Soo Locks, Part 1

After my quick tour of the Valley Camp, I walked across to the Soo Locks Boat Tour office, bought my ticket, and took my seat on the dock to await boarding.  Our boat was Bide-a-Wee, which I'm told is Scottish for "stay awhile."  This is the third vessel to bear this name.  Mark Bisdorf captained, and his assistant Adam provided the color commentary.

Boat tours of the locks started in 1934.

Bide-a-Wee is one of five boats in the tour fleet.

I assumed the tour would be boring — a kind of "duffers' tour" for folks 70+.  However, this two-hour jaunt through Canadian and American waters turned out to be not just a pleasant boat ride, but an informative introduction to one of the busiest commercial traffic areas in the U.S.

Captain Mark told me that roughly a dozen freighters "lock through" Sault Ste. Marie every day.  These huge ships carry all manner of cargo to and from ports on Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie.  While most are U.S. and Canadian ships, some foreign freighters transit the entire St. Lawrence Seaway from the East Coast to Duluth and back again.  Freighters operate during the mid-March to January shipping season.  The locks close down when Lake Superior freezes over.  This downtime also provides an opportunity to drain, inspect, and repair the locks.

We started by transiting the Canadian lock, moving up the St. Marys River toward Lake Superior.  The original Canadian lock was opened in 1895.  In 1987, after nearly a century of service, a 200-foot section of the lock wall shifted four inches.  The lock was forced to close.  Parks Canada and the City of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, rose to the challenge and funded construction of a new lock.  The $10.3 million project created a lock within the old one.  This lock is now too narrow to accommodate lake freighters,  but is used instead for smaller craft, such as our tour vessel.  The new lock opened for business in 1998.

We wait for the doors behind us to close.  Then water is pumped
into the lock.  Note the water level in the photo above...

...and the water level when the upstream doors opened!
That's a lot of water!

"Locking" is rather like filling or emptying a bathtub.  Going upstream, our boat moved into the lock, the downstream doors closed, and the junior crew and lock workers secured the boat fore and aft to avoid any accidents, e.g., crashing into the lock's doors!  Water was then pumped into the lock, raising our level relative to Lake Superior.  It took about 20 minutes to raise us 21 feet.  When we reached the proper elevation, the doors of the Canadian lock swung open, our lines were cast off, and we continued up the St. Marys River.

We sailed upstream as far as the Algoma Steel Plant, which has operated at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, since 1901.  The guide book notes that this plant includes Canada's biggest blast furnace, which produces 5,000 tons of molten iron each day.  To do this the furnace needs a plentiful supply of iron ore, coal, and limestone.  I was startled when Adam, chattering on the PA system, pointed out a pile of limestone beside the river and declared that it came from the Carmuse limestone quarry.  Carmuse operates the world's largest limestone quarry at Rogers City, just 20 miles north of Presque Isle.

The auto industry is the Algoma plant's largest customer.  Big rolls of steel sheeting are loaded onto barges which are then pushed by huge tugs through the locks and downstream to auto plants in southern Michigan and Ohio.

This crushed limestone comes from Presque Isle County!

Steel rolls are loaded onto barges to be pushed by big
tugs like the one just nosing into the photo on the left.

As we started back downstream we navigated past the up-bound freighter Michipicoten, which makes Bide-a-Wee look like a bathtub toy.  Built in 1952, this self-unloading freighter is named for a Canadian island in Lake Superior northwest of Sault Ste. Marie.  Michipicoten means "big bluff" in the Ojibwe language.

Then we sailed past or under the area's bridges.  The taller of these carries international auto/truck traffic between the U.S. and Canada.  It links the 2,000-mile I-75 to the 5,000-mile Trans-Canada Highway.  Beside it are the black railroad bridges — a lift bridge, a bascule (or jackknife) bridge, and a swing bridge.  These are used twice a day.

When a train approaches the border, the lift bridge drops down while the bascule bridge unfolds into place.  This jackknife bridge — its sections shown at 45 degree angles in the photo below — is so perfectly balanced with concrete counterweights that it takes only a 40 hp. motor to move the parts into place.  (A 40 hp. engine isn't very powerful.  Honda makes a slick 40 hp. outboard motor for your fishing skiff.)  To complete the rail line the swing bridge turns, and all four canals are bridged.

The Michipicoten is a 696-foot long, 66-foot wide ship.

The railroad bridges (foreground) and the auto bridge.
The up-tilted sections are the counterbalanced parts.

Before long we were locking through on the American side.  More on that next time. •••