Inspired by the nearby death of the great -grandfather, the winner of the scholarship hopes to make life safer for fishermen

Ben Collings-Mackay says he knows how he will spend the $ 45,000 he received for Frank H. Sobey’s prestigious scholarship.

Collings-Mackay, a fourth year’s business student at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, NS, and a fourth generation lobster fisherman, is one of the eight recipients this year of the scholarship for the students of the Atlantic Canadian affairs. It has an activity focused on creating a life jacket for commercial fishermen who is less cumbersome than traditional ones.

The life jacket swells automatically when someone affects the water and would have a GPS function that sends ping to nearby boats and emergency services that detailed the position of the exaggerated person, said Collings-Mackay. A stroboscopic light on the jacket would also contribute to making it easier to identify the person.

Collings-Mackay said that his company, Cm Marine Safety Equipment, is working with a law firm and hopes to submit patent applications within the next few weeks.

He said the company has worked with an engineering company to develop a prototype of the life jacket and aim to build it this summer. The device would be tested in preparation for approval by regulatory agencies such as Transport Canada and the United States coast guard.

“The engineers and lawyers are not cheap,” said Collings-Mackay, a 22-year-old from Montague, Pei “and it will be nice to be able to continue pushing this project along the way and bringing him to save someone’s life. This is what this prize means.”

For Collings-Mackay, water safety is personal.

Tragedy of 1958

In June 1958, his great -grandfather and a colleague had just sold the capture for the day. When they were returning to the shore in a light dinghy – according to June 6, 1958, Charlottetown Guardian – the boat turned upside down, throwing the couple into a quick tide out. The great-grandfather of Collings-Mackay managed to grab a mooring rope that ran between a buoy and a boat anchored on the ground and stopped rescued. His colleague, Ernest Brown, was swept away by the tide and died.

And on the first day of fishing in Collings-Mackay, which arrived after his first year of university, he received a reminder of the dangers on the water.

When a boat stopped next to that of Collings-Mackay, he noticed a man who was wetting and a little shaking. When the man had been at sea, he was knocked on board but managed to survive.

Collings-Mackay wondered why the person did not wear a jacket of life. But soon he had a different perspective on the jackets of life when he was out to work.

“You realize the reason why people do not wear them and how they are completely inadequate for work,” he said, noting that they are bulky, they are captured by things and hinder their functions.

Also, said Collings-Mackay, there is a stigma around the jackets of life.

“Fishing is a very generational and traditional industry,” he said. “People fish with their fathers and their grandparents and never wear them, so why should they? And I think there is also a little pressure between even even there to adapt, however foolish it may seem.”

Fishing dead

From 1999 to 2021, the Average number of deaths per year on Canadian commercial fishing ships It was about 12. In almost half of cases, it was the lack of personal floating devices.

Mary Oxner is one of the accounting professors of Collings-Mackay. He said that the scope of what he is working on is much more complex than companies that many other students have created.

“This is an expensive thing to bring to the market,” he said. “It requires in -depth tests, requires a patent, requires legal advice, requires technical and engineering support … it is a complex thing to do when you are a young twenty -year -old to try to pull all these supports and resources.”

The entrepreneurial aspirations of Collings-Mackay are very far from its original life plans. Growing up, he always thought he would join the military. (We need in the reserve unit of the new Scotland Highlanders.) He said his parents encouraged him to focus on education.

‘It is really giving me a purpose’

The school has not always been easy for Collings-Mackay, who fought and had to be tutat in mathematics at secondary school, which is surprising, given that today it is Major in accounting.

“If I hadn’t come to school, I would never have done this project,” he said. “And I think I’m really giving me a purpose, something I can achieve and fight.”

This motivation comes in part by the people who have invested in his company, but also to the safety of loved ones.

“Every time I launch, I say that it is not a bigger motivation than having all your friends and family that fish every day without a mask of life,” he said. “It’s a tragedy waiting to happen.”