Bring Home the Peninsula
Donation protected
In 1944 Marathon Paper Mills of Wisconsin, under the leadership of D.C. Everest, undertook the building of a Sulphate Kraft Pulp Mill at Peninsula, Ontario, then a CPR water stop of some 30 inhabitants on the rugged North Shore of Lake Superior. Over the next several years, Marathon Paper Mills expanded the wilderness community of Peninsula into a company town called Marathon. The name Peninsula was not discarded. It lives on in the vessel that the town of Marathon is now seeking to bring home to the port where she served most of her long career.
The rafting of pulpwood from the mouth of the Pic River to the new mill at Marathon required a vessel large enough and strong enough to withstand the rigours of Lake Superior. That vessel was the decommissioned Canadian Navy tug, HMCS Norton. Renamed the Peninsula, she quickly became the flagship of the Marathon woodlands operation, well-known to every resident of the new community.
The Norton had had a sound military pedigree. Originally designed for recovery operations serving Canadian and Allied North Atlantic vessels, Norton was the first deep sea tug built for the Canadian Navy during WW II. She was built by the Montreal Dry Dock Company in 1943 at a cost of $514,794.56, ($7,142,981.62 in 2017 dollars), and launched on November 29, 1943, whereupon she was sailed first to Quebec City for completion, and then on to Halifax to be commissioned. Carrying a crew of 2 officers and 22 ratings, she had a busy naval career (from early 1944 to December 7 1945) in a region extending from St John’s, Newfoundland south to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, inland as far as Quebec City, and eastward well into the North Atlantic. In this latter period of the war, she recovered ships of the British, Canadian, and US navies, and escorted Canadian Navy supply vessels in the Gulf of St Lawrence at times of suspected enemy submarine activity.
At the end of hostilities, the Norton was chartered by the War Assets Corporation to the Foundation Maritime Company as W.A.C.1, and she continued her deep sea towing duties until Mar 22, 1946 when she was purchased by Marathon Paper Mills of Canada Ltd, Port Arthur, Ontario. So she was a well-tried but still relatively new vessel when her new Captain, George Matheson, sailed her to Port Arthur for refit, load-line inspection, renovation of the crew accommodations, and registration (#175492) under her new name “Peninsula”. With her 1000 HP 9-cylinder Dominion Sulzer engine, and the only riveted hull ever installed on a Norton class tug, the Peninsula was at the time the most powerful tug at the Lakehead port.
In her career as Marathon’s premier tug, the Peninsula habitually towed 8000-cord rafts of 8-foot pulpwood mainly destined for Marathon’s American packaging industry. She brought these rafts from the booming grounds at the mouth of the Pic River, first to Port Munro and the Slate Islands for storage, and then, as space opened up, to Jellicoe Cove, adjacent to the mill’s extensive woodyard. She also towed occasional rafts from Port Arthur to Marathon, a trip that could take 12 to 14 days. Sometimes, giant rafts of up to 25,000 cords of pulpwood would have to be towed.
But in time, the Marathon mill, like other northern pulp-and-paper operations, moved on to acquiring woodchips by rail, abandoning the cumbersome process of cutting and rafting and chipping all its own wood. And the Peninsula’s rafting job was done. She was sold to Western Engineering for Lakehead harbour duties in the autumn of 1968, and later acquired by Paul Lecuyer of Gravel & Lake Services, where she remained active until 2015. Appropriately, in a belated return to her original calling, the Peninsula was called on briefly to revive her recovery career on June 6, 1979, when she towed the still-smouldering freighter Cartiercliffe Hall to port in Thunder Bay, after a disastrous on-board fire that had cost seven lives.
Having seen duty on most of Lake Superior from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay, and south into United States ports, in 2018 the Peninsula will have been in the water for 75 years. Adding to her historical importance, she is now the last remaining Norton Class deep-sea tug in North America. Marathon’s international Great Lakes freighter, the D.C. Everest, was scrapped before we could obtain memorabilia from her, but we can rescue the Peninsula from the same fate, and preserve a piece of Marathon’s and Canada’s history.
The Marathon & District Historical Society proposes to purchase the tug, to sail her home from Thunder Bay under her own power, and then to bring her ashore, and install her in prominent view at the bottom of Stevens Avenue, overlooking the harbour from which she sailed from 1946 to 1968. Here, on the former site of the Everest Hotel, she will be an educational tourist attraction, a symbol of Marathon and of significant Canadian maritime history. We propose an interactive display on board, beginning by providing visitors with a personalized tour led by a knowledgeable guide, and graduating to a virtual tour in the future.
As a former resident of Marathon, Naval Historian, Great Lakes Mariner or just an interested party, we invite you to participate in the fundraising effort to enable this project. Sponsors will be suitably recognized. The Marathon & District Historical Society is a charitable organization and all donations are tax deductible.
