Halifax man travels to Kingston to once again board S.S. Keewatin

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While there was no shortage of special guests along Kingston’s waterfront on Saturday for the official opening of the SS Keewatin to the public, none was more special than Jim Sykes.

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The 91-year-old Halifax resident made the 1,500-kilometre, 15-hour trek westward to the Limestone City to once again spend some time with an old friend — the Keewatin.

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Sykes worked aboard the ship, which now permanently resides in the dry dock at the Great Lakes Museum, for a decade between 1946 and 1956.

“They’re divided into categories,” said Wykes, whose memories of his time aboard the ship were clear, according to his family. “One is the fun, one is serious accidents and one the bad weather. I could on about each of those, probably too long.”

On a day meant to celebrate the world’s last remaining British-built Edwardian passenger steamship, Wykes chose to remember a few of the fun times he had aboard the 117-year-old vessel.

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“There’s a place up on the next deck that if you threw a potato overboard, it would go straight down and end up coming up under the stern because it had gone through the propeller,” Sykes recounted as guests and officials hung on his every word. “We think it only happened once, but somebody decided if you could do it with one potato, you could do it with a bag of potatoes. They dropped a bag in a canvas bag and the whole bloody bunch came up under the fantail, having gone through the propeller,” he said to more than a few laughs.

He also recalled how they’d initiate the newer staff members.

“There was always one for the new guy when there were three decks above this,” Sykes said. “They’d get the new guy to stick his head out the porthole, telling him there was some attraction and then send somebody up above with a bucket of water. As soon as he stuck his head out …” he said, not needing to finish his sentence. “They’d come down mad as heck and we’d say, ‘Look, we’ll do it over again but, we’ll send somebody else up. That time you’d send somebody up to the fourth deck with it and get him all over again,” he quipped.

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“We did have some fun.”

While aboard the ship, Sykes built massive model versions of ships, including two that are still on display, perfectly intact, aboard Keewatin today. He also built a replica of Keewatin itself, which is displayed inside administrative offices in Tay Township, where the ship used to reside.

Flexing his knowledge of the Keewatin, Sykes pointed to the ship’s interior walls.

“I know this boat so well that I know her rivets are all reversed, so that the head of the rivet is outside, where normal riveting the head is on the inside,” he said, also adding that Keewatin used to transport grain, which required a hatch that went right through the passenger port, but which was disguised.

“There was a hatch that went down right through the passenger port, but it was disguised,” Sykes said. “Eventually they cut that out and they didn’t carry grain anymore and they put portholes in the new cabins they created and they were not reverse rivets,” he said.

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But neither Sykes’ experiences, nor his knowledge, are what he most cherished from his time aboard the Keewatin.

“He met his wife on this boat as well,” his daughter-in-law told a reporter.

Sykes’ son encouraged him to the tell his story, which brought a smile to his face.

Sykes recounted how during a stop, he spotted a gentleman and two women deboard from a train and come aboard Keewatin.

“This was very close to my last trip (aboard Keewatin),” he said. “Not the last trip, but close.

“Out of the car got two girls and a guy,” he continued, his signature wit on full display. “As far as I was concerned, the guy wasn’t very smart because he was certainly with the least attractive of the girls. Anyway, they got some keys and I think that cabin was 152.”

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Sykes knew he had to meet the other lady in that trio.

“I had a pair of nail clippers in my pocket, and I clipped the tag off her suitcase with the nailclippers, put it in my pocket and they found their way to their cabins,” he said.

“Six years later, I married her.”

“Today he’d be arrested as a stalker,” his son quipped.

Other distinguished guests on Saturday for the public launch party for Keewatin included Kingston and the Islands MP Mark Gerretsen, MPP Ted Hsu and Mayor Bryan Paterson.

“This is a huge opportunity for the city of Kingston, for tourism, to showcase our marine history, that we have such a close connection to in Kingston, to showcase that to the world because we get so many visitors who come,” Gerretsen said. “And it’s another reason why people should come this far and visit their marine museum, because of this incredible attraction that’s here now.”

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Gerretsen confirmed the federal government has received grant applications related to Keewatin’s restoration and upkeep, which is expected to be extensive.

“I know those are moving along very well, and I’m fairly confident in the near future we’ll have another announcement to make on that,” he said. “A ship like this is going to need a lot of restoration and a lot of maintenance over the years, but when you have a national treasure, you’ve got to take care of it.”

Paterson gloated about the tourism boost that the historic vessel brings with it.

“This is an exciting moment for our community,” he said. “I just think about all the history along our waterfront and adding to that history here today, this is a fabulous new addition to our tourism sector, to our waterfront. I had a sneak preview back in December just after the ship arrived. I know there has been just so much work and so many volunteers who have put in countless hours to make this a reality. Honestly, just kudos all around. This is great for Kingston.”

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Keewatin was buit by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Glasgow, Scotland, and launched in 1907. Five years older than the Titanic, and built in the same style, the Keewatin was one of six ships owned by Canadian Pacific Railway that served as part of the Great Lakes Fleet. The ship was saved from the scrapyard by R.J. Peterson in 1967, served as a museum ship in her home port since 2012, and last fall was relocated to the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes.

Chris West, chair of the board of directors for the museum and a driving force in bringing the Keewatin to Kingston, had the happy look of a captain who’d just ported after sailing around the globe, beaming as hundreds of residents climbed aboard the ship on Saturday.

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“It’s been a very long journey, and it’s overwhelmingly gratifying to share this celebration with the whole community and people who’ve come from far and wide, people who have served on the ship, starting in the winter,” West said. “We got her in late October and people came all through the winter to help clean her up and make her presentable to open this spring. It was an impossible job. The ship was not tidy and displayable when she arrived. It was the opposite.”

West also spoke of the boost to the local tourism industry the ship now provides.

“It’s really, really gratifying to see what the mayor referred to as ‘a big vision’ (come to life),” he said. “There were doubters. Not everybody thought we could pull it off, but we did, and this will be a principle attraction in Kingston I hope for another hundred years, long after I’m gone. We hope it’s a gift to the community and the community falls in love with it the way we have.”

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For now, only parts of the ship are available to the public, but more areas will open as the ship is restored, along with other areas, including a dining salon, ballroom, ladies’ tea lounge, along with an exhibit that opens in July exploring the whole period surrounding the ship’s history.

“That backstory, which is fascinating, will be told and there will be interactive components, lots of visual and audio and video. We’re building and building on each success step. We’ve got the ship open, there’s a lot more ship that’s going to be open. There are other parts of it.”

On a personal level, West said, the significance of the city now being home to Keewatin can’t be understated.

“It’s not an exaggeration; this is the last one in the world,” he said. “There were thousands of them built in that Titanic period, the Edwardian period. They’re all either scrapped or sunk except this one. It’s a fluke. And that’s why it’s so important to preserve and restore it. As the years go by, it becomes more and more precious. We have a 350-foot national historic site dry dock, with a 350-foot SS Keewatin perfectly snuggled in.”

On this day, at least, that significance was not lost on at least one attendee, who called it home for 10 straight summers many moons ago.

“This is his dream,” Sykes’ daughter-in-law said of his return to the Keewatin. “There’s no one that loves it more than papa.”

janmurphy@postmedia.com

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