Molly Kool's N.B. home should be a museum: heritage expert
North America's first female sea captain died last week
The New Brunswick home of North America's first female sea captain should be turned into a museum and moved into Fundy National Park, says the president of the Albert County Heritage Trust, Mary Mijka.
Molly Kool, who died last week in Bangor, Maine, at the age of 93, was born and raised in the village of Alma, N.B., at the entrance to what is now Fundy National Park.
She earned her master mariner's certificate from the Merchant Marine Institute in Yarmouth, N.S., in 1939. That accomplishment made Kool, whose father was a Dutch sea captain, the first licensed female sea captain in North America and only the second woman to do that job in the world.
Mijka said Kool's former home could become a museum that would explore the rich history of the area.
"This is a very colourful history, because Alma has been a shipbuilding place and a lumbering place and a shipping place," Mijka said.
"Then, of course, [there was] the creation of the park. So all of those things, and most prominently of course Molly Kool — we are very proud. We want the whole world to know that we have had somebody like her in our midst," she said.
Mijka said the park has already given her the go-ahead, and it would take only a few thousand dollars to move the house.
The Polish-born Mijka knows what she's talking about when it comes to moving buildings. It was under her guidance that the Albert County Heritage Trust moved the historic Anderson Hollow Lighthouse.
The lighthouse was originally located in Waterside, N.B., but was later moved to Riverside-Albert, and finally to the Harvey Bank Heritage Shipyard Park at Mary's Point where the Shepody River meets Shepody Bay.