Down Memory Lane

I know this was supposed to be the summer of the railways, but bear with me on this little marine excursion -- there most definitely is a connection.

When that I was and a little tiny lad (in 1961, when I was 7 years old, if you want the facts) my parents decided to take the family on a trip to Saskatchewan.  My mother was from Regina, and many of her relatives still lived there.  At that time, the Canadian Pacific Railways' splendid deluxe streamlined train The Canadian was still only 5 years old.  Amazing to think that the same railway cars continue in service today, and still under that historic name, 55 years later!

Anyway, we travelled exclusively via the CPR -- but not entirely by rail!  At that time, the CPR still ran two passenger/cargo steamships on the Great Lakes during the summer.  Their route was from the CPR harbour at Port McNicoll (near Midland ON) to Fort William (now Thunder Bay) with two nights spent on the ship en route.  On the first morning out from Port McNicoll, the passage through the locks in Sault Ste, Marie was a highlight of the trip.  A special "boat train" connected from Union Station in Toronto to the dockside in Port McNicoll on the days one of the ships was sailing.  We went west by that route, continuing on The Canadian from Fort William to Regina, and made the entire return trip by train.

All of which is bringing me around to the fact that the very ship upon which we travelled, the S. S. Keewatin, is now once again moored dockside in Port McNicoll as a museum, and open to visitors.

The mere fact that the Keewatin is still afloat on her own keel is pretty remarkable.  This ship was built in 1907, making her 108 years old this year.  With her sister ship Assiniboia, she was designed and built at the Fairfield shipyard in Glasgow, Scotland, on the river Clyde.  The Clyde was the world's Number One shipbuilding port at that time, and the many shipyards turned out a multitude of famous ships.  Among the great Clyde-built ocean liners, the Keewatin and Assiniboia must have appeared pretty tiny and insignificant, but the design and construction followed very similar principles as you can see in these two magnificent models located aboard the ship.  The Keewatin is in front, the Belfast-built Titanic behind, and both models are built to the same scale.

But the Keewatin is still with us when such famous Clyde-built ocean greyhounds of that day as Cunard's Mauretania and Aquitania -- and even much more recent Clydesiders like the original Queen Elizabeth -- have long since gone to their fate at the scrapyards.  Indeed, the Keewatin is -- as far as is known -- the only surviving steamship in the world dating from the time before the first World War which is still afloat.  What is this miniature ocean liner's secret of longevity?

Simple.  It's called "fresh water".  The metal used in constructing the hull simply didn't corrode to anywhere close to the same extent that it would have done had she spent her entire career in the ocean.

Mind you, the Keewatin is no stranger to salt water.  She was sailed across from Glasgow to Canada on her own steam.  At Quebec she had to be cut in two and the front and back portions towed through the small locks along the St. Lawrence River and the Welland Canal.  Once into Lake Erie, the ship was reassembled at Buffalo and sailed proudly to Georgian Bay to begin her career.  This extraordinary process was built right into the ship at the design stage, by the way.

She was far from alone.  In that age before the development of highways, the marine highway of the Great Lakes was of prime importance as a transport route for both passengers and cargo.  After World War One the rival Canadian National Railway also maintained a shipping service on the Great Lakes.  So did Canada Steamship Lines, whose white-painted liners with red and black funnels were a familiar sight from Thunder Bay to Tadoussac on the lower St. Lawrence, and all ports in between.

After her final retirement in 1965, the Keewatin was taken to Douglas MI, where she was maintained lovingly as a floating museum by a local family.  More recently, a developer proposed a sizable waterfront park and real estate development on the site of the original CPR station, gardens, and dock at Port McNicoll.  The obvious centrepiece of such a development was sitting dockside in Michigan, waiting for her moment.  In 2012, the ship was towed backwards out of the mouth of the Saugatuck River -- with considerable effort and a good bit of nail biting due to the shallow sandbars blocking the channel behind her -- and then on a long voyage up Lake Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinac, across Lake Huron and down the length of Georgian Bay to her old home port.

Here's a picture of the Keewatin being triumphantly towed home into Port McNicoll three years ago:

(photo by Gail Hamelin)

A good deal of the ship's original equipment has survived all these years.  Other items have been returned or donated from many sources, or even reconstructed.  So when you visit the Keewatin, now in the process of being restored to as much of her original state as possible (with the aid of much dedicated volunteer labour), you are seeing a ship whose décor reflects the exact era that gave birth to the eternally-famous R. M. S. Titanic.  More than that, you will see a time capsule of furniture, table settings, clothes, and other artifacts reflecting the decades during which Keewatin was in service.  There's also a sizable collection of beautifully detailed marine models, donated or loaned.

I've been looking for the opportunity to visit the Keewatin ever since that grand return, and this week the chance finally came.  Walking through the Keewatin after all these years was an amazing experience -- a real feeling of time travel.  At every turn, memories were triggered by the sights and surroundings.

To start off with, here are a few black and white photos from that voyage over half a century ago.

(P. S.:  I'm the youngest one!)

The second picture plainly shows that the Keewatin was a coal burner.  Unlike many ships around the world, she was never updated to burn fuel oil.  That last picture (plainly on a windy day) was taken outside the wheelhouse.  We were actually given a personal tour of the bridge and wheelhouse.  That was thanks to my grandfather, a noted marine architect, who arranged this special visit with his personal friend, the superintendent of the CPR's Great Lakes service.

You'll also see that all the other pictures were taken on the boat deck.  That was plainly the centre of our life aboard ship, but was the one main area of the ship that was not covered on the tour -- not yet, anyway.  Maybe it will be in future.

I arrived early in the morning, and after a sizable tour group from a Great Lakes cruise was taken off to visit around the vessel, I was the only person waiting.  So I got a solo personalized tour from Ron, the former head tour guide, who is an absolute fountain of information.  All my life, I've been fascinated by any kind of transportation technology, so I was totally in my element -- quite aside from the memory aspect of the visit.

Here, then, are a selection of the photos I got today, with appropriate comments:

The ship's main staircase -- obviously Ron took this one for me.  Thank you, Ron!

The Ladies' Lounge -- where, as Ron put it, the ladies were served afternoon tea and other things that they perhaps shouldn't have been having!

The long narrow central lounge -- peering between the flower planters, you can glimpse the lower level where a grand piano was located.  I recall a singalong night in that lounge.

The skylight of the lounge contains the original panels of hand-painted glass from Italy.  The Keewatin wasn't intended for the deluxe Atlantic trade, but the CPR still decorated with a lavish hand and budget.

Original soup cups from the ship's china service on display in the dining room.  Hundreds more pieces of the original china are shown in the pantry.

Individually hand-carved wall panels in the gentlemen's lounge and bar, each one with a different face portrayed in the centre.

The basic tour of the ship costs $15.00.  For $5.00 extra you can add on a tour of the boiler room and engine room, which is absolutely fascinating.  Here's a view of the workings of the main engine, a smaller version (but still impressive) of the same type of engine used in such ships as the Titanic. 

And finally, as I left the ship on a beautiful sunny day, this end-to-end portrait of the Keewatin posing as of old alongside the dock in Port McNicoll.

Touring the S. S. Keewatin was a remarkable experience -- certainly a trip down memory lane, but also a trip back into history, to a simpler time when travel was more leisurely and more of an experience in its own right, when cars were mainly used for shorter trips and trains and ships covered longer distances while the passengers relaxed and enjoyed themselves.  Truly fascinating.