From Montreal to Minnesota, by Inland Sea

August 20, 2016 8:40 AM

"I was so used to driving and flying, my understanding of North America had become distorted. Then I took a slow boat through four Great Lakes. I saw every mile."

Porter Fox recounts his six day voyage from Montreal to Thunder Bay as a passenger aboard the Algoma Equinox, a bulk carrier.

posted by mandolin conspiracy (28 comments total)

I WANT TO DO THIS SO BAD
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:44 AM on August 20, 2016 [17 favorites]

I grew up in SW Ontario and had no idea how truly big Ontario was until I drove across Canada.

Going around the lakes on the Canadian side is impressive. Around Lake Superior on the trans canada is the most beautiful driving in all of Canada in my opinion.
posted by srboisvert at 9:09 AM on August 20, 2016 [7 favorites]

That looks amazing. And perhaps like the most authentic form of travel ever. Except... maybe...

"I was so used to traveling by bulk carrier and tramp steamer, my understanding of North America had become distorted. So I hacked off my arms and legs and bobbed along on the currents like a discarded plastic bottle. I saw every mile."
posted by logicpunk at 9:56 AM on August 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

srboisvert is right, the north shore of Superior is a gorgeous drive.

_{grrr, Thunder Bay is not in Minnesota, dumb title writer}
posted by Sauce Trough at 10:43 AM on August 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Aughhh this was a secret known only to those who live in harbor towns and now EVERYONE KNOWS. and I will never win a ride.
posted by Elly Vortex at 12:05 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I got back last night from hiking on the coast of Lake Superior and can attest to the massiveness of Ontario, the majesty of the mountainous eastern coast, and how criminally under-appreciated it all is, although of course that's also one of its virtues. I had the Gargantua peninsula, a wild, Suessian landscape of volcanic rock (from when, as the article mentions, the continent was split apart), to myself all week. The real game changer was that the water was warm. I spent 3 summers there as a ranger 25 years ago and swam in the lake maybe once; this trip I was in this clear, sweet water all the time and it was paradise.

Anyway, it's kind of funny that the writer talks about this being a slow way to see the Great Lakes, when they made the trip from Detroit to Thunder Bay in at least half the time it would take if you were driving (and in so doing wrapped up the article rather abruptly - I guess you'll have to buy the book if you want to read about Sault Ste Marie, Superior and Thunder Bay).

Also: I realized just last week, watching a lake freighter rumble past Leslie Spit on the way to the Welland Canal, that every time I see a Laker I think of Gordon Downie, because of Broadcast: We look out and there, on the lake’s a light/ A Great Laker’s light / If it’s showing green / It’s dropping off something/ If it’s showing red/ Coming from the right/ Out of the west/ Into the night
posted by Flashman at 2:30 PM on August 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

As I write this, a laker is passing by on the St. Lawrence not far from where I'm sitting. I grew up watching them go through the seaway, and I know people who've worked on the boats. It's a decent living (or it was), but they take a slightly less prosaic view of the trip.

I'm not far from Kingston right now, and I would like to see the Hip tonight, but I'm on the US side, and I'm not even sure if they'll broadcast it here (plus we don't have a TV).
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:37 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's broadcasting live on the CBC's website.
posted by Kitteh at 3:52 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

and youtube. I'll be watching in Chicago.
posted by srboisvert at 4:06 PM on August 20, 2016

Hip stream on youtube.. I'm assuming this will be FPP'ed as well by someone more civic minded than me...
posted by srboisvert at 4:12 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Having taken a number of longish trips on a tiny and slow old-school Vespa, I found it a similar means of forcing the mind to finally process the scale of the world at an almost 1:1 ratio.
posted by sonascope at 4:40 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

This looks so lovely. I really want to do this.
posted by gt2 at 5:22 PM on August 20, 2016

Dang, that is some silver suit he's wearing!

I have driven around the Lakes on the way from Boston to the Twin Cities, and it is indeed nice. (The Ontario bits of that trip are a little dull, though: I once nodded off driving up there and awoke, still heading west on the same straight stretch of road. Yikes.)

But yeah, I thought we'd all agreed not to tell anyone about the North Shore. Who blabbed to the writer?!
posted by wenestvedt at 5:48 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm here in K-town and this is tremendous. Canada, you are so in love with this band, it is beautiful.

They opened with "50 Mission Cap!"
posted by Kitteh at 6:33 PM on August 20, 2016

I had a job before this

I had a job before this

It was that job that eventually drove me to this
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:21 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

i am verklempt.
posted by srboisvert at 7:22 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

OK gang, let's rent a sailboat and do this. The SS Paphnuty* wants you!

