CORNER BROOK, N.L. — Volunteering is in Patti Power’s blood.
Now she’s found a way to give freely of her time and energy and combine it with another of her favorite things to do: meet new people.
Power is one of the latest recruits to join the Ambassador program in Corner Brook.
Started in 2016, the program involves amassing a corps of volunteers eager and able to greet visitors to the city during the tourism season from spring to fall.
Power was born and raised in Corner Brook and lived half her life here, but spent 25 years working in Halifax before retiring a few years ago and returning to her native hometown.
She went to a volunteer meeting last year, but was unavailable to follow through on the commitment required, but is good to go this time around.
“I was looking for something to get myself involved with in the city,” she said. “I’ve always been a volunteer. I like being involved and meeting people. It’s just something I’m interested in.”
In Nova Scotia, she gave her time mostly to food bank drives and fundraisers and helping out with a series of road races.
This will be her first foray into tourism, though she is also a member of the building committee for the new theatre in Cow Head.
Power does genealogy as a hobby and her former career in environmental technology actually required her to do some historical research of Corner Brook. She feels that’s a good start to building up a knowledge base of information tourists will want to hear about.
“I’ll learn a lot more for sure,” she said after attending the first meeting for the new season with the rest of the Ambassador team Friday.
The Ambassador program is an initiative of the City of Corner Brook, the Corner Brook Port Authority, the Corner Brook Museum and Archives and Branch 13 of the Royal Canadian Legion. The volunteers mostly work to engage visitors from cruise ships, but have also been involved in other events such as Hockey Day in Canada in 2018, the CB Nuit art festival events the last two years and the Tall Ships visit in 2017.
There are currently 16 volunteer ambassadors. Robert Murphy of the Ambassador organizing committee said there are possibly three more people who will join.
“We hope to take on a few more because we have such a huge cruise ship season and tourist season this year,” said Murphy. “We are really looking forward to getting out there, showing off Corner Brook and making people glad that they came by for a visit.”
Members of the Ambassador program will be partaking in a tourism training session offered by Hospitality Newfoundland and Labrador next month, in advance of the first scheduled cruise ship visiting Corner Brook on May 31.
“These people are all enthusiastic, they know what they’re doing and they enjoy doing it,” said Murphy.
The port of Corner Brook has a busy cruise ship schedule for 2019 with 20 visits booked:
- May 31: Saga Sapphire
- July 2: AIDAvita
- July 16: AIDAvita
- July 24: Queen Mary 2
- July 30: AIDAvita
- Aug.3: Zuiderdam
- Sept. 5: Queen Mary 2
- Sept. 7: Albatross
- Sept. 8: Aurora
- Sept. 9: Zuiderdam
- Sept. 10: Hamburg
- Sept. 11: Silver Wind
- Sept. 12: Mein Schiff 1
- Sept. 21: Marco Polo
- Oct. 3: Arcadia
- Oct. 5: Amadea
- Oct. 7: Seven Seas Navigator
- Oct. 8: Queen Mary 2
- Oct. 10: Norwegian Dawn
- Oct. 11: MSC Meraviglia
Source: Corner Brook Port Corporation