An American television station is featuring a former local resident.
Called ‘Resurrecting a Titanic-era cruise ship’, the PBS program Great Lakes Now discusses the SS Keewatin’s move from Port McNicoll to Kingston last year as part of the series dive into Lake Huron.
When the S.S. Keewatin was built in Glasgow Scotland in 1907, the shipwrights knew the finished ship would be too large to fit through the St. Lawrence Seaway and Welland Canal, the program notes.
“So, they built bulkheads into her hull and the ship was split into two pieces when she reached Montreal. The two pieces were then towed separately to Buffalo, NY where they were reconnected.”
Skyline Investments Inc., which brought the ship to its home port of Port McNicoll with great fanfare in 2012, donated the Edwardian-era vessel to Marine Museum of the Great Lakes (now called the Great Lakes Museum) last year.
While the host’s pronunciation of the ship may throw viewers off, the program tells the story of how the S.S. Keewatin operated in the Upper Great Lakes throughout the first half of the 1900s as part of the Canadian Pacific Railroad fleet.
But by the 1960s, faster modes of transportation took hold, and hundreds of steamships like the Keewatin were decommissioned and sold for scrap.
Over the next 50 years, it would take no less than three miracles for her to reach the Kingston museum where she sits today, a promo for the program says.
“It’s the mandate of the Great Lakes Museum to preserve this ship for all of Canada, for all the world because it is one of a kind for the world,” Doug Cowie, the Great Lakes Museum manager.
The program airs tonight at 7:30 p.m. on WTVS Detroit and September 8 at 10 a.m. on WNED Buffalo.
