I’ll come right out and say it: I failed the on-line exam of l’Institut National de Sécurité Nautique. The course offered by National Boating Safety School © 2025 is accredited by Transport Canada. Here’s the email I received.

Dear Sir,

Please save or print this email. You did not pass the boating safety test. The pass mark was 75%, and you obtained 72%. You must wait at least 24 hours before taking the test again. We recommend that you review the study materials before taking the test again.

Thank you,
Technical Support: Soutien Technique
National Boating Safety School: Institut national de sécurité nautique
371 Touzin avenue
Dorval
H9S 2N3
1-800-533-1972
Fax:1-800-533-1972
info@safeboatingcourse.ca

Yesterday by accident i stumbled onto their web site.  At the moment I do not recall what initially provoked me to investigate the matter apart from a lingering resolve I have nurtured for years to qualify myself to operate at whim a pleasure craft on our local waterways. “The Pleasure Craft Operator Card is good for life.”

As of September 15, 2009, everyone who operates a motorized pleasure craft must carry proof of competency on board at all times. Proof of competency is not required for a pleasure craft without a motor.

Over a decade ago we escaped the mandate for competency in an early season outing on nearby Clayton Lake; but the wish to legitimize my entitlement has since then brewed within me. So last evening – after having paid my tuition – I put on my headphones and began the three hour on-line course which I interrupted for an abbreviated overnight repose then resumed to completion for another hour at four o’clock this morning.  After reawakening at 8:00 am – and following my ablutions – I attacked the Transport Canada exam with vigour.

Seemingly  – that is, in defence of my poor showing on the exam – my requisite acuteness was overtaken this morning by the urgency to rally as previously planned with friends at the golf club for breakfast at 10:00 am. In all honesty there is nothing especially challenging about the exam – given the proper attention; but apparently my enthusiasm defeated the requisite ambition.  So I must take the course again. I understand you can do so any number of times. While I am hopeful not to be practising death scenes off the Maclan Bridge for repeated failures, I am unwilling in this unfamiliar state of inadequacy to predict or forecast my success.  Nor does it help to have discovered while breaking the fast on the patio this morning at the golf club that our dear friends both dismissively confirmed their own prior fulfillment of qualification for the operation of a motorized pleasure craft. One of them is a product of the Rideau River, the other of Muskoka Lakes.

This afternoon, crushed and in final submission to my intellectual defeat, I reviewed as recommended the study materials. I now await the 24-hour expiry before retaking the exam. Admittedly I haven’t a great deal more in the meantime to preoccupy me. Nonetheless I sought to recover my stock alignment and stability with ritual behaviour by conducting an early evening jaunt during the magnificent summer sunset along the Appleton Side Road to the Petro-Canada car wash on Campeau Drive in Ottawa. By coincidence afterwards we cut across Terry Fox Drive to Hazeldean Road to the location of Les Moulins La Fayette where we purchased suitable treats to accompany our late afternoon coffee and to assuage the perils of failure.