Miniature Empress of Canada Oil Painting Sells in Montreal for $419.00

A small 8 x 10″ oil painting by Canadian artist Harry Leslie Smith (1900-74) of Canadian Pacific’s second Empress of Canada at her berth in Montreal sold today on eBay for $419.  The starting price was $9.99 and the painting attracted 43 bids. This was the ship in which I emigrated from England to Canada at the age of four, along with my parents and younger brother. I remember to this day my father holding my head out the porthole and telling me that this was our new land – and seeing the bleak, grey, rocky coast of Labrador in late October!

Coming back to the UK for good in 1992, the result of that voyage today is a London-based company called The Cruise People Ltd, which I formed to be able to allow the public to book the voyages that they wanted. We don’t just do cruises, our customers have sailed Round Antarctica, to the North Pole in Russian nuclear icebreakers, up the Amazon to Peru, to Australia in container ships, across the Northwest Passage in ice class expedition ships, across the Atlantic in tall ships – just ask and we’ll see what we can do for you, including the ultimate in luxury.

Along the way, in 1998, I managed to obtain a larger oil painting of the Empress of Canada by American artist Lawrence Blumenthal that today hangs in my office in London and shows her departing from Liverpool on one of her regular voyages to Montreal. This painting is joined by a Blumenthal miniature in oils of Cunard Line’s Carinthia, in which ship I returned to England at the age of eleven to spend a summer in North Devon.

For your own voyage of choice  please call us on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk and we will do our utmost to find what you are looking for, and if we can’t we’ll do our best to make alternative suggestions.

By Kevin Griffin, London, 12th February 2013.

On the Bridge On The Event Of The Return Of The Former Canadian Pacific Steamship Keewatin to Canada, June 23, 2012

Here we have Eric Conroy, project manager for s.s. Keewatin, in his role as Capt Rick and Kevin Griffin of The Cruise People Ltd on the day of her return to Port McNicoll. Kevin had been a waiter on sister ship s.s. Assiniboia and had been invalided off at Sault Ste Marie in late August 1965 with appendicitis. Some forty-seven years later, on his arrival at Port McNicoll, he met John Bell, the dishwasher at the time who had been promoted into his position as waiter. Both Eric and Kevin started their careers as 17-year-old waiters for Canadian Pacific Great Lakes Steamships and Kevin transferred out to Canadian Pacific BC Coast Steamships in 1966 to serve as chief night steward on the Alaska cruise ship t.e.v. Princess Patricia, summer work that helped put him through Western University in London, Ontario.

Here are some photos from that voyage:  Photo essay of the Keewatin‘s voyage from Mackinaw City to Port McNicoll.

For further information on cruising in the Great Lakes or to Alaska please feel free to call The Cruise People Ltd in London, England, on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk

Two Views of Canadian Pacific’s s.s. Keewatin Approaching Port McNicoll – Separated by About Ninety Years

The view on the right was taken on June 23, 2012, as the s.s. Keewatin approached Port McNicoll after an absense of forty-five years in Douglas, Michigan. The view on the left is a Notman Archives photo taken from a similar spot about forty-five years before that. Roughly ninety years separate the two photographs yet the deck looks the same, minus the passengers. The grain elevator and freight sheds ashore have meanwhile disappeared.

Here are some photos from this voyage:  Photo essay of the Keewatin‘s voyage from Mackinaw City to Port McNicoll.

To learn more about cruising in the Great Lakes feel free to call The Cruise People Ltd in London, England,  on 0230 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk.

The Wake of the s.s. Keewatin

Here we have the wake of the s.s. Keewatin in Lake Huron last week, as she was being towed by Fogg Towing’s ST class tug Wendy Anne and escort tug American Girl from Mackinaw City to Port McNicoll, Ontario, Keewatin‘s base port for more than half a century.