*The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down / Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
posted by leotrotsky at 7:39 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Know Your Ships" on Facebook is dedicated to boats on the Great Lakes. I grew up on Lake Erie; the pull of its maritime history is strong.
posted by etaoin at 11:06 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

My grandfather was a boilermaker in a shipyard in Milwaukee where freighters like this would come in for repairs. As a child I got to board many ships like this, and would marvel at the mounds of iron ore on deck. My grandmother would frequently offer to cook dinner for the ships' captains and senior officers, and they were always very glad to come off ship and have a family meal. I still have a log book my grandmother kept and the crew hailed from all over the world, including a few favourite return visitors from the UK and India. As a child I could never quite grok the geography/engineering that allowed a ship of that size to make it from the Atlantic into Lake Michigan.

Thanks for sharing the link. I might have missed this. I would love to do this cross-lake journey.
posted by amusebuche at 12:15 AM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm still worried about that small craft with engine trouble drifting into the shipping lanes. Hope they made out all right.
posted by valkane at 3:58 AM on August 21, 2016

> I grew up in SW Ontario and had no idea how truly big Ontario was until I drove across Canada.

My wife and a Scottish friend of hers once took the train from Toronto to Jasper, and the distances involved blew her friend's mind. To drive from Toronto to just the Manitoba border is about 1900 km, which is the same distance from her hometown of Glasgow to Kiev.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:15 AM on August 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

> As I write this, a laker is passing by on the St. Lawrence not far from where I'm sitting. I grew up watching them go through the seaway, and I know people who've worked on the boats.

I grew up in Sarnia, Ontario and still have family there. If you're into sitting by the water and watching tankers (and other boats of all sizes) go by, Sarnia is a damn good place to do it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:23 AM on August 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

I like how there's stopped traffic on the Blue Water Bridge, because of course there is.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:49 AM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

I, too was a bit disappointed the piece kind of went "Oh, then we got to Lake Superior which is pretty big. The end." I've got inlaws on the north shore of Superior and in Thunder Bay, and I love going up there because it's spectacular.

And yeah, Sarnia/Port Huron is great for watching ships because the shipping channel where Lake Huron feeds into the St. Clair River is quite narrow, and you get a close-up view.

Speaking of plying the Great Lakes as a passenger, Great Lakes cruises were once more of a thing: the SS Aquarama was docked briefly in Sarnia in 1988 near the grain elevators. It was towed to Sarnia after it was taken out of mothball in Muskegon (. The plan was to turn it into a floating convention centre/hotel. When it first arrived in Sarnia, you could tour it for five bucks. As a kid who liked watched ships, I badgered by dad to pony up for the tour, which he relented on, so I got to have a look around inside. Some Googling reveals that someone posted a VHS rip of their Aquarama tour from 1988 here.

It was a former troop carrier (originally the Marine Star) that was converted to a cruise ship in 1952 - you could take a cruise from Detroit to Cleveland on it, until it was mothballed in the early 1960s.

After the plan to dock in Sarnia and turn it into a hotel didn't pan out, it was towed to Windsor, and then eventually Buffalo where there was some proposal or other to turn it into a floating casino. Plans to repurpose it never got of the ground, and it was eventually scrapped.

Still...I'd love to travel the Great Lakes on a freighter.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:50 AM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nice to see James North in Hamilton get a shout-out. The Brain is a great place to grab a quiet pint on a Sunday afternoon. They have a solid tap list (Hennepin and some sort of DDC are usually there) and lots of delicious snacks.
posted by bismol at 9:38 AM on August 21, 2016

Kinda sorta related, so I'll just leave this here.

U.S. partiers wash up in Canada, blown across St. Clair River
'We had 1,500 people who were in complete need of help, and everyone walked away alive'

Last year:

Shipping groups from the U.S. and Canada say the annual Port Huron Float Down event on the St. Clair River puts participants in danger and hinders commercial operations.

The unsanctioned event takes place on the international waterway Sunday, with people in tubes and rafts expected to float from a beach in Port Huron, Mich., — across from Sarnia, Ont. — to Chrysler Beach in Marysville, Mich., approximately 13 km down river and across from Corunna, Ont.

It's a pretty narrow shipping lane, with a pretty swift current.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:31 PM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

My sister (who lives in Sarnia) just texted me that article. I think my favourite part is "...where were Americans everywhere."
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:37 PM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I sent this to my dad in Thunder Bay. Before they had kids his father was a cook on one of the shipping lines in the Great Lakes and sailed these routes.
posted by marylynn at 8:03 PM on August 25, 2016