Locked In?: This week President Donald Trump signed into law America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 and hopes are high that appropriation will soon follow of the $922.4 million for a new 1,200-foot-long lock at Sault Ste. Marie. Calling the signing “a milestone” in its press release, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, overseer of the Soo Locks, notes: “Since this act includes authorization for the construction of the new lock, the project can now compete with other construction projects throughout the country for appropriations, or funding. The project is authorized to be 100 percent federally funded and will be considered for appropriations in the next funding cycle.”
In the release, Lt. Col. Greg Turner, district engineer, said, “We stand ready to execute the New Soo Lock construction and have already begun taking steps to minimize the time from receipt of funding to project completion.” The lock has come close to authorization before about 15 years ago, but money was not actually appropriated. Once constructed, the new lock will take the pressure off the Poe Lock, which currently is the only one of the Soo Locks that can handle the 1,000-foot Great Lakes freighters. The Department of Homeland Security has warned that a closure of the Poe Lock, built in 1896 and rebuilt in 1968, for six months would halt U.S. steel production and affect 11 million jobs. “It’s really exciting that it was signed. Now we have to look at appropriations,” Deb DeLuca, executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, told Business North. It’s estimated that it will take seven years to build the new lock, work which will generate up to 15,000 jobs. The U.S. Army Corps altered the photo above to show what the new lock might look like, replacing two older locks. The second Poe-sized lock is shown on the far left, the current Poe Lock in the center, and the current MacArthur Lock far right.
Comfort Food: Two Thunder Bay women are using food as a way to welcome Indigenous students from remote northern First Nations coming to the city to study. Using a grant from the PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise, Sue Hamel and Michelle Derosier brought students from Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School and the Matawa Learning Centre on walking tours to sample a variety of restaurants and cafes, reports Heather Kitching of CBC News. They sampled baked goods at Bay Village Coffee, pancakes at the famed Hoito, salt fish at the Scandinavian Home Society, meats and cheeses at Maltese Grocery, pizza at Donato’s and treats Sweet North Bakery. They also visited the Ahnisnabae Art Gallery downtown. Michelle tells Heather that she had been thinking of doing something for a while to address the city’s challenges with race relations and the hard transition for students. The “Aanin Walking Tours” (aanin means “hi” in Ojibwe) seemed like a “really beautiful, simple thing to do.” Bay Village Coffee owner Gary Mack handed out gift cards to encourage the students to come back. “We’re just wanting to let them know that this is a place that’s safe,” Gary said, “and they’re welcome here any time.” In the photo, Michelle Derosier, front and center, captures a selfie in front of the Hoito with students of Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School and other Aanin walkers.
Sir Arthur at Silver Islet: A wonderful storyteller and friend, the late Bill MacDonald of Thunder Bay and Silver Islet, once wrote in Lake Superior Magazine about a Big Lake visit by the famed author of the Sherlock Holmes novels. “Lake Superior did not draw Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – lecturer, spiritualist and creator of Sherlock Holmes – to Silver Islet, Ontario, in 1914 and again in 1923,” Bill wrote. “Neither was he lured by the flooded, deep-shaft silver mine with its gutted buildings still clinging to the tiny islet that gave the mainland community its name. … No, Sir Arthur came for mystical, spiritual reasons. He came because he loved ghost towns and their cemeteries, with their faded headstones and trees growing out of graves. And he came to keep a promise to my great-aunt Muriel.” Link through to the rest of the story for a great ghostly tale to get you in the mood for next week’s Halloween excitement.
Other Ontario Ghosties: Who’s afraid of ghosts? Apparently not Algoma Country, where hauntings are an acknowledged part of its uncanny history in public and private places, writes Elizabeth Creith of The Sault Star. Historical sites like Fort St. Joseph hold ghost walks to educate and entertain the public. One story involves a British soldier who deserted with a companion in winter during the early 19th century. They tried to walk across the frozen lake to the U.S. side, lost their way and were found unconscious by traders who brought them to the fort. One died and the other lost both legs and all his fingers to the cold. At Fort St. Joseph some years ago, writes Elizabeth, “the curator told me that she and another employee of the fort were sitting outside one evening after the site had closed when they saw a man ‘walking’ toward the flagpole. He reached the pole and turned away, and they noticed he had no legs below the thigh.” Elizabeth notes other spooky tales, but also reports that the official position of City Hall in the Sault is that no historical site in the city is haunted. Yet some visitors have felt unearthly cold chills at the base of a staircase in the Ermatinger Old Stone House (in photo), where a small child is rumored to have fallen and later died. “A former employee also told me of working in the summer kitchen with another employee, and hearing doors squeaking around the house. There were no visitors or other staff on site at the time,” writes Elizabeth, who concludes her story with: “Are ghosts real? The answer depends on whom you ask. But just in case they are, you might want to follow the example of our Celtic ancestors. Keep to your own hearth, and if you hear a knock on the door and open it to find an oddly-dressed stranger there, don’t invite them in. Just bribe them with sweets to go away, and everybody will be happy.”