Having left Mackinaw City on Tuesday evening at 5:30, passing Blount Small Ship Adventures’ Grande Mariner off Mackinac Island, the last Canadian Pacific steamship, s.s. Keewatin continued on course to her new career in Georgian Bay. On board were Eric Conroy, project manager, with Josh Killham, Al Russell and myself and cameraman Cameron McCleery as passengers, plus four sailors from Fogg Towing Co of Beaver Island, Michigan – Dennis, Ryan, Bob and Jonathan – and pilot Kevin Noseworthy. And here is the evidence – the wake of the s.s. Keewatin off Manitoulin Island.

We entered Georgian Bay on Thursday evening June 21 at about 7:30, greeted by a small flotilla of boats off Tobermory. The s.s. Keewatin literally sailed out of the sunset towards her new life as the centrepiece of a marine park at the developing resort town of Port McNicoll, where we arrived at about 1:30 pm on Saturday, June 23, accompanied by a much larger flotilla! Here are some of the results of that voyage:  Photo essay of the Keewatin‘s voyage from Mackinaw City to Port McNicoll.

For further details on this ship or cruising the Great Lakes in 2012 please contact Kevin Griffin at The Cruise People Ltd in London on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk.

New Expedition Company in the Costa Rica to Ecuador Range – Other Cruise News: One Ocean Plans Two Northwest Passage Transits This Summer – Keewatin Casts Off For Canada Tomorrow

          THE CRUISE EXAMINER at Cybercruises.com

          by Kevin Griffin

     The Cruise Examiner for 18th June 2012

This week we report on Sea Voyager Expeditions, a new expedition company that will offer departures to Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and Costa Rica. The ship they will be using is the 60-guest Sea Voyager, which once worked for Lindblad. Far from the tropics, in the Canadian Arctic, four ships will be offering transits of the Northwest Passage in 2013, but One Ocean Expeditions is planning to operate two such passages this summer between Kangerlussuaq and Coppermine, in the Canadian Arctic, with the Akademik Ioffe. And today The Cruise Examiner crosses the Atlantic to join the 105-year-old former Canadian Pacific passenger ship Keewatin for the last leg of her voyage back to her old base in Canada.

THIS WEEK’S STORY                                          (See previous columns)

Former Canadian Pacific s.s. Keewatin, Last Surviving Edwardian Liner in the World, Sails on Tuesday For Her Old Home Port in Canada

This photo by “National Post” photographer Darren Calabrese shows the finish on this Clyde-built steamship.

From Kevin Griffin, managing director at The Cruise People in London: I have been posting recently on the subject of the s.s. Keewatin‘s voyage back to Canada and this week, at the invitation of former Keewatin crew member and project manager Eric Conroy, I will actually be joining this historic ship for the final leg of her homeward journey. Eric and I both started our careers as 17-year-old waiters on these ships, he on Keewatin and I on sister ship Assiniboia.

Conroy, who worked two summers on the Keewatin and wrote a book about it called “A Steak in the Drawer” (the title came from ordering an extra steak and putting it in a drawer for later consumption), has been in charge of this project. This involved purchasing the 3,856-ton vessel, the last surviving Canadian Pacific passenger ship and possibly the last surviving Edwardian liner in the world, and bringing her home to Canada. In November, the firm that engaged him, Skyline International Development Inc of Toronto, purchased the 105-year-old Clyde-built ship and after having dredged the harbor at Douglas, Michigan, where she had been used as a museum, at a cost of $1 million to release her, had her towed to Mackinaw City, where she has been waiting.  All of this has been made possible by Skyline International and its founder and president Gil Blutrich, whose vision has brought this about.

Photographer Darren Calabrese rolls up his sleeping bag after spending a night on board in Mackinaw City.

On Monday morning, I cross the Atlantic to join the ship as one of five riding crew, five sailors, a cook and a cameraman, for the final leg of her tow to the Georgian Bay port of Port McNicoll, her base for several decades. In Port McNicoll, the Keewatin will become the centrepiece of a new waterfront park and part of a new resort community being developed by Skyline International, which also owns the King Edward, Cosmopolitan and Pantages Hotels in Toronto and the Deerhurst and Horseshoe resorts in Muskoka and Barrie, Ontario. 

