How An Ontario Native Is Helping Keep A Historic Maritime Trade Alive
SAINT JOHN — “I’ve just kind of stumbled into this market,” says Patrick Giguère.
Giguère owns West Side Canvas and West Side Marine, a dual workshop and storefront that will open on February 6 at the corner of Somerset Street and Churchill Boulevard.
The Cornwall, Ontario native says he’d “only been on a boat two or three times” until he ventured into the world of marine canvas and boat flooring.
Giguère isn’t a sailor but he is somewhat of a tailor; he uses his sewing skills to make adjustments and repairs on covers, enclosures, and sails for the local sailing and fishing scene in southern New Brunswick.
It’s been a passion for Giguère, who started out in the sewing world making bags to carry items in during his hikes around the Bay of Fundy and Rockwood Park. Learning by doing, with a little help from YouTube, Giguère began expanding his repertoire, sewing more ambitious projects and looking for new types of fabric.
That brought him to industrial sail maker Estey Group, who asked the aspiring tailor if he wanted a job.
Learning by doing
Giguère explains that the covers, sails, and other canvas found on boats is all custom-made.
“Boats are somewhat mass-produced but, even then, there’s a lot of uniqueness to each one. You have to have somebody go on the boat itself and take measurements and make a pattern for whatever they need. It has to be a local.”
Honing his skills and learning more about the trade at Estey convinced Giguère that he was on the right path. He’d found a passion and was in a great market for the skills he was learning. He also got a sense of how to run a marine canvas business and what was needed for the Saint John market.
“I got to see the volume. There was always tons of stuff coming in, more than we could get through,” he says. “I know from talking to different people that most other places that do canvas, they have like a year-long waiting list … and the people who are doing it are planning on retiring in the next few years.”
Pursuit of passion
As he describes it on the West Side Canvas website, the “hobby became a jobby.” Now Giguère is going full entrepreneur, leaving his civil service job behind and making the jump to a full-time tradesman and business owner.
Getting into the marine canvas game isn’t easy. In addition to acquiring the needed skill, Giguère had to get special, industrial sewing machines to handle the heavy fabric. He says there’s only one guy, in Nova Scotia, who can do repairs and maintenance on the machine.
For simpler mechanical fixes, Giguère says he’s learned a lot about how to do it himself so he doesn’t have to make the trip.
“It’s a good idea to have a backup machine if you can,” he advises.
Giguère route to Saint John was circuitous but, having visited the Port City before, he decided to take up an offer to teach at a local middle school several years ago.
While he has left teaching behind, the city and the romance of the sea have stayed with him and helped him forge his future.
Another opportunity
In addition to doing marine canvas projects, Giguère has also become an installer of SeaDek marine flooring, which will also be available at the 379 Somerset Street location. He says it was a natural fit for the work he was already doing. In fact, it was the decision to become a SeaDek installer that pushed him to make that, and his canvas work, his full-time job.
Seeing all the marine-related opportunity in Saint John has made Giguère contemplate bringing some of his previous teaching work back into his new profession.
“I’m interested in kind of building up more of an awareness of this trade, and others like it, as a viable career that people should be thinking about,” he says.
“When I worked at Estey they had this old picture of these guys working: they’re sitting on their benches and they have their needles and their tools, and they were preparing a sail. I thought to myself ‘this is part of the history of this area.’ How many people around here, their grandparents, were an integral part of sailing and shipping and everything that went on here?”
“I’m not even from here and I’m one of the only ones doing [marine canvas and flooring]. I’d love to, as I get my feet under me and figure things out, create a mentorship or an apprenticeship program like how the tool library does things.”
Alex Graham is a Huddle reporter in Saint John. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].