(LEVIS, Quebec) — On Monday, Bernadette Jordan, the minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, and Mario Pelletier, commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard, marked the delivery of CCGS Jean Goodwill, the second of three medium interim icebreakers to join the fleet after completing refit and conversion work at Davie Shipbuilding in Levis, Quebec.
The work was completed under the National Shipbuilding Strategy’s third pillar for vessel repair, refit and maintenance. The work on the three medium interim icebreakers helped directly create and maintain upward of 450 good-paying middle-class jobs.
CCGS Jean Goodwill is named in honor of the late Jean Goodwill, an officer of the Order of Canada. Goodwill was a Cree nurse from the community of Little Pine Nation in Saskatchewan who in 1954 became Saskatchewan’s first Indigenous woman to finish a nursing program. Goodwill is also a founding member of the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada and a contemporary pioneer of public health services for Indigenous peoples.
The conversion work and refit completed on CCGS Jean Goodwill included enhancing icebreaking capabilities and endurance, upgrading the propulsion control system, navigation and communication electronics, improvements to the galley, and increased crew accommodation capacity.
CCGS Jean Goodwill, along with its sister ships CCGS Captain Molly Kool and the future CCGS Vincent Massey, will support icebreaking operations while new ships are being built and the existing fleet undergoes repairs and planned maintenance periods. CCGS Jean Goodwill will be based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and is expected to start assisting icebreaking operations in early 2021.
Quick facts
• In August 2018, the government of Canada, on behalf of the Canadian Coast Guard, awarded Chantier Davie a $610 million contract for the acquisition of three icebreakers and work to prepare the first ship for service in the Canadian Coast Guard.
• The first of the three icebreakers, CCGS Captain Molly Kool, entered into service in late 2018. The third icebreaker, CCGS Vincent Massey, is expected to join the fleet in 2021.
• The three icebreakers will be part of the national Coast Guard fleet which carries out icebreaking duties in Atlantic Canada, the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes during the winter, and in the Arctic during the summer. In addition to icebreaking, the vessels will support other Coast Guard programs, such as search and rescue and environmental response.
– Government of Canada