The subject of repatriating this 105-year-old cruise ship to Canada, brings to mind the cruising history of Canadian Pacific, whose Empresses, Duchesses and Princesses operated so many early cruises. Canadian Pacific, one of the early lines to go into cruising, offered a world cruise every year in the 1920s and 1930s, when the St Lawrence River was closed by ice, as well as cruises between Montreal and New York, to Bermuda, to Alaska, to the Mediterranean and to the West Indies, not to mention the Great Lakes. This, and crossing the Atlantic with Canadian Pacific as a four-year-old boy, was what got me into the shipping business and into cruising.

To know more about the this voyage:  Photo essay of the Keewatin‘s voyage from Mackinaw City to Port McNicoll. And for cruising in general please call The Cruise People Ltd in London on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk.

Homebound Voyage of Former Canadian Pacific Steamship Keewatin From Mackinaw City Finishes at Port McNicoll Next Week: Scene at Mackinaw With Tug Wendy Anne by Richard Weiss

A personal note from Kevin Griffin, managing director of The Cruise People Ltd in London, England:

I have a particular interest in the s.s. Keewatin as I was privileged at the age of 17 to land my first real job - as a waiter – on board her sister ship s.s. Assiniboia. This was during their last summer of passenger service and just before I entered university. The Keewatin and Assiniboia were built on the Clyde in 1907 and operated Canadian Pacific’s Great Lakes Steamship Service, sailing weekly from Port McNicoll, on Georgian Bay, to Sault Ste Marie and on to the Canadian Lakehead at Port Arthur and Fort William (which combined into Thunder Bay in 1970).

The pay was $173.58 per month but that was upped almost immediately to $240 once I was on board. Meals and berth were included and tips were an added bonus. Clothing requirements were “black shoes, white shirts, black bow tie, navy blue trousers and old clothing for work in port. Jackets are supplied and the navy trousers can be purchased at Del Hasting’s Men’s Wear in Midland.” The jackets were blue serge with brass buttons and were quite warm on a hot summer’s day at lunchtime!

The Keewatin sailed on Wednesdays and the Assiniboia on Saturdays and the two ships met at Sault Ste Marie every Sunday. The cost of such an “Inland Sea” cruise in those days was $90 per person in an inside cabin or $100 in an outside, and the fare included passage Port McNicoll-Fort William and return, berth and meals aboard ship and hotel room and meals in Fort William while the ship handled cargo. These cruises, which  were offered twice weekly, thus consisted of five nights, one of which was spent ashore.

When the boat train from Toronto came alongside at Port McNicoll at 3 pm, passengers boarded the ship, followed by the waiters carrying their luggage (and freshly laundered sheets, towels and uniforms from the Royal York Hotel laundry in Toronto) and she sailed promptly at 3:15 – just fifteen minutes later! At the Lakehead there were rail connections to and from the Pacific via Canadian Pacific’s famous Trans-Continental express “The Canadian.”

The next season, with the passenger service gone (although the Assiniboia still carried cargo for a while), I was given a ticket on “The Canadian” and assigned to Canadian Pacific’s British Columbia Coast Steamship Service, where I joined Princess Patricia, cruising from Vancouver to Alaska. She was built in the same shipyard as Assiniboia and Keewatin and gave her name to Princess Cruises when she was chartered to Stan McDonald of Seattle for two winters cruising from Los Angeles to Mexico. We had to remove all the Mexican decorations in preparation for her next Alaska season. One difference on the West Coast was that the waiters wore cooler white jackets for lunch.

Having sailed as a four-year-old from Liverpool to Montreal in Canadian Pacific’s second Empress of Canada, and later worked for the company in Montreal, I had not only immigrated to Canada with them, but had also managed to collect three employee numbers – in Port McNicoll, Vancouver and Montreal! Meanwhile I crossed the Atlantic again on the third Empress of Canada in 1970. As the Mardi Gras two years later, she became the start of Carnival Cruise Lines and right up until today’s Carnival Breeze, every Carnival ship has had an “Empress Deck.”

