so you’ve been told that I’m a boat
builder that’s true but I’m not gonna
talk to you about boat building tonight
I’m gonna talk to you about story
telling I told my first story when I was
six years old at least the first story I
recall telling I told my classmates that
my father was an airline pilot
he wasn’t 20 minutes later I corrected
the record I told them he was a
bricklayer guess what
he wasn’t three years later in the
playground I denied being a Mennonite it
was silly because in the town where I
grew up everybody knew everybody and
everybody knew that I wasn’t Mennonite
but Mennonites were low in the pecking
order and I didn’t want to be teased so
it made total and complete sense to my
little mind to deny an essential part of
who I was
years later I made up an entirely
different fictional me during my first
year at college I told people that I
came from Vancouver instead of the
Fraser Valley that I sailed I didn’t I
created a new career for my folks some
better vacations a better school and
interestingly enough I made myself an
Anglican if truth be told I don’t recall
most of what I made up it was a long
time ago and embarrassing enough that
I’ve managed to repress it like a good
Mennonite I might add how many of you
right the episode didn’t end well as any
of you know who have made up stories
about yourself nothing good comes of it
in my case I met somebody who I cared
about fest up in the storytelling came
to an end
partly out of guilt partly out of
embarrassment to a certain degree
curiosity I went to see a therapist he
and I talked in the acid I feel shame
mmm like a man and I yes I was ashamed
embarrassment oh yes
was I sorry yes I had hurt people of
course I was sorry but but here’s the
thing I liked telling stories when I
told the therapist this he told me
something that I thought was very wise
he said we’re all telling stories
it’s up to each of us to decide whose
story were going to tell keep that in
mind whose story we’re going to tell
then he suggested acting or writing
that’s me but that’s two years ago today
I’m the proprietor of ashes still water
boats a small company that designs and
builds wooden canoes and kayaks the
company was promised on this statement
the fragments from one’s past would be
crafted into something unique not at all
like the original but evoking it in its
complete essence I would capture and
transform things on their way to being
lost memory and artifact would be forged
into a new form of narrative what that
meant was we’d build stuff from cool
things precious objects in people’s
lives a canoe for instance from wood
recovered during a cottage demolition or
gunnels from grandma’s chair and for the
most part we’ve been successful since
having started the company in 2014 we
built boats for customers in Canada in
the United States and we’ve distributed
plans to roughly a 1,000 builders in 30
odd countries for the last two years our
shop has been located in the century-old
barn with the rubble stone courtyard and
big sliding doors it’s a rural paradise
where it’s just as easy to lose an
afternoon listen to the birds and the
breezes as it is to pick up the tools I
wouldn’t say I’ve arrived but I do feel
like I’m on my way
so what happened between 1985 and 2014
well I took that therapist advice I
graduated with a fine arts degree in
creative writing I wrote some plays I
wrote some scripts and treatments
published some fiction did a gig writing
features for an entertainment magazine I
had three kids found a quark notes made
no money got divorce got married and
eventually ended up making ends meet
doing communications management gigs by
the time of 2014 hit I was working with
a local animal shelter managing their
capital campaign it was the end of a
bunch of contracts that were all kind of
weird in their own way and I ended up
spending most of our vacation that
summer working and complaining to
anybody who would listen my wife mostly
we were staying way out on this amazing
point of land in Nova Scotia but I was
cranky unmotivated and very unhappy I
didn’t like who I was where I was or
what I was doing but there was one thing
one thing that animated me out there
there was a retired guy next door and he
loved boats building boats sailing boats
designing boats anything about boats you
name it he loved it and I loved talking
to him about it so picture this ten days
into our trip mid rant my wife stops me
with one of those low looks and says so
Trev all you do is bitch about work and
talk about boats when the mmm you didn’t
say mmm or she could do something about
that and that was the genesis of Ash’s
still water boats by November of the
following year I’d prototyped our first
boat rented a shop and had enough orders
to justify not taking another
communications gig
two years later business was steady and
I had a full-time apprentice from the
local school and a retired fellow
carving paddles keeping me company
I had a kickass shot I was an artisan
and I was still telling stories the
paddles in this picture were made from
honey locust and cherry the cherry was
harvested in the 1950s from the
customer’s family homestead the honey
locust started as skis made by his
great-grandfather in 1910 this canoe was
made of cedar recovered from the Avon
