Building a Sailing School in Quebec City
I moved to Quebec City because I needed full French immersion. Since there were essentially no sailing schools there and I was already a sailing instructor, I built one. It became a real institution-building project: staffing, operations, structure, and continuity.
As an anglophone, I wanted to improve my French through full immersion, not just classroom learning. So I moved to Quebec City to live and work entirely in French.
Once I got there, I realized there was almost no real sailing-school ecosystem. Because I was already a sailing instructor, I pitched the Yacht-Club de Quebec on building a school from scratch.
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The Starting Point
I came in with years of sailing instruction experience from Montreal, and Quebec City offered an unusual opportunity: clear potential, but very little infrastructure for a full youth sailing program. A club member made the project possible by providing me with a 40-foot, two-bedroom trailer that became our base of operations.
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The Problem
The main challenge was not enthusiasm. It was capacity. Because there were virtually no sailing schools in Quebec City, there was no deep local instructor bench, no obvious pipeline, and no clear precedent for scaling the program well.
Questions we had to solve
- Where do we find qualified instructors?
- How do we house and integrate them in Quebec City?
- How do we build a program kids want to come back to?
- How do we ensure continuity after any one summer ends?
What We Built
We recruited instructors from Montreal, where the sailing ecosystem was stronger, and handled the operational layer required to make it work in Quebec City: accommodations, integration, staffing, and day-to-day logistics.
From there, we focused on building a program that was not just functional, but exciting. Over time, the school grew into a program teaching more than 200 kids per summer.
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What I Was Responsible For
This pushed me far beyond instruction. I was involved in building the school as an organization.
- Pitching and defending the vision
- Budget planning and oversight
- Standing up program operations
- Recruiting and coordinating instructors
- Solving housing and staffing constraints
- Building program structure
- Coaching youth sailors
- Designing for long-term continuity
Continuity Mattered More Than One Good Summer
It is easy to build something that works for one season with the right people in the room. It is much harder to build something that still works after those people leave.
To support continuity, I documented the operating model in a separate sailing school manual so future teams could preserve the standards and culture that made the program work.
The strongest proof of continuity is that some of the kids from the program are now starting to become instructors themselves.
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Why This Project Still Matters
"This project shaped how I like to build: under constraint, in places with obvious potential but limited structure, and with systems designed to outlast the original builder. It also reinforced my view of leadership: not just doing things well yourself, but creating conditions for others to grow into responsibility and carry the mission forward."
What I Took Away
I came to Quebec City partly to improve my French and do something hard. I left having helped build a school, create opportunities for young sailors, and contribute to a program with real momentum of its own.