LAKE EFFECT
Locks hold the key on a Montreal to Minnesota cruise
The waiting room at St. Lambert Lock in Montreal looks out at a half kilometre of chainlink fence, six security camera towers, a blaze- orange derrick and a guardhouse. There, three armed men stare at a 230- metre stretch of placid, blue- green water waiting to lift 30,000- tonne freighters up along the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The lock is part of the oldest and most travelled inland waterway in North America — a 3,700-kilometre corridor that connects the Atlantic Ocean with all five Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Since deep draft navigation opened on the St. Lawrence in 1959, more than 2.2 billion tonnes of cargo, worth around $ 485 billion, has traversed the seaway.
I’d been waiti ng 20 minutes for my ride — a 225-metre freighter called the Algoma Equinox. The Equinox traverses the St. Lawrence and four Great Lakes twice a month, transporting iron ore west and grain back east. Like many freighters around the world, it also occasionally carries people. Travellers willing to take the slow boat get a private cabin, three meals a day and shore leave wherever the ship loads, unloads or stops at a lock.
After picking me up in Montreal, the Equinox’s captain, Ross Armstrong, told me the ship would cross Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron and Superior and drop me in Thunder Bay, Ont. — six hours north of Duluth, Minn. The trip would take six days.
Three crew members lowered a steel gangplank onto the parking lot curb, and I dragged my roller bag onto the ship. The Equinox is almost the exact size of the 60- storey Carnegie Hall Tower i n New York City, leaned over on its side. The long, blue hull floated about a metre above the water, weighed down by 30,000 tonnes of iron ore pellets in the cargo holds.
All three crew members wore coveralls and hard hats. One, from Newfoundland, introduced himself as Tony. He looked like a Tony, with a bushy black moustache, pudgy cheeks and curly black hair.
“You’ll be in the owner’s cabin,” he said. “Better hurry up, supper’s almost over.”
It was 5 p. m. on a warm June day. The sun was still high overhead and the air smelled like river water and algae. Fluorescent lights gave the interior of the ship a pale blue hue. The halls were timeless in a way that any steel room, like a prison cell, is timeless. My cabin was on the third floor, starboard side. It was surprisingly large. The queen- size bed could have been transplanted from a Comfort Inn. The separate sitting area had a chipboard desk and mini- fridge, and there was an en suite bathroom by the foot of the bed. The walls were covered with white plastic panels. The curtains were a kind of shiny plastic I had never seen before. Behind them, two oversized portholes looked out on a constantly moving scene.
A rain shower hit, carried by a ferocious wind. Five minutes later it passed, and the evening sun hammered the deck. I had never moved this slowly as a passenger and wondered if I would lose my mind with boredom in the next six days. But the pace was meditative, too. From the 23- metre- tall wheelhouse, you notice things onshore you would typically miss in a car, train or plane.
The first ships to sail the lakes were classic European schooners, sloops and brigs. “Canallers” were the workhorses of the mid-1800s, and by 1860, 750 of them were in service. The steam engine brought larger boats, and larger locks, too. Steam barges called “smokers” spoke to each other using “whistle talk.” Next came hookers, whaleback tows and bulkers, before steel ocean freighters sailed up the St. Lawrence and the age of the modern laker began.
These days oreboats, straight deckers, bulkers, sternenders, self unloaders, longboats and lakeboats deliver 163 million tonnes of cargo to and from the lakes annually.
Most goes to or comes from electric utilities, steel mills, construction companies, mining companies, factories and farms. Because a freighter can transport a ton of cargo 827 kilometre on a single gallon of fuel — compared with 325 kilometre by train or 94 kilometre by truck — shipping is often a greener way to move people and freight as well.
Many shipping companies like CMA- CGM, Canadian Maritime, Rickmers- Linie and Grimaldi Lines offer passenger cabins on certain routes. Prices average around $129 a day.
Great Lakes freighters are unique in that almost all passenger tickets are sold through nonprofit fundraisers — mostly to benefit shipping museums — so booking a room is not easy.
Seeing a Great Lake for the first time, I understood how French explorers, who discovered “the sweet seas” and essentially blazed the border with Canada, assumed that the lakes led to the Pacific — and China.