stage retrofit in the 1980s this boat is
made from cedar to cedar fence posts and
it weighs 30 pounds I was doing what I
had set out to do I was designing and
building boats pretty cool right
desk guy gets fed up starts a boat
company wiles away the hours in the shop
happily ever after
you knew there’d be a twist nope in the
summer of 2016 that was an outdoor show
surrounded by curious people all of whom
were saying wonderfully affirming things
about my boats but I was irritated by it
by them and to be truthful I was more
than irritated I was angry and I had no
clue why I just knew that something
wasn’t right something wasn’t clicking I
was tired I was cranky I wasn’t
motivated in fact I found myself pretty
much back in the same place I was during
that vacation in Nova Scotia the long
and short of it was that a few weeks
later I was diagnosed with depression
when I told my wife about the diagnosis
she gave me a puzzled look and said I
don’t get it you’re finally doing
something you love right and there you
have it there’s a rub
how does a guy who’s dreamed of being a
creator all of his life and he’s on the
cusp of making it real all of a sudden
not give a damn I designed and built
that and that famous people were
following me on Instagram it’s true and
I was entirely unimpressed I’d finally
found my bliss and I could have cared
less right so what changed why am I here
why did I fly from Sao Paulo to get here
if I didn’t care
well after getting the diagnosis I sat
down in a beautiful stone courtyard I
listened to the birds and stared a long
long time at the trees
I stopped building I started thinking I
started thinking about the boats I
designed and built and I started
thinking about what made them worth
building remember that quote at the
beginning I would I would capture and
transform things on their way to being
lost memory and artifact would be forged
into a new form of narrative I kept
thinking about that and the more I
thought about it the less comfortable I
was with it as a guiding principle it
was fantastic but in practice it wasn’t
working
why because it wasn’t I wasn’t using it
as a guiding principle at all it was
clever copywriting marketing shtick the
very thing I’d started ashes to escape
I wasn’t forming a new type of narrative
at all I was so I was telling a pretty
story to sell boats so ok yeah using
recovered materials as part of this
story but it was far from the whole
story it didn’t include the part where I
was kept up at night because of anxiety
about delivery dates or about money the
part where perfectionism stalled me for
days or that every boat had its flaws
the whole story included the fact that
my days were actually not that Pleasant
sawdust in your sinuses 24/7 sucks
earplugs eight hours a day sucks when
people told me I was lucky to be doing
something I loved that my boats were too
beautiful to put in the water that
bugged me because even though I liked
what I was selling I actually didn’t
like what I was doing which sucks here I
was trying to tell an authentic story
and what I was doing was telling a
beautifully curated marketing myth all
those things that kept me up at night
the anxiety about delivery dates
imperfect joins the fingerprints and the
varnish all those things were part of
each boat but they weren’t part of the
story at the same time I was doing a lot
of sketching I had always been cognizant
of a boat
relationship to nature and anatomy in
particular but now I was making it
explicit look those ribs that you see
there on the left those are human ribs
and look at how they replicate they’re
the hull of a canoe and on the same side
over here that’s a seal here we have
seed pods you can see part of the
history of this is that those seeds
bring life the wind catches and carries
them across continents from one place to
another they take life from A to B well
that’s what boats did how did all of us
get here on this continent unless we
were born here thousands tens of
thousands of years ago we came by a boat
all of us came here at one time or
another by this form of transportation
here we have bones you’ll see over here
this paddle that’s a human foot and
that’s a canoe paddle and if you look
carefully you can see here the very
feminine lines of a canoe and here we
have the sum of masculine lines of a
kayak if you look at it the right way
the anatomy of a boat has this
incredible relationship to our own
anatomies when looked at this way it’s
easy to see that a canoe is more than
just a thing that you sit in and paddle
or hang on the wall and as I explored
that the boat started to feel less like
physical objects made of materials with
provenance and more like objects
integrated into who we are as humans
both historically and physically the
drawings told me that I was involved in
a story that stretched deep into our
collective psyches and if you visit our
website today you’ll see imagery that
connects the boats to the anatomy of
various mammals birds and fish at some
point in this exploration I recognized
that I stopped feeling resentful what
people were telling me when they said
that the boats were beautiful was that
they found something in their own
relationship to themselves and to nature
that they found beautiful when you
respond to something in these boats you
