Community fights to keep Titanic- era ship
Georgian Bay residents sign petition to prevent cruise for historic vessel
PORT MCNICOLL, ONT.— When the historic passenger vessel S. S. Keewatin first went through the Welland Canal, it had to be cut in half.
The 106- metre- long ship was too long to fit into the lift locks of the canal in 1907 when it was on its way to Owen Sound from its birthplace in Glasgow’s River Clyde to start a 60- year career as a Great Lakes passenger vessel for Canadian Pacific Railway Upper Lake Service.
Now, more than 9,000 people in this Georgian Bay port have signed a petition asking the federal government to prevent Keewatin from taking a second cruise on the Welland Canal. They want the vessel to remain as a museum destination here, rather than as a museum destination at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes on the Kingston waterfront.
Keewatin is five years older than the Titanic and is believed to be the only Edwardian passenger liner still afloat, and its fate has been afloat for the past three years since its owner — Skyline Investments Inc. — decided not to go ahead with plans to create a 1,400- home resort community on Georgian Bay.
Former Skyline president Gil Blutrich purchased Keewatin from R. J. Peterson in Saugatuck, Mich., to be the community centre for his proposed $ 1.2- billion waterfront community in
Port McNicoll.
Peterson had operated Keewatin for 44 years in Saugatuck as a popular maritime museum after rescuing it from a date with a scrapyard.
Blutrick had Keewatin towed 935 kilometres from Saugatuck to Port McNicoll in June 2012 to arrive back in its home port exactly 46 years to the hour it last shipped out for Thunder Bay. More than 1,000 boats were out on Georgian Bay to welcome home the passenger vessel, all of them blasting their air horns.
CP Ships retired Keewatin after its last trip to Thunder Bay from Port McNicoll in the fall of 1967. Keewatin had started carrying passengers, freight and mail to Thunder Bay in 1908 from Owen Sound, but CP moved its passenger fleet to Port McNicoll in 1911 after its Owen Sound grain elevator was destroyed by fire.
Although Skyline owns Keewatin, a large volunteer group called Friends of Keewatin, headed by Capt. Rick Conroy, is responsible for the significant restorations of the ship since its arrival.
Conroy was a teenage waiter in the Keewatin’s ornate dining room in 1963 and ’ 64, and had written a book about life aboard the ship. As an adult, he organized Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade for many years in Toronto.
He persuaded 851 people to each pay $ 20 to help pull the 3,600- tonne ship into her final berth at Port McNicoll. The $ 18,000 raised was donated to the cardiac clinic at Royal Victoria hospital in nearby Barrie and won a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The Keewatin has been closed as a museum since last April, because of COVID- 19.
Skyline has agreed to donate Keewatin to the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes, which will require the ship to make its second trip through the Welland Canal, towed by tugboats. In 1908, it was cut in half in a dry dock in Levis, Que., and then stitched back together in Buffalo.
The Welland Canal now can accommodate ships of up to 740 feet in length.
S. S. Keewatin is five years older than the Titanic and is believed to be the only Edwardian passenger liner still afloat
The retired Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Alexander Henry sat in the dry dock at the Kingston museum from 1984 to 2017, after 25 years of breaking ice on the Great Lakes.
The icebreaker also seemed destined to be scrapped when the museum was sold to make way for a waterfront condominium. However, Thunder Bay’s tourism authority stepped in to buy the icebreaker and tow it through the Welland Canal to Thunder Bay, where it was built in 1959. It’s now a museum on the Thunder Bay waterfront.
The Kingston condo deal fell through and the museum was resurrected, and is now looking for a vessel to sit in its empty dry dock.