Good on Ya, Gord: A local broadcaster caught his “holy grail of angling” this week while on a fishing trip at Lac Seul with outdoor writer and guide Ben Beattie of Sioux Lookout. CBC Radio Canada Thunder Bay correspondent Gord Ellis hook a 51.5-inch muskie at the lake, which is about 380 miles northwest from Thunder Bay. “I caught it trolling a 10-inch lure called a Jake,” Gord generously tells us (not hiding either the location or the method). While the lake is a bit far from our Lake Superior watershed, we thought anglers might still get a kick out of a local man hooking a muskie monster – the elusive 50+ incher that he's hunted for three or four decades (according to Gord). "Just an incredible animal," Gord says of the fish. "And she went back to her icey abyss after a few pics … one for the books." Even before the big catch, Gord landed another important catch - a spot in Hayward, Wisconsin's Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame this spring. Gord's weekly Outdoor Column broadcasts Thursday mornings.
Dennis O'Hara
Marcia Hales’ walk-through display, 3739 S. Lake Ave. on Duluth’s Park Point, is open this season until Jan. 6.
Dennis O'Hara
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Marcia Hales sits beside more than a decade of guest books from her walk-through holiday display. Marcia welcomes visitors, Thanksgiving through the New Year, at 3739 Lake Avenue South.
The Last Lights: For those who have loved strolling through the amazing Holiday Spirit in the Lights display on Marcia Hales’ lakeside Park Point property in Duluth, this is the year to make sure to visit. Marcia told us this week that this will indeed be the last year for the display. She credits aid from Jim Braulik for making this last year possible, but says she needs aid to repair her walkway to the Lake, where sparkling green lights create a fairy tale beach during the holidays. The boardwalk was damaged in the recent storms. She’ll also be creating a volunteer site to garner help during the display, from Dec. 14-Jan. 5. Marcia’s magical lights, and how that walk-through display of twinkling lights, plastic penguins, a backyard bonfire and warming house has touched visitors from around the world, is the subject of Chuck Frederick’s book, Spirit of the Lights, by the publishers of Lake Superior Magazine.
Remembering a Tragedy: How powerful is a Lake Superior storm? We've blended two images here of the Black Rocks at Marquette, on the left, a sunny summer day taken by Jeff Burgess and, on the right, one from Jerry Mills taken during the Oct. 24, 2017, storm. Both photos are used by Jerry to tell the story of how one year ago, he snapped a picture of a man swept into Lake Superior during the October storm at Marquette. In his wrenching remembrance of that day, Jerry tells of his own brush with nearly being swept off a cliff. The man whom Jerry photographed was recovered, but two others – Robert Anderson and Sarah Hall – drowned nearby that day after also getting pulled off the shore by waves.
“One year ago, on October 24, 2017, I captured a viral photo of a young man being swept into Lake Superior and nearly drowned at Black Rocks in Marquette, MI, moments before two people standing on the rocks just below me were swept to their deaths,” writes Jerry. “What I’ve never shared, until today, is what happened twenty minutes earlier. Why? First, it’s embarrassing to admit how my determination to ‘get the shot’ that day almost got me killed. Second, because it’s still unsettling to accept that on that day, for the first time ever, I experienced terror beside this lake I have so long loved. Third, because I was always one who claimed, ‘That could never happen to me!’ It can. I know now. Because it did.”
Jerry goes on to describe how he found just the right spot where he thought it was safe to take photos, high above Lake Superior’s waves and nestled among trees he could use if the wind – which he thought was the danger – blew him around. As he was snapping shots, a wave crashed over the cliff where he was, nearly carrying him off, as he shows in a video posted this week, too. The photos here are in the video, and we blended them to show the vast change of the Lake from sunny to storm day. Jim posted the video and his story in hopes that others will not make the mistakes made by him and several others during that storm. “I’d give anything to change the outcome for Sarah and Bob, the two who drowned. I was reassured by their family that there was nothing anyone could have said or done to keep these two fellow adventurer photographers away from the lake that day. Just like me, they never saw or heard that Presque Isle was closed. Just like me, they hoped to document Lake Superior in her wildest natural state. And just like me, they never imagined that that day might be their last.”
Photo & graphic credits: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Michelle Derosier; Joy Morgan Dey, Paul L Hayden; Ben Beattie; Dennis O'Hara; Jeff Burgess/Jerry Mills.