Vincent Turple Sr.

Island story

Vincent Turple was a Pictou Island boatbuilder whose work connected the Island’s fishing economy with the difficult problem of winter transportation. The 1931 census index records Vincent Turple, age twenty, on Pictou Island. Later community-history evidence identifies Elias Turple and Sarah Livingstone as his parents and describes Vincent learning wooden-boat construction from his father. Vincent later lived on the Island with Winnifred Hemmings and their family and became closely associated with Island boatbuilding. PIHS records attribute the surviving mail iceboat to Vincent, but its construction year is not fully settled: PIHS sources give 1940 and 1941. The surviving boat makes his work unusually tangible. It represents local craftsmanship applied to mail, supplies and passenger travel across a Strait that could alternate between ice and open water.