We are understandably very excited about this initiative. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for giving our project your consideration. Donations can be made to: Marathon & District Historical Society, P.O. Box 728, Marathon On., P0T 2E0, or online at the following address:
The rafting of pulpwood from the mouth of the Pic River to the new mill at Marathon required a vessel large enough and strong enough to withstand the rigours of Lake Superior. That vessel was the decommissioned Canadian Navy tug, HMCS Norton. Renamed the Peninsula, she quickly became the flagship of the Marathon woodlands operation, well-known to every resident of the new community.
The Norton had had a sound military pedigree. Originally designed for recovery operations serving Canadian and Allied North Atlantic vessels, Norton was the first deep sea tug built for the Canadian Navy during WW II. She was built by the Montreal Dry Dock Company in 1943 at a cost of $514,794.56, ($7,142,981.62 in 2017 dollars), and launched on November 29, 1943, whereupon she was sailed first to Quebec City for completion, and then on to Halifax to be commissioned. Carrying a crew of 2 officers and 22 ratings, she had a busy naval career (from early 1944 to December 7 1945) in a region extending from St John’s, Newfoundland south to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, inland as far as Quebec City, and eastward well into the North Atlantic. In this latter period of the war, she recovered ships of the British, Canadian, and US navies, and escorted Canadian Navy supply vessels in the Gulf of St Lawrence at times of suspected enemy submarine activity.
At the end of hostilities, the Norton was chartered by the War Assets Corporation to the Foundation Maritime Company as W.A.C.1, and she continued her deep sea towing duties until Mar 22, 1946 when she was purchased by Marathon Paper Mills of Canada Ltd, Port Arthur, Ontario. So she was a well-tried but still relatively new vessel when her new Captain, George Matheson, sailed her to Port Arthur for refit, load-line inspection, renovation of the crew accommodations, and registration (#175492) under her new name “Peninsula”. With her 1000 HP 9-cylinder Dominion Sulzer engine, and the only riveted hull ever installed on a Norton class tug, the Peninsula was at the time the most powerful tug at the Lakehead port.
In her career as Marathon’s premier tug, the Peninsula habitually towed 8000-cord rafts of 8-foot pulpwood mainly destined for Marathon’s American packaging industry. She brought these rafts from the booming grounds at the mouth of the Pic River, first to Port Munro and the Slate Islands for storage, and then, as space opened up, to Jellicoe Cove, adjacent to the mill’s extensive woodyard. She also towed occasional rafts from Port Arthur to Marathon, a trip that could take 12 to 14 days. Sometimes, giant rafts of up to 25,000 cords of pulpwood would have to be towed.
But in time, the Marathon mill, like other northern pulp-and-paper operations, moved on to acquiring woodchips by rail, abandoning the cumbersome process of cutting and rafting and chipping all its own wood. And the Peninsula’s rafting job was done. She was sold to Western Engineering for Lakehead harbour duties in the autumn of 1968, and later acquired by Paul Lecuyer of Gravel & Lake Services, where she remained active until 2015. Appropriately, in a belated return to her original calling, the Peninsula was called on briefly to revive her recovery career on June 6, 1979, when she towed the still-smouldering freighter Cartiercliffe Hall to port in Thunder Bay, after a disastrous on-board fire that had cost seven lives.
Having seen duty on most of Lake Superior from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay, and south into United States ports, in 2018 the Peninsula will have been in the water for 75 years. Adding to her historical importance, she is now the last remaining Norton Class deep-sea tug in North America. Marathon’s international Great Lakes freighter, the D.C. Everest, was scrapped before we could obtain memorabilia from her, but we can rescue the Peninsula from the same fate, and preserve a piece of Marathon’s and Canada’s history.
The Marathon & District Historical Society proposes to purchase the tug, to sail her home from Thunder Bay under her own power, and then to bring her ashore, and install her in prominent view at the bottom of Stevens Avenue, overlooking the harbour from which she sailed from 1946 to 1968. Here, on the former site of the Everest Hotel, she will be an educational tourist attraction, a symbol of Marathon and of significant Canadian maritime history. We propose an interactive display on board, beginning by providing visitors with a personalized tour led by a knowledgeable guide, and graduating to a virtual tour in the future.
As a former resident of Marathon, Naval Historian, Great Lakes Mariner or just an interested party, we invite you to participate in the fundraising effort to enable this project. Sponsors will be suitably recognized. The Marathon & District Historical Society is a charitable organization and all donations are tax deductible.
We are understandably very excited about this initiative. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for giving our project your consideration. Donations can be made to: Marathon & District Historical Society, P.O. Box 728, Marathon On., P0T 2E0, or online at the following address:
Organizer
StanandBev Johnson
Organizer
Marathon, ON
