The MS Chi-Cheemaun ferry has been an enduring symbol of the Bay for half a century.
By Willy Waterton // Photo by Willy Waterton
No sooner had I poked my head out around the bulkhead than a solid wall of water towering above the bow (not the foamy water one sees in whitecaps) rolled down the ship’s side. I tucked back into the stairwell as the water crashed above and beside me. Wet but unhurt, I waded back into the MS Chi-Cheemaun’s warm cafeteria. Three stories above me, the ship’s officers and crew had instinctively ducked as the wall of green water had also smashed into the wheelhouse windows.
It was the fall of 1974 and I was a deckhand during the first season the 111-metre-long vehicle and passenger ferry came into service. The Chi-Cheemaun traverses Georgian Bay between the straits of Tobermory on the tip of the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula and South Baymouth on Manitoulin Island.
This was the one of the first big storms the Chi-Cheemaun had weathered and Lake Huron was throwing all the fury and energy she could muster at the newly christened ship. The superstructure of the ferry towered above the waterline and there was a rumour among old timers in the crew that she was top-heavy and likely to capsize or turn turtle in a storm. As we know, this didn’t happen (thanks to stabilizing fins), and 50 years later the MS Chi-Cheemaun, or Big Canoe in Ojibwe, still cruises the waters of the Great Lakes.
The Addisons from Evansville on Manitoulin Island have worked a combined 140 years for the Owen Sound Transportation Company.
In the photograph above, the three Addison brothers, Norm, Murray and Rick, pose in the wheelhouse of the Chi-Cheemaun. The Addisons from Evansville on Manitoulin Island have worked a combined 140 years for the Owen Sound Transportation Company. All three worked on the Chi-Cheemaun, while both Norm and Murray worked on the SS Norisle and Norm started his sailing career on the MS Normac in 1967. I spent the spring and summer of 2019 arranging to take this photograph as part of my ongoing “Salt of the Earth” portrait project. The only time the brothers could be found together was during the 2019 fall ferry layup in Owen Sound harbour.
I had worked with Norm and Murray as a deckhand and then as the last watchman on the SS Norisle, the Great Lakes’ second-last coal-fired steam-powered passenger ferry. On my first day of work, I improperly tied a dolly, used to move trailers on the car decks, to a railing. Later, the dolly handle fell and hit Norm on the head, gashing his forehead. When Captain Dick Tackaberry saw Norm’s injury, he wanted to fire me on the spot. Norm replied that since the crew hadn’t yet trained me, it wasn’t my fault and I shouldn’t be fired.
I’ve never forgotten Norm’s kindness to a high school student he had just met. The next fall, I returned to work on the Chi-Cheemaun when the storm I described earlier tested the vessel.
All of the Addison brothers have now retired, but if you cruise this summer during the Chi-Cheemaun’s 50th anniversary, you can view their photograph along with the other “Salt of the Earth” portraits in the ferry’s upper stern galley.