are responding to something somewhere
inside you that connects you to their
form it’s a something that exists that
exists at a deeply personal
level and doesn’t require the
affirmation of others I don’t need you
to tell me that they’re beautiful and
you don’t need me to tell you or affirm
your opinion of them anyway out of all
of that came the idea that I didn’t need
to build boats to be content what I
needed to do was find the thing the real
story if you must behind the boats I
came to understand that the story wasn’t
the boat the story was everything that
resulted in the boat I realized that I
didn’t need to hide the flaws I realized
or I could admit that they weren’t
perfect I could point out the thumbprint
in the varnish if you will and those
things that had stalled me deadlines
perfectionism money uncertainties about
materials or design they mattered less
since then I’ve made fewer boats and
designed more I’ve worked with a
sculptor on public art projects and just
this week I was meeting with educators
in Brazil on a project that brings
together technology boats and social
innovation I still build and design
beautiful boats and don’t get me wrong I
still want them to be beautiful and I do
care that all of you think that they are
beautiful the difference is I don’t need
them to be beautiful in fact it would be
awfully boring if that’s all that they
were if my boats are a story and I
believe that their story they’re a story
that includes the good and the bad all
the inputs and all the outputs they are
marketing stick they’re much much more
than the images curated for our social
feeds they are a story that includes the
good the bad the boring the exciting the
flaws the successes the fingerprints and
the varnish the anxieties about
deadlines the uneven shear lines the
spilled epoxy a story that includes the
flaws you see and the flaws that you
don’t your story is not what you post on
snapchat or Instagram it’s every
decision that you make every day
everything that happens to you and
everything that you make happen the
beautiful
and the banal in the end it doesn’t
matter who you are a student a medical
intern or a boat builder what you did
today what you had for breakfast the
miss bus connection the cranky roommate
the fact that you denied being a
Mennonite the skin knuckles and the
sawdust in your sinuses even as you sit
here tonight you are telling a story you
have no choice remember that therapist I
told you about at the beginning he was
wrong we don’t get to choose whose story
we tell we only get to tell our own and
since you’re telling a story make it
good
thank you [Music]
builder that’s true but I’m not gonna
talk to you about boat building tonight
I’m gonna talk to you about story
telling I told my first story when I was
six years old at least the first story I
recall telling I told my classmates that
my father was an airline pilot
he wasn’t 20 minutes later I corrected
the record I told them he was a
bricklayer guess what
he wasn’t three years later in the
playground I denied being a Mennonite it
was silly because in the town where I
grew up everybody knew everybody and
everybody knew that I wasn’t Mennonite
but Mennonites were low in the pecking
order and I didn’t want to be teased so
it made total and complete sense to my
little mind to deny an essential part of
who I was
years later I made up an entirely
different fictional me during my first
year at college I told people that I
came from Vancouver instead of the
Fraser Valley that I sailed I didn’t I
created a new career for my folks some
better vacations a better school and
interestingly enough I made myself an
Anglican if truth be told I don’t recall
most of what I made up it was a long
time ago and embarrassing enough that
I’ve managed to repress it like a good
Mennonite I might add how many of you
right the episode didn’t end well as any
of you know who have made up stories
about yourself nothing good comes of it
in my case I met somebody who I cared
about fest up in the storytelling came
to an end
partly out of guilt partly out of
embarrassment to a certain degree
curiosity I went to see a therapist he
and I talked in the acid I feel shame
mmm like a man and I yes I was ashamed
embarrassment oh yes
was I sorry yes I had hurt people of
course I was sorry but but here’s the
thing I liked telling stories when I
told the therapist this he told me
something that I thought was very wise
he said we’re all telling stories
it’s up to each of us to decide whose
story were going to tell keep that in
mind whose story we’re going to tell
then he suggested acting or writing
that’s me but that’s two years ago today
I’m the proprietor of ashes still water
boats a small company that designs and
builds wooden canoes and kayaks the
company was promised on this statement
the fragments from one’s past would be
crafted into something unique not at all
like the original but evoking it in its
complete essence I would capture and
transform things on their way to being
lost memory and artifact would be forged
into a new form of narrative what that
meant was we’d build stuff from cool
things precious objects in people’s
lives a canoe for instance from wood
recovered during a cottage demolition or
gunnels from grandma’s chair and for the
most part we’ve been successful since
having started the company in 2014 we
built boats for customers in Canada in
the United States and we’ve distributed
plans to roughly a 1,000 builders in 30
odd countries for the last two years our
shop has been located in the century-old
barn with the rubble stone courtyard and
big sliding doors it’s a rural paradise
where it’s just as easy to lose an
afternoon listen to the birds and the
breezes as it is to pick up the tools I
wouldn’t say I’ve arrived but I do feel
like I’m on my way
so what happened between 1985 and 2014
well I took that therapist advice I
graduated with a fine arts degree in
creative writing I wrote some plays I
wrote some scripts and treatments
published some fiction did a gig writing
features for an entertainment magazine I
had three kids found a quark notes made
no money got divorce got married and
eventually ended up making ends meet
doing communications management gigs by
the time of 2014 hit I was working with
a local animal shelter managing their
capital campaign it was the end of a
bunch of contracts that were all kind of
weird in their own way and I ended up
spending most of our vacation that
summer working and complaining to
anybody who would listen my wife mostly
we were staying way out on this amazing
point of land in Nova Scotia but I was
cranky unmotivated and very unhappy I
didn’t like who I was where I was or
what I was doing but there was one thing
one thing that animated me out there
there was a retired guy next door and he
loved boats building boats sailing boats
designing boats anything about boats you
name it he loved it and I loved talking
to him about it so picture this ten days
into our trip mid rant my wife stops me
with one of those low looks and says so
Trev all you do is bitch about work and
talk about boats when the mmm you didn’t
say mmm or she could do something about
that and that was the genesis of Ash’s
still water boats by November of the
following year I’d prototyped our first
boat rented a shop and had enough orders
to justify not taking another
communications gig
two years later business was steady and
I had a full-time apprentice from the
local school and a retired fellow
carving paddles keeping me company
I had a kickass shot I was an artisan
and I was still telling stories the
paddles in this picture were made from
honey locust and cherry the cherry was
harvested in the 1950s from the
customer’s family homestead the honey
locust started as skis made by his
great-grandfather in 1910 this canoe was
made of cedar recovered from the Avon
stage retrofit in the 1980s this boat is
made from cedar to cedar fence posts and
it weighs 30 pounds I was doing what I
had set out to do I was designing and
building boats pretty cool right
desk guy gets fed up starts a boat
company wiles away the hours in the shop
happily ever after
you knew there’d be a twist nope in the
summer of 2016 that was an outdoor show
surrounded by curious people all of whom
were saying wonderfully affirming things
about my boats but I was irritated by it
by them and to be truthful I was more
than irritated I was angry and I had no
clue why I just knew that something
wasn’t right something wasn’t clicking I
was tired I was cranky I wasn’t
motivated in fact I found myself pretty
much back in the same place I was during
that vacation in Nova Scotia the long
and short of it was that a few weeks
later I was diagnosed with depression
when I told my wife about the diagnosis
she gave me a puzzled look and said I
don’t get it you’re finally doing
something you love right and there you
have it there’s a rub
how does a guy who’s dreamed of being a
creator all of his life and he’s on the
cusp of making it real all of a sudden
not give a damn I designed and built
that and that famous people were
following me on Instagram it’s true and
I was entirely unimpressed I’d finally
found my bliss and I could have cared
less right so what changed why am I here
why did I fly from Sao Paulo to get here
if I didn’t care
well after getting the diagnosis I sat
down in a beautiful stone courtyard I
listened to the birds and stared a long
long time at the trees
I stopped building I started thinking I
started thinking about the boats I
designed and built and I started
thinking about what made them worth
building remember that quote at the
beginning I would I would capture and
transform things on their way to being
lost memory and artifact would be forged
into a new form of narrative I kept
thinking about that and the more I
thought about it the less comfortable I
was with it as a guiding principle it
was fantastic but in practice it wasn’t
working
why because it wasn’t I wasn’t using it
as a guiding principle at all it was
clever copywriting marketing shtick the
very thing I’d started ashes to escape
I wasn’t forming a new type of narrative
at all I was so I was telling a pretty
story to sell boats so ok yeah using
recovered materials as part of this
story but it was far from the whole
story it didn’t include the part where I
was kept up at night because of anxiety
about delivery dates or about money the
part where perfectionism stalled me for
days or that every boat had its flaws
the whole story included the fact that
my days were actually not that Pleasant
