Labor of Love

By Fr. Ben Hasse

One of the graces of this past fall semester was canoeing! Here’s how it came about: I went canoeing with my dad on the Friday before the Fourth of July on the Michigamme River, and I remembered how much I love canoeing in the wilds of the UP! After several more canoe trips, I realized… if you’re in a canoe, you’re guaranteed to be more than 6 feet from the other person. Also, while it’s adventurous and can be challenging, it’s also accessible to just about anyone once you have the canoes, life jackets, and paddles!

A few weeks later, I was browsing on Facebook Marketplace, a tool I’d never used before, and I found a lot of used canoes cheap! When all was said and done, I was able to get St. Al's 18 canoes and a lot of paddles and life jackets thrown in for good measure! The canoes came from all over the UP and northern Wisconsin.

We ran a number of test trips leading up to O-Week, and then a lot of trips all fall until the last trip on Oct. 15 with the snow coming down! The trips were more fun than expected, with many chances for people to be in a canoe together chatting and building friendships. We experienced a lot of natural beauty. In a year when an abundance of things have been cancelled, we had a new and fun activity for our community to enjoy!

An unexpected bonus was the opportunity to repair the canoes! When you get used canoes cheap, you also learn canoe repair! A few just needed fastenings tightened or a seat or yoke replaced. Some of the aluminum canoes needed rivets tightened with epoxy to stop leaks. It was satisfying to see these canoes go to work!

However, some of the Royalex whitewater canoes had been pretty beat up! I would really like to know how they got so thoroughly damaged. We replaced gunwales on six canoes, as well as seats, thwarts and yokes on some of them. The biggest challenge was repairing tears and cracks in the hulls (pictured below). After lots of trial and error, sticky fingers and fiberglass stuck in shirtsleeves, all the canoes have been made seaworthy! Even the canoe that was thrown in “for parts” is ready to go on the water!

As I worked on the boats with Fr. Tom and with students, I thought about my willingness to spend long hours getting them repaired. I thought about how much more excited I am to paddle a boat we repaired than one that was ready to go when I bought it. I thought about all the conversations and deepening friendships among the repairers.

All of this seems to me to be a little glimpse into God’s desire for each of us! He sees all our brokenness, our wounds. Many of them may be hidden from the outside, but He sees them! And He labors to love us, to heal us, to equip us to love and give once again. Perhaps we are even dearer to Him in the aftermath of that healing than we were to start with! 2020 had many fierce challenges… but it also had many graces! For me, and I think for the St. Al’s community, the canoes were one of the blessings!