Now, I am privileged once again by being one of only a few to be invited to join the final leg of  the tow of Canadian Pacific’s last surviving passenger ship, s.s. Keewatin, from Mackinaw City back to her home port of Port McNicoll. There she is due to arrive at about 1:30 pm on June 23, a hundred years to the day after her first passenger departure from the then-new port, which opened in 1912. Under the auspices of Skyline International Development Inc of Toronto, the Keewatin is to become the centrepiece of a new waterfront park in the newly-revived resort community of Port McNicoll.

Here now are some of the results of that voyage:  Photo essay of the Keewatin‘s voyage from Mackinaw City to Port McNicoll.

For details of present-day Great Lakes cruising please feel free to contact The Cruise People Ltd on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk. We are still very much involved with the Great Lakes, as general passenger agent for the Polish Steamship Company’s cargo-passenger service between Europe and the Great Lakes.

Great Video Shots of the Former Canadian Pacific Steamship Keewatin Being Towed Out of Saugatuck-Douglas, Michigan, Last Week

From the lens of Roger Lelievre, publisher of the Great Lakes shipping guide “Know Your Ships,” this video positively brings the 105-year-old s.s. Keewatin alive again.

For details of present-day Great Lakes cruising please feel free to contact The Cruise People Ltd on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk. We are still very much involved with the Great Lakes, as European representative for the Great Lakes Cruising Coalition and also as general passenger agent for the Polish Steamship Company’s cargo-passenger service between Europe and the Great Lakes.

Canadian Pacific’s Last Surviving Passenger Steamship S.S. Keewatin Passes Under The Mackinac Bridge at 10:35 am on June 4, 2012

The former Canadian Pacific Great Lakes steamship Keewatin is seen here at about 10:35 local time this morning passing under the Mackinac Bridge from Lake Michigan into Lake Huron. The 105-year-old Clyde-built steamship will lay over at Mackinaw City for a few days before completing the final leg of her return voyage to her former home port of Port McNicoll, Ontario, where she is due at 2 pm on June 23. This will be one hundred years to the day from when she departed on her first Canadian Pacific passenger sailing from the same port bound for Sault Ste Marie, Port Arthur and Fort William. The Keewatin will become the centrepiece of a waterfront park in her old home port on Georgian Bay. Here now are some of the results of that voyage:  Photo essay of the Keewatin‘s voyage from Mackinaw City to Port McNicoll.

For anyone wanting to cruise the Great Lakes in 2012 please contact The Cruise People Ltd in London on 020 7723 2450 for further details of cruises offered by Travel Dynamics International in the 138-passenger m.v. Yorktown, or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk.

The Cruise Examiner Tries Out Croisières de France’s Horizon – Other Cruise News: s.s. Keewatin Finally Leaves Douglas, Michigan

          THE CRUISE EXAMINER at Cybercruises.com

          by Kevin Griffin

     The Cruise Examiner for 4th June 2012

This Sunday in Marseilles, together with twenty-four members of the Ocean Liner Society, The Cruise Examiner completed a 7-night Western Mediterranean cruise on board Croisières de France’s new 46,811-ton Horizon. with calls at Santa Margherita (for Portofino), Civitavecchia (for Rome), Salerno (for the Amalfi coast), Trapani and Valletta. He filed his report from on board ship on the way back to Marseilles. Next year’s Ocean Liner Society cruise will be a 4-night voyage departing Hamburg on May 27, 2013,  for Kiel via Sylt and Heligoland, on Plantours + Partner’s m.s. Hamburg, until recently operating as Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ Columbus.

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Meanwhile, last week, after forty-five years as a maritime museum at Douglas, Michigan, the former Canadian Pacific Great Lakes steamship Keewatin finally left Douglas, after a false start on a sandbar, on the first leg of a trip under tow to her previous home port in Canada. She will lay over at Mackinaw City, Michigan, before departing on her final leg to Port McNicoll, Ontario, where she is due at 2 pm on June 23, a hundred years to the day after her first passenger departure from that port.