sawdust in your sinuses 24/7 sucks
earplugs eight hours a day sucks when
people told me I was lucky to be doing
something I loved that my boats were too
beautiful to put in the water that
bugged me because even though I liked
what I was selling I actually didn’t
like what I was doing which sucks here I
was trying to tell an authentic story
and what I was doing was telling a
beautifully curated marketing myth all
those things that kept me up at night
the anxiety about delivery dates
imperfect joins the fingerprints and the
varnish all those things were part of
each boat but they weren’t part of the
story at the same time I was doing a lot
of sketching I had always been cognizant
of a boat
relationship to nature and anatomy in
particular but now I was making it
explicit look those ribs that you see
there on the left those are human ribs
and look at how they replicate they’re
the hull of a canoe and on the same side
over here that’s a seal here we have
seed pods you can see part of the
history of this is that those seeds
bring life the wind catches and carries
them across continents from one place to
another they take life from A to B well
that’s what boats did how did all of us
get here on this continent unless we
were born here thousands tens of
thousands of years ago we came by a boat
all of us came here at one time or
another by this form of transportation
here we have bones you’ll see over here
this paddle that’s a human foot and
that’s a canoe paddle and if you look
carefully you can see here the very
feminine lines of a canoe and here we
have the sum of masculine lines of a
kayak if you look at it the right way
the anatomy of a boat has this
incredible relationship to our own
anatomies when looked at this way it’s
easy to see that a canoe is more than
just a thing that you sit in and paddle
or hang on the wall and as I explored
that the boat started to feel less like
physical objects made of materials with
provenance and more like objects
integrated into who we are as humans
both historically and physically the
drawings told me that I was involved in
a story that stretched deep into our
collective psyches and if you visit our
website today you’ll see imagery that
connects the boats to the anatomy of
various mammals birds and fish at some
point in this exploration I recognized
that I stopped feeling resentful what
people were telling me when they said
that the boats were beautiful was that
they found something in their own
relationship to themselves and to nature
that they found beautiful when you
respond to something in these boats you
are responding to something somewhere
inside you that connects you to their
form it’s a something that exists that
exists at a deeply personal
level and doesn’t require the
affirmation of others I don’t need you
to tell me that they’re beautiful and
you don’t need me to tell you or affirm
your opinion of them anyway out of all
of that came the idea that I didn’t need
to build boats to be content what I
needed to do was find the thing the real
story if you must behind the boats I
came to understand that the story wasn’t
the boat the story was everything that
resulted in the boat I realized that I
didn’t need to hide the flaws I realized
or I could admit that they weren’t
perfect I could point out the thumbprint
in the varnish if you will and those
things that had stalled me deadlines
perfectionism money uncertainties about
materials or design they mattered less
since then I’ve made fewer boats and
designed more I’ve worked with a
sculptor on public art projects and just
this week I was meeting with educators
in Brazil on a project that brings
together technology boats and social
innovation I still build and design
beautiful boats and don’t get me wrong I
still want them to be beautiful and I do
care that all of you think that they are
beautiful the difference is I don’t need
them to be beautiful in fact it would be
awfully boring if that’s all that they
were if my boats are a story and I
believe that their story they’re a story
that includes the good and the bad all
the inputs and all the outputs they are
marketing stick they’re much much more
than the images curated for our social
feeds they are a story that includes the
good the bad the boring the exciting the
flaws the successes the fingerprints and
the varnish the anxieties about
deadlines the uneven shear lines the
spilled epoxy a story that includes the
flaws you see and the flaws that you
don’t your story is not what you post on
snapchat or Instagram it’s every
decision that you make every day
everything that happens to you and
everything that you make happen the
beautiful
and the banal in the end it doesn’t
matter who you are a student a medical
intern or a boat builder what you did
today what you had for breakfast the
miss bus connection the cranky roommate
the fact that you denied being a
Mennonite the skin knuckles and the
sawdust in your sinuses even as you sit
here tonight you are telling a story you
have no choice remember that therapist I
told you about at the beginning he was
wrong we don’t get to choose whose story
we tell we only get to tell our own and
since you’re telling a story make it
good
thank you [Music]
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