The James Whalen has arrived at her final resting spot on Wednesday at the Thunder Bay Transportation Museum.
An effort from volunteers, tugboat and barge services, and cranes and lifts made it possible for pieces of the Whalen tug to make their final journey up the Kaministiquia River, along the Lake Superior Thunder Bay port to the Pier Six dock.
Wally Peterson, president of the transportation museum, said it’s been an emotional day bringing the 10-year preservation project to an end.
“When the company was in scrapping it, we struck a deal with them to remove these pieces and they put them on the Patterson dock for us,” Peterson said. “ We worked to get it to the museum site, and we needed to do it now because we’re getting closer to freeze-up. We also want to have it on site for our Haunted Harbour event, which will take place between Oct. 9 and 25.
Tom McClement, owner and operator of LH Crane, who provided the crane service for Wednesday’s Whalen transport, said the company has been involved with this project since the Whalen sank in 2022.
“We worked together as a team with Thunder Bay Tug Services to raise the Whalen at that time; she was put into storage at the Patterson dock, and then dismantled this spring,” McClement said.
“It’s really the end of a multi-year project for us, and it was the ultimate fate of the Whalen, but it’s good that we were able to work with the salvager to maintain some key components, and we have some history here that will be preserved for many years.”
Gerry Dawson, owner of Thunder Bay Tug Services Ltd, reminisced about the tug’s heyday in the Thunder Bay port.
“I remember watching it breaking ice as a kid with my dad,” Dawson said.
“I’ve been around the industry for a long time, and I knew a lot of the captains that operated it. I remember sitting in high school watching her break ice in the spring. It’s too bad it ended up the way it did. It is a big piece of our waterfront history.”
Among the Whalen pieces arriving at the transportation museum were the stern with the tug’s name, the staircase that ran down into the display area, the large smokestack, the windlass for the anchors, the skylight that was over the top of the engine room, and the pilot house.
“We also have the funnel, the anchors, a section of the hull and the stairway that ran from the wheelhouse down to the deck,” Peterson said.
The pieces will be placed inside the fenced area in front of the Alexander Henry.
“We’re going to arrange the pieces to look like the hull did when it was intact. We’ll then restore the wheelhouse and the captain’s quarters, and we’ll be putting in a display of the James Whalen featuring what it did and how it worked.
While the museum workers continue to fundraise to maintain the museum, they are looking ahead to their next project — bringing the caboose at the marina into the fold.
“The people who maintain the caboose are in a quandary because they can’t do anything on their site. They can’t get power. They can’t fence it and their lease is up next year, so they’re planning to talk to the city about moving it to our site,” Peterson said, adding that a location has been chosen for it at the museum site.
