Beausoleil First Nation celebrates launch of new state-of-the-art ferry
By Rick Garrick
BEAUSOLEIL FIRST NATION — Beausoleil celebrated the launch of its new custom-built state-of-the-art ferry, the Niigaan Enaazhek, with a launch ceremony and on-board tour in early August.
“It’s been a long time coming and it finally arrived (on Aug. 8),” says Beausoleil Chief Joanne Sandy. “It’s about time that we got it. It was tendered out in 2019, and we are just getting it now. It’s not fully operational right now, we’re just waiting for Transport Canada’s guidelines and regulations with regards to the safe manning of the vessel.”
Chief Sandy says there are other matters to deal with to get the ferry operational.
“They’ve licensed the old [Sandy Graham ferry] until the end of the year, then it has to be decommissioned,” Sandy says. “But we’re hopeful that in the next few weeks that we’re going to be fully operational.”
Sandy says the new ferry, which is a double-ended Ice Class Super 1A vessel, has ice-breaking capabilities for ice up to 24 inches thick.
“Everybody is happy we got a new ferry, and we don’t have to park it because it has ice-breaking capabilities,” Sandy says. “It’ll be operational all year around.”
Beausoleil Councillor Marla Monague says the community is so excited about having the new ferry, which is rated to carry up to 150