat School: an important step in helping us make our dream a reality.

Our new Boat School will be integrated into the current Maritime Museum site, in the heart of the Halifax Waterfront. We plan to extend the historic “finger wharf” that’s home to CSS Acadia by between 60 and 80 feet, create a small boat marina on the north side of Acadia, and build the new boatshop on the harbour side of the Waterfront Boardwalk. The facilities onboard the newly renovated CSS Acadia, Canada’s first purpose-build hydrographic vessel, will also be integrated into the program of the Boat School.

The Province-wide Impact of the Boat School: Through the Building Boats, Changing Lives program, the Museum has offered workshops to schools and organizations across the province. An important feature of the Boat School project will be to continue and grow this effort. Our vision is that the Boat School will be both a ‘hive’ of boat building and sail training activity on the Halifax Waterfront and also a ‘hub’ through which this programming can be offered on an outreach basis throughout the province.

Community Support: The Foundation in recent months has been joined by over 100 members of our community who believe in what we’re doing. Each one of these generous Founding Patrons has contributed $1,000 to help us build the capacity to raise the funds build the Boat School. (Here’s a link to the list of Our First 100 Patrons.)

Plans for a Capital Campaign: Our Foundation has been preparing a Capital Campaign for the Boat School over the past year. Allan Shaw and John Young will Co-Chair our Campaign: Wayne Myles will be Vice Chair. John Hennigar-Shuh will coordinate the campaign. John Risley and Jim Irving have agreed to join our Campaign as Honourary Co-Chairs. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown our plans for a Capital Campaign launch this summer into disarray, as corporate, individual and foundation donors have understandably adjusted their immediate giving priorities to meet the social devastation occasioned by this novel virus. Someday soon, though, we’ll arrive at our new normal and our Campaign plans will take off. Stay tuned.

The Boat School Dream captured the imagination of Museum managers, the Board of our Foundation, and the folks at Develop Nova Scotia. As our Deputy Minister, Justin Huston, put it: “Your dream for this Boat School is golden.”

This is the way that a dream becomes a plan.

Over the past three years, our Foundation has supported the work of Eamonn Doorly, the Museum’s Boatbuilder, and Dr. Shane Theunissen, his partner from Mount St Vincent University. Together they have developed a program we call Building Boats, Changing Lives.

With the financial support of Alion Canada, Eamonn, Shane, and their volunteer/mentors have held workshops at Pictou Landing First Nations School, with a multi-racial group of young women at the Maritime Museum last summer, and at the Fisheries Museum in Lunenburg and the Dory Shop in Shelburne. Here are three videos that capture the essence of this exciting program.

Here’s a link to a blog post about the Building Boats, Changing Lives program by former Maritime Museum intern Aleen Leigh Stanton. It captures the impact of the program:

At the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, They Build More Than Boats

When young people have an experience that introduces them to a sense of their own power to achieve things they had never before dreamed of and express themselves in a voice that is uniquely their own, a seed is planted that, if nurtured, can have a profound and innovative impact on them and their communities. Youth empowerment can help build self-reliant communities, and self-reliant communities can create sustainable development, and sustainable development can lead to poverty reduction.

We aim to plant the seed. The Boat School we are planning to build will allow us to take this program to the next level and vastly expand the number of kids at risk we are able to serve.

Here are some comments from boat building kids:

“I feel accomplished!”

“I thought that it was great.”

“When everyone comes together, we can do great things, such as learning to build a boat.”

“In only a few days I learned things I never thought I could ever learn. … Everyone felt the same way.”

“The fact that the boats actually floated was a successful and proud moment.”

One of the most significant recent developments on the Halifax Waterfront is that the Maritime Museum and HMCS Sackville, along with our Foundation and Develop Nova Scotia have agreed to work together to create a new precinct in the heart of the Waterfront we’re calling the Canadian Maritime Heritage District.

What does this mean? Well, at it’s most basic level it means that the four anchor partners are acknowledging our shared commitment to celebrating the many ways that the lives, and livelihoods, and culture, and passions of Nova Scotians, Maritimers, and Canadians have been affected since forever by living by, and working on, the sea.

It also means that we are committing to work together to make the territory that we share along the Waterfront a hive of maritime activities, fascinating exhibits, wonderful story-telling, hands-on exploration, boat building, public access to the water, sea music, and visiting ships: in short, the “must-visit” place on the east coast of Canada, if you want to immerse yourself in our maritime culture and heritage.

Our Canadian Maritime Heritage District will reflect the contributions of Mi’kmaw seafarers, and those who arrived later and worked as mariners, fishermen, sailors, and others who made their livings on or from the sea. It will also recognize the sacrifices and triumphs of the many service men and women, and Merchant Mariners who contributed to victory in WWII in the critical Battle of the Atlantic.

Our District will also work with contemporary ocean industries in Atlantic Canada to help the public understand their continuing contribution to the economic and social vitality of our city, province, region, and country.

We’re just getting started. Watch us grow!

At it’s most basic level, the Canadian Maritime Heritage District is about acknowledging our shared commitment to celebrating the many ways that the lives, and livelihoods, and culture, and passions of Nova Scotians, Maritimers, and Canadians have been affected since forever by living by, and working on, the sea.