Molly Kool's friends apply for ACOA money for museum

Friends of the late Molly Kool, North Americas first female sea captain, are looking for some federal dollars to secure her legacy with a permanent historic site in the NewBrunswickvillage where she was born and raised.

Mary Majka, president of the Albert County Heritage Trust, presented a business plan to the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency (ACOA) in Fredericton this week.

The plan involves moving Kools former home in Alma, at the entrance of the Fundy National Park, to a site set aside inside the park and turning it into a museum.

Majka said she asked for $65,000 in funding to have Kools house dismantled, moved and put back together.

"That would include the repairs, the rebuilding and also the interpretative material,"she said.

"When I went there, I was very prepared. I did not just go and present my case. I went with a lot of information, with stacks of documents and plans and things that the park has given me.They were very, very receptive; very interested."

If ACOA approves the project, andthe house is moved onto a foundation inside the park, Majka said she would then be able to apply for provincial heritage money.

"We are now contemplating to take it in pieces. We have found somebody who can do that very carefully with photographing, and numbering and measuring it," Majka said.

'This is certainly a good start'

Alma Mayor Hilyard Rossiter, who knew Kool, said the house would be the first recognizable landmark in the community of 300 to commemorate the late sea captains life.

"What you want is something here that people, when theyre browsing through the village, have an opportunity to see some of the history, and this is certainly a good start," he said.

Kool died inFebruary in Bangor, Maine, at age 93.

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.

Kool spent five years as a sea captain before moving to Maine and getting married.