Boatbuilder says hobby is artistic and therapeutic
St. John’s man says constructing traditional boats has been an interest since childhood
There is something about boatbuilding in Scott Mcdonald’s blood.
Maybe it started while being around boats and the fishery growing up in New Bridge, St. Mary’s Bay. Or maybe it was watching his grandfather, Norman Little, build fishing boats in Bonavista when Mcdonald went there as a kid for summer visits.
Or maybe — like many people in Newfoundland and Labrador attached to the saltwater — he was just born with it in his veins.
After building some boats while in high school, his focus turned to his career and starting a family, and the hobby of boatbuilding was put on dry dock.
A few years ago, with the encouragement of his wife, Pamela, he floated the idea in his mind of building boats again.
“When I was seven or eight I remember going down to Bonavista in the summer and my grandfather would be building a boat in his son’s basement for fishing,” Mcdonald said at his home in St. John’s.
“I remember sitting down to the table and he explaining it to me, how to do the stem of the boat and join it to the keel, and steaming of the laths.
“In the punts that he built, he’d cut juniper. He would rig up a kettle into a steam box and put (laths) in it for about 20 minutes and then you can bend the wood.”
In Mcdonald’s backyard on a trailer — which he also constructed and welded together — sits an Amesbury Dory he built about three years ago.
In his backyard garage on work stands sits a cedar canoe that he is finishing — there are piles of sawdust in the bottom of it from all the sanding, with the smell of sawdust, paint and adhesives in the air.
Mcdonald said he chose to build the Amesbury dory skiff because it is a traditional boat, and it is a good sea boat.
“When they started making the dory skiff it was basically a dory revised to accommodate a motor,” Mcdonald said.
“The dory always interested me. You go cut the timber and I always liked the dory for the way the planks are. You overlap the planks and you haven’t got to caulk between the planks. Caulking can be time-consuming. You can now get good marine construction adhesive. I researched everything about the Amesbury dory skiff.
They are good for open water, offshore water, and I like the shape, the lines of the boat.”
Pamela said there’s been a change in her husband since he started to work on boats again. He’s less stressed, and calmer.
“I told him he needs to do something for himself,” she said. “The difference it has made to him is wonderful.”
Mcdonald said the activity is both relaxing and enjoyable.
“For me, it’s my meditation,” he said. “You don’t think about anything else when you are at this. It is a stress reliever. It’s both art for me, and therapeutic.”
Mcdonald said he also looked at it as a project for him and his son — who is now 10 — to work on together.
“He is interested in it, but not as much as me, but he loves going out in the boat and in the woods,” he said.
Both his son and his daughter, 12, enjoy the outings in the boat.
Mcdonald is a power engineer who has worked in Come By Chance, in Alberta and now at Long Harbour in project management.
Mcdonald built his first boat when he was around 10 to 12 years old. He said a neighbour in New Bridge had a sawmill, and cut his own timber to build boats.
“I watched him build a flat one time,” Mcdonald said. “Then I went and cut my own timber and he sawed it for me, and I built a little flat.
“I built a couple of these when I was in high school and (my brother and cousins) would row up the river to go trouting.”
He started building boats again about four years ago, starting with a 15-foot flat.
Mcdonald said there are few traditional boats around anymore and he fears the skills and history will be lost. He said he is pleased to see the work being done at the Wooden Boat Museum in Winterton to keep the tradition of boatbuilding alive.
He says he would like to see more people take up the hobby, and to see more traditional boats in the water.
The boats Mcdonald builds are for his family’s use. He doesn’t make them to sell.
He said the idea to build a canoe came after a wilderness adventure with a friend for which they borrowed his uncle’s canoe. Now he’s making one for himself for future trips.
“It’s very satisfying using a boat that you built yourself,” he said. “I won’t build another canoe, unless I see a way to make one better for myself. I move on to other types of boats. I’ve always got a boat in mind. I’m thinking of a sailboat, with a drop rudder, or drop keel, just to learn how to sail. They are all a challenge to me.”
Mcdonald said he is so patient and precise with his research and boatbuilding that he trusts what he builds.
“People sometimes ask me, ‘Do you think it’s going to float?’ I never think about that. I never have any hesitation, or fear that it’s going to leak. Never question that,” he said. “Just put it in the water and go.”