THIS WEEK’S STORY                                          (See previous columns)

The Cruise Examiner for 23rd January 2012: New Small Ship Cruise Services in the South Pacific – Other Cruise News: The Keewatin is Prepared for her Homecoming

          THE CRUISE EXAMINER at Cybercruises.com

          by Kevin Griffin

     The Cruise Examiner for 23rd January 2012

As ships get larger and larger it is pleasing to see new small ship services opening up at the other end of the size scale, two of which in the South Pacific have recently come to the attention of The Cruise Examiner. A new organisation called Pacific Schooners has been formed to offer 7, 14 and 22-day cruises around the Cook Islands in the 30-passenger saili-assisted Tiare Taporo, which has recently been converted from a Grand Banks side trawler. Further to the south, a company called Island Escape Small Ship Cruising, now offers 5- and 6-night cruises in Vanuatu, Tonga and New Zealand’s Bay of Islands in the 24-passenger catamaran Island Passage. Further north, on the Great Lakes, the new owners of the former Canadian Pacific passenger ship Keewatin are preparing to have her towed from Douglas, Michigan, were she has spent the past forty-five years as a museum ship, to her old home port of Port McNicoll, Ontario, on Georgian Bay, where she is to become the centrepiece of a new resort development, and possibly a new cruise ship port as well.

THIS WEEK’S STORY                                          (See previous columns)

Plans for the s.s. Keewatin Come Together as She is Readied for Her June Tow to Become the Centrepiece of a New Resort Community at Port McNicoll on Canada’s Georgian Bay

Photograph of s.s. Keewatin and dredging equipment at Douglas, Michigan, courtesy of Eric Conroy at the s.s. Keewatin Project

And now for a happier story than the recent Costa cruise ship tragedy and tales of a Shakespearian captain.  What you are looking at here is the 105-year-old former Canadian Pacific Great Lakes passenger ship Keewatin.  At 3,856 gross tons and with dimensions of 350 x 44 feet, she has just been rescued from an uncertain future to become the centrepiece of a new resort development at her old Georgian Bay home port of Port McNicoll, Ontario.

The Keewatin is shown at Douglas, Michigan, near Saugatuck, where she has been used as a maritime museum for the past forty-five years. She has been shorn of her lifeboats in order to lighten ship for a scheduled June tow from Douglas to Port McNicoll. In the foreground is the dredging equipment that was hired to cut the channel from Douglas that will free her. The Edwardian steamship was lying in a bed of mud until December 2011, when she was finally floated again, and after inspection  was said to be in marvellous condition.

This dredging, which is being paid for by the ship’s new owners Skyline International Development Inc, will also open up the dock at Douglas to small cruise ships such as Travel Dynamics’ 2,354-ton Yorktown, 257 x 43 feet, which is scheduled to call at nearby Saugatuck several times this year on her cruises between Detroit and Chicago. The Yorktown has a passenger capacity of 138, compared to Keewatin‘s 288 when she was in service between 1908 and 1965.  For those wishing to cruise the Great Lakes in 2012, the Yorktown will be offering a total of thirteen 7, 10, 11 and 14-night cruises, with fares from $3,995 for seven nights, including the cruise, all port charges, lectures, shore excursions and wine with lunch and dinner.

When she returns, the Keewatin, shown here at Port McNicoll during her days of regular service between Georgian Bay and Lake Superior, will become a floating community centre and centrepiece for Port McNicoll’s renaissance. Plans are to build a new resort hotel and condominiums and rebuild the old dockside railway station to its original plans. On board, Keewatin will also feature a museum on her main deck and a kind of market in her old main cargo deck, which in her last years was used to carry about forty cars. This will also be made available for community functions. Berthed very near to her old berth, from which she used to sail from every Wednesday for Sault Ste Marie, Port Arthur and Fort William (the last two now called Thunder Bay), the ship will become the hub of what has until now been a sleepy Ontario town.

Just this month Skyline has also acquired a set of vintage railway rolling stock to become part of the scene. The port, with deep water, will naturally be seeking to attract a certain amount of cruise ship trade, and with an attraction such as the Keewatin will be well equipped to do so.

For more information on either the s.s. Keewatin or how to book a Great Lakes cruise in the m.v. Yorktown please contact The Cruise People Ltd in London on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk.