THUNDER BAY -- The Lakehead Transportation Museum Society has requested the city commit $150,000 to bringing the Alexander Henry home.
The former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker outlived its welcome on the docks of Kingston in June. It's now on temporary moorings in Picton, its fate needs to be decided by spring and efforts are underway to haul it across the Great Lakes to the shore where the Port Arthur Shipbuilding Company built it 50 years ago.
City council voted to pass the issue to the Waterfront Development Committee and to task administration with writing a report on granting the LTMS the requested funds. That report, however, may not return until after the municipal budget process takes place in February.
"We're a little disappointed it couldn't be moved along a little faster and that has been the whole problem right from day one," said LTMS president Charlie Brown after the meeting, who had hoped to hear a positive response by January.
"We're really under short time constraints. We wish we had six months or a year to actually deal with this. The Henry is sitting there in Picton. Its fate is quickly coming up and we need to be able to deal with this in an efficient way."
Brown committed to assisting administration in whatever way he can and intends to lobby the province as well.
"The city of Thunder Bay has to have some skin in the game and this is the skin that we're looking for: a little bit of money to start us up," Brown said.
"We're not looking to come back time after time after time. This would actually give us the opportunity to move forward in a big way."
From its dry dock at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes At Kingston, the Alexander Henry attracted 10,369 visitors in 2015. The converted bed and breakfast section of the ship made a total of $935,000 over the decade it operated, ending in 2009.
LTMS members believe it could become a tourism attraction and destination if it could be secured to the former Pool 6 grain elevator site near Prince Arthur's Landing.
"From an investment standpoint, there's a lot of rationale to it, plus you have the historic value of the ship, which is an iconic transporation artifact," Brown said.
"It's a stand-alone, turn-key tourist operation that we can just bring in, put the gangplank down and hook it up and people can get up on it."
The idea sailed through shifting winds among councilors.
"Why don't you run it, own it and ask for a loan instead of a grant?" asked Westfort Coun. Joe Virdiramo.
Brown suggested the LTMS is a not-for-profit volunteer group and that a grant would deliver returns far above its weight in tourist investment.
While the LTMS budget listed Thunder Bay's contribution to the move at $125,000, it listed Kingston's contribution at only $50,000 even though Kingston would be otherwise liable for the cost of scrapping the ship at $326,000. Neebing Coun. Linda Rydholm challenged Brown and his executive to achieve a better balance.
"It's certainly by far -- by far -- the least expensive option for the city of Kingston so of course it got approval," Rydholm said. "I'm like other councilors here wondering if Kingston would ante up more funds. Fifty-thousand seems pretty cheap."
Northwood Coun. Shelby Ch'ng took her opposition a step further, casting the only dissenting vote in an otherwise unanimous council decision.
"I was hoping to be sold on the project and I can't help but feel like I'm not. It's not really a feeling, I'm looking at the numbers and feeling like they're not there. There are no numbers to explain the hotel costs, the costs of staffing. I'm not going to support a report because I don't see this as sustainable."
Brown said his group will continue fundraising into 2017 as it reaches out to what he said has been a receptive community not only to this project, but to the broader vision of a transportation museum to preserve the industry's history.
"All funds that will be generated through this will be turned back into the city's other projects that have been left to deteriorate by the city itself so there is a return on the investment on that," he said.
"It would certainly give us a big leg up as far as the Lakehead Transportation Museum's longer-term goal of a transportation museum and saving these artifacts in this area."
