By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Burlington Men’s Shed is listed as an “emerging shed” on the Ontario Men’s Shed website, as they are still in the early stages of cultivating a core group of members and establishing projects for them to work on. But the founder, Ron Smith, believes they are on the right track.
He says that Men’s Sheds give older men a social connection that they lack, engaging them in projects as a tool to bring them together.
“With women, social contacts are tighter, and they tend to have lots of friends, and men are the opposite,” Smith said. “A lot of men’s [friends] aren’t really their friends, they’re their wives’ friends, husbands. That’s what often occurs.”
Randy Buffet, a member of the Burlington Men’s Shed, joined the group in September of last year after retiring and going to the city’s Parks and Recreation guide.
His testimonial about what the Men’s Shed offers him is proof of Smith’s statement.
“I think it is [about] making some new friends,” Buffet said. “It’s also just getting me out of the house once I retire. I didn’t have a lot of friends in Burlington. My work has been a lot more in the United States, so I don’t have as many local people around here.”
“So, it’s kind of forced me to get out of the house [and] meet some new faces and friends,” he continued.
Men’s Sheds are local organizations open to men, that work on projects that involve hands-on woodworking, building, and craftsmanship. To Smith, this is what sets the Men’s Sheds apart from other community groups.
“The lifeblood of a Men’s Shed is projects,” Smith said. “Without the projects, it’s more of a social club. It’s unique in the sense that it’s built around the concept of projects and physically giving back something to a community.”
Smith cited a book called Shoulder to Shoulder by Professor Barry Golding, one of the biggest advocates of Men’s Sheds in Australia, where the Sheds originated, to illustrate a point about how relationships among men tend to be stronger and form more quickly when they are working towards a common goal.
Smith said he spoke to a man from the Ottawa area who had recently moved to Burlington on the phone about the Men’s Shed after his daughter emailed Smith.
“We talked on the phone for an hour and his name is Al Brown,” Smith said. “He was from a shed up in the Ottawa area. And after I got off [the phone] his daughter phoned me back and she said, ‘You know, my dad is 90 years old.’ I didn’t really know he was 90 years old. I had no idea.”
“And she said, ‘The only thing that’s kept him alive for the last 10 years is Men’s Shed.’ She said, ‘I’m telling you that’s the only reason he’s still here.’ And so, she was thanking me for spending the time on the phone with him,” Smith continued.
The Burlington Men’s Shed is a relatively new shed, having only started a year ago.
Smith spoke about the fact that because Burlington is a very urban area, it has encountered certain difficulties that clubs in more rural cities or towns have not had to deal with.
“I think that in a rural setting, you have a better chance of coming across a building that could be retrofitted to a workshop,” Smith said.
“I think in a lot of rural communities you have probably more men that are used to using their hands and have the ability to make things and build things. So, putting those two things together gives you the opportunity to have that work. When you work in a setting such as Burlington, you end up with a component of professional people that aren’t necessarily used to working with their hands,” he continued.
The Burlington Men’s Shed currently operates out of the Burlington Seniors’ Centre, which was provided to them directly from the City of Burlington, but is not necessarily conducive to large-scale projects, Smith noted.
“The room that we have at the Burlington Seniors’ Centre maxes out at about 16. In order for us to grow, we need a real workshop space,” Smith said.
“And if we have the workshop space now, it’s not just having a meeting space once a week. We have access to a facility 24/7. And now we can bring in more people who might be interested in joining Men’s Sheds, and unfortunately, we’ve had people come and leave because they were thinking they could be more hands-on,” Smith continued.
Buffet says that the projects have been minimal so far because the club is so new.
“So far, it’s been a little more social,” Buffet said. “There’s probably a core group of about 15 to 20 of us that kind of meet just on a weekly basis for the coffee and so on. And what we are trying to do is figure out some projects that we can start doing to help benefit us and also benefit the community.”
Smith mentioned an MBA business competition at McMaster University that the Shed group judged and said that as a result of the lack of space to work on more hands-on projects, the Shed is currently focusing on mentorship as a priority. He is thinking that some MBA students might benefit from mentorship from Shed members.
“I would think that our relationship with McMaster will grow because of the business background of a lot of our people, and because of the culture of a lot of their students,” Smith said.
“I’d say 85% of their students were not born in Canada. And as such, even though they can get their academic education at McMaster, sometimes they lack the ways we do business in Canada. So, I see us filling a certain gap there that could benefit both the university and our well-being as we try to put projects together,” he continued.
Besides that, the main project that the Shed has been working on is repurposing signage that would otherwise be disposed of and selling it to other community non-profit groups in need of promotion, at a reduced price.
Smith said initially they considered using a laser engraver but settled on a vinyl printer because of its many advantages.
“The disadvantages with things like a laser machine is that it requires venting. It has an odour,” Smith said.
“When we started playing with the vinyl cutter, or the vinyl printer in this case, we found that it’s a machine that doesn’t make any noise, it’s non-toxic, it doesn’t require any venting and it’s safe. With the laser machine, if you’ve got the wrong material, you can end up with poisonous fumes, things like that,” he continued.
“Whereas the [vinyl] printer is like an inkjet printer on steroids. And so, we felt that as a starting point, and it is a starting point, we would have more of a chance of finding some space to accommodate the printer. And if we have to do the mounting and some of the cutting and whatever it is, we add to the service of signage,” Smith said.
Currently, the Shed is using the vinyl printer in the Maker Space, located in the Central branch of the Burlington Public Library.
So far, most of the signs produced have been for the Men’s Shed itself.
Buffet also sees the Shed as a group of people who can help out with community events wherever they are needed.
“If there’s an event that requires some volunteering, whether that’s music in the park, some parade, or at a food shelter and so on, if somebody said, ‘Hey, you know, we’re stuck, we need some people,’ we have a shed group that can now kind of come and volunteer and provide that type of skill set,” Buffet said.
Smith said that using modern technology like a vinyl printer creates an opportunity to exchange skills with younger people who are more adept at using such machines.
“I’m computer literate. I am to a certain degree,” Smith said. “But when it comes down to graphic design and manipulating you know, vector files and whatever it might be, there’s young people at Mohawk that are a hell of a lot smarter than we are.”
“And maybe some of those people would be interested in working with us, maybe giving them access to a machine that they might not otherwise have access to. We see it as an opportunity to work with a lot of high school students that need volunteer hours in order to graduate. This, once again, could be an interesting opportunity rather than picking up garbage in the park,” he continued.
Smith says the group is very informal and doesn’t have any strict hierarchy.
“We spend half an hour; we call it our ‘sandbox’ over at the Seniors’ Centre,” Smith said. “So, we brainstorm some ideas, we chit-chat back and forth, there’s no formality.”
“Now I’m the facilitator, that’s all, I’m not a president or anything, I just happened to start this thing. So, everyone has a voice,” he continued.
Smith mentioned that friendships have even blossomed outside of the Shed, including a group of men who met at the club and started a shop together.
It costs $40 for a Men’s Shed membership, but people not ready to commit can pay a drop-in fee of $3 to attend a single meeting. For more information on how to join the Shed, contact burlingtonsheds@gmail.com to connect with Smith directly.
