Lost opportunity

Ron Bourret remember almost being swept overboard delivering a meal to the captain of the SS Keewatin.

Bourret, Thunder Bay’s manager of licensing and enforcement, spent his 16th summer as a night steward on the fabled passenger liner, a familiar sight on the Great Lakes until 1967, when passenger service between Port McNicoll and the twin cities of Port Arthur and Fort William was cancelled.

On Thursday it was confirmed the Keewatin, which has been housed in Saugatuck, Mich. for more than four decades, is coming home to Canada, but not to Thunder Bay.

Instead the luxurious ship will be turned into the feature attraction on the Port McNicoll, Ont.  waterfront, a living museum honouring the Great Lakes’ storied past.

Bourret has mixed feelings about the ship heading to southern Ontario, and not his hometown Thunder Bay, after 44 years as a fixture on the Saugatuck waterfront. 

“It’s a loss,” Bourret said, happy though that the Keewatin will once again call Canada home. “When I see what they’ve done with the other passenger ships in Toronto harbour, as well as the one in Kenora, even if we had it as restaurant or something like that, it certainly would have been an incredible tourist draw.

“It’s very unfortunate. It’s a great loss. We see what the one in Duluth does. It’s just a laker, and yet the tourists going through that, and even me bringing my grandkids through that was amazing.”

Bourret recalled several fond memories of his time aboard the Keewatin and its 3,300-horsepower engine, including being inducted into the fire spark patrol.

Sent to the top of the ship with a bucket of water in hand, it was the job of the new recruits to catch the sparks emanating from the smoke stack, ensuring they didn’t hit the wooden deck and burn the Keewatin to the water.

It took new crewmembers about 15 minutes to catch onto the fact they’d been had by the veterans.

“They were just killing themselves with laughter,” he fondly remembered.

Bill Scollie blames the city administration of the day for the Glasgow, Scotland-built Keewatin not being part of the Thunder Bay waterfront.

Scollie, at the time an at-large city councillor, was part of a major push about eight years ago to bring the Keewatin home to Thunder Bay as the centerpiece to waterfront revitalization. 

Billed the last of the Great Lakes steamships, Scollie said the city had a commitment from Keewatin owner R.J. Peterson to bring her back to Thunder Bay.

Red tape got in the way, however.

“We shook hands. (R.J. Peterson) donated it to us. We shook hands on the deal. The boat was being donated through the Friends of Canada Association so Mr. Peterson could get a tax deduction. What happened after that, and this is observation, we ended up getting a new city manager and a new city clerk.”

Scollie said he asked Bob Petrie, the then city manager, and John Hannam, the city clerk, to renew the waterfront development committee, which at the time had been allowed to lapse for about 18 months.

It didn’t happen, at least not right away.

“I think Mr. Peterson, who loved the boat, I think he just thought we lost interest.”

Also at issue was the estimated US$1 million cost to dredge a channel through silt-filled Kalamazoo Harbour, a must for a ship which drafts between 16 and 18 feet. Without the procedure, the boat is all but immovable.

Scollie said it’s a shame something couldn’t have been worked out to move the Keewatin to Thunder Bay.

“The boat itself could have been pulled into any harbour, our harbour I would have hoped, been hooked up to a hydro line and a septic line and it instantly would have become our No. 1 tourist attraction on our harbour,” Scollie said.