Saint John Ironworkers Local 842 forged her steel. Members of Tobique First Nation built her cabins. Dozens of pro bono woodworkers crafted her hull— clad in white New Brunswick pine— while 110 companies financed her birth.
Today Saint John is a city saturated in quiescence, a defeated town spread too thin by interests other than its own.
But some see the coming of a new era, a budding epoch to build on the city’s early foundation of wealth and prosperity.
Long before Mayor Mel Norton’s proclamation of a “renaissance city,” there was a man set on granting citizens their lost symbol of identity.
Twenty-eight years ago, St. Thomas University alumnus Barry Ogden approached city hall with an idea to rebuild the Marco Polo. She now sits in a shed in West Saint John wrapped in plastic.
“You can call it— like in Quebec, a quiet revolution or a cultural revolution, First Nations are going through this now— I think we are going through it,” said the Saint John High School teacher.
He completed it a few months ago and is now looking for a home for it on the harbour.
“I get stopped five times a day with people saying the Marco Polo [II] should be down on the waterfront,” Ogden said.
It has been over 130 years since the first Marco Polo sank. Below sea and salt, off the shore of Prince Edward Island, the great clipper rests.
Home to the fourth largest port in the world at the time, Marco Polo was a beacon of hope to the new province.
When the Marco Polo was launched in 1851, it tipped over and sat idle for two weeks in the engulfing mud of March Creek. This is said to have contributed to the ships warped hull and impossible speeds for that era. This telltale ship is a reminder that to falter is not to perpetually fail.
When Napoleon cut off Britain from its wood source in Scandinavia, New Brunswick filled the role. The Marco Polo delivered lumber in a record 15 days. When she returned to Liverpool, locals thought she had simply come back for repairs.
She was later dubbed Queen of the Seas being the first ship to make a round trip voyage from Britain to Australia in less than six months.
Now Ogden is trying to get the new ship on the water for a voyage through the Marco Polo Project website.
Though she may never see the dramatic tides on the Bay of Fundy or the swift currents of the Atlantic Ocean, the Marco Polo II will serve the people of Saint John as a reminder where they came from and what they can accomplish.
“What holds Saint John back [now] is negativity,” said Ogden.
Marco Polo II’s construction represents a bevy of different things, one of which is an attempt to combat the city’s poverty.
“Yes, we have a lot of slums and we have the oldest schools in New Brunswick. But we also have to develop a greater sense of pride.”
For Ogden, success lies within the power of positive thinking.
“The first person you have to like in this world is yourself, but a community has to like itself too.”
