THUNDER BAY -- Paul Pepe says he likes the idea of a maritime museum on Thunder Bay’s waterfront.
But the city’s manager of tourism isn’t yet ready to commit to helping to bring the former coast guard icebreaker Alexander Henry to town, as proposed by the organizers behind a planned transportation museum.
There are still a lot of questions that must be answered, Pepe said earlier this week, including whether or not the Alexander Henry is available and where the money will come from to pay the estimated $250,000 it will cost to tow the floating museum from its current berth outside of Picton, Ont.
It’s an idea that, if feasible and affordable, might make sense, Pepe said.
“It’s connection to Thunder Bay is not that it just broke ice here, that it was sort of a sign of spring, a nautical robin of spring here in the harbour, but the fact it was built here at the Port Arthur Shipyards in 1959. So it was birthed here as a vessel,” Pepe said.
Decommissioned in 1984, it spent the past several years on the Kingston, Ont. waterfront, the centrepiece of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes collection.
However, the museum sold its property to a private developer and this past winter was given its eviction notice, forcing the board of directors to attempt to find a new home for the ship. According to a recent story in the Kingston Whig-Standard, a local developer, Henry Doornekamp, has agreed to berth the ship over the winter, but unless a solution is found, the ship could be cut up for scrap or sunk as a recreational diving reef.
Enter Thunder Bay.
More than a decade ago, the city investigated the possibility of bringing SS Keewatin home to the waterfront, but the costs to do so, which included dredging a channel through the Kalamazoo River in Douglas, Mich., were deemed prohibitive.
The city also hosts the James Whalen tugboat on the Kaministiquia River.
Pepe said the venture is at the early exploratory stages at this point, noting the idea has yet to be broached officially with the waterfront development committee, who could consider the Pool 6 berth as a permanent home for a maritime museum.
He said they have reached out to organizers of the transportation museum proposal to see if the city can be of assistance conducting due diligence or looking at the project from a feasibility perspective.
The city, for its part, wants to ensure any static exhibits like a maritime museum aren’t going to be a financial drain.
Pepe acknowledged it wouldn’t become a destination driver, but more of an added enhancement to keep tourists around a little longer.
“We talk about Thunder Bay as a hinge of the nation and as a transportation corridor for hundreds, if not thousands of years that settlements have been here,” he said.
“There is a greater need for us to be able to tell that story in more opportunities.”
A request for comment from the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes was made, but not responded to immediately.
