The effusive testimonials read like a late-night TV advertorial.
The difference is Armand Martin won’t make a penny from all the unabashed praise heaped forward from the many appreciative karate students who have come under his skilled and caring tutelage.
The 59-year-old Tignish man never got into karate to make money. He simply saw the sport as a challenge — something he always dreamt about tackling.
As sensei (instructor) for 30 years with the West Island Karate Club, Martin has guided 34 local members to their black belts with more than 2,500 people overall benefiting from his program.
While he is currently working towards his fifth-degree black belt, his focus is always on aiding the progress of students and advancing the sport. To that end, he spends two to three hours a night, five to six nights a week, on the mat.
“His priorities are at the grassroots level,’’ said friend and neighbour Hal Perry, who has watched Martin in action for hundreds of hours teach his two boys and others this sport built on respect, confidence, control, humility and physical activity.
“He is a builder of the sport. He does not like the limelight. He always tries to put the spotlight on somebody else.’’
Perry says Martin has a special way of teaching that stimulates a student to want to do well. He builds their self-confidence and brings them to heights they never thought possible.
“I have been all over this country and I will tell you that sensei Armand Martin is very highly respected wherever he goes,’’ said Randy Rix of Fredericton, N.B., a former student who has attained third-degree black belt. “I have tried to mold myself after him for both his skill and his superior attitude everyday.’’
Martin, in turn, says he considers both current and former students a part of his family.
Martin’s years of devotion to karate, which extends to officiating at provincial and national competitions, has earned him considerable recognition.
In 1989, he received a special award from the national coaching certification for his dedication and commitment to coaching West Prince athletes. The following year, he was named the P.E.I. Karate Association ‘Coach of the Year’ for the first of what would be several times.
He received the Heart of Gold Award for his outstanding contribution to the community and recently was recognized by Sport P.E.I. for his heavy volunteer involvement in karate.
Martin’s “biggest thrill’’ among all the impressive acknowledgements that the soft-spoken man has received, but certainly has not sought, was being named in 2008 Citizen of the Year for the Community of Tignish.
Martin, the fourth of eight children of the late Ralph and Alice Martin, grew up on a mixed farm just outside Tignish in St. Peter and St. Paul. Everybody had their chores, such as milking cows, taking in wood or feeding chickens and sheep. He had no interest in farming and even less in school, making it no further than to Grade 10 (years later he would get his GED).
“I just couldn’t sit down on the seat,’’ he said of restless times spent in the classroom.
“I had to get out on nice, warm sunny days.’’
Keeping in shape was a far greater priority than earning a good education. He often ran five to eight kilometres a day. At 18, he took up boxing, winning nine or so of about a dozen middleweight bouts — three coming by knockout. He notes he had no difficulty putting his general mild manner aside when he got inside the ropes.
“I could be not very nice when I wanted to be,’’ he said.
His boxing came to an abrupt halt when, after five years in the ring, he seriously injured his left hand when it “went through a bunch of sprockets’’ while working with his father in their home machine shop.
As a teenager, he spent a great deal of time in the shop with his father — a jack of all trades who put food on his family’s plate first by fishing lobsters before turning to farming then working in a sawmill and as a blacksmith and machinist.
An 18-year-old Armand Martin moved to Ontario to work in a foundry, casting metal. He enlisted in karate classes while there, starting what quickly grew into a life-long love affair with the sport.
He returned to the Island homestead in 1972 to work with his father. In two years, he had opened his own business called Martin’s Machine Repair. That same year — 1974 — he married Julia (nee Gaudet).
The pair has proven to be good partners both on and off the mat. Julia, who has a second-degree black belt in karate, teaches the sport and does the bookkeeping for the West Island Karate Club. She also is secretary for the machine shop, where Martin and his crew of seven manufacture and repair everything from tractors to fishing boats.
His 29-year-old son Dougie and his youngest sister Marina Doucette join Martin each day in the shop. His daughter, Jenny Matthews, 33, is a bookkeeper who lives nearby.
“When my son is ready to take it over, he can have it,’’ Martin said of his shop that has seen business taper off the last couple years due to the economic downturn.
As for karate, he says he plans to “keep going for awhile — one year at a time.’’