About

In 2017, The Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador partnered with Memorial University’s Faculty of Education to begin offering boat building workshops (WBMNL, 2017, p. 9). After two successful builds, a for credit course was created for Memorial University students, as part of the 2019 Winter Semester. ED4947, Newfoundland and Labrador Wooden Boat Technologies, is a special topics course offered as part of the Education program. Open to all students, this project-based learning course “provides opportunities for students to engage in traditional and contemporary small wooden boat building techniques and skills within the Newfoundland and Labrador context” (Canning, 2019, p. 1).  The course also covers the “significant impacts of wooden boats on the societal and technological development of the province” (p. 1).

Newfoundland and Labrador Wooden Boat Technologies is instructed by master boat builder, Jerome Canning with the assistance of Dr. David Gill. Over the course of the semester, students will learn to construct a 16’4” foot Rodney punt, based on the boat built by Marcus French and documented as part of David A Taylor’s Masters thesis in Folklore, Boat Building in Winterton, Trinity Bay. His research was conducted in 1978 and 1979 to “document the living tradition of boat building…and to describe how that tradition fits into the cultural context of the community” and reprinted in 2006 (Taylor, p. 3)

This blog will provide pictures and descriptions of my experience in learning to build a boat. I hope it will be of interested to readers and may encourage others to learn about Wooden Boats.

All images and ideas expressed on this blog are my own work (unless otherwise cited) and I would appreciate it not being reproduced elsewhere without my permission.

References

Memorial University of Newfoundland. (2019). ED4797: Wooden Boat Technologies course syllabus. St. John’s, NL: Jerome Canning.

Murray, H. (2007). Of boats on the collar: How it was in one Newfoundland fishing community. St. John’s, NL: Flanker Press.

Taylor, D. (2006). Boat building in Winterton, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Gatineau, Quebec: University of Ottawa Press.

Toelken, B. (1996). The dynamics of folklore. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

Wilson, W. A. (1992). Documenting Folklore. In Elliot Oring (Ed.), Folk groups and folklore genres: An introduction (pp. 225-254). Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador (2017). Wooden Boat Museum NL: Annual report of activities 2016-2017. Retrieved http://woodenboatmuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/Annual-Report-of-Activities-2016-2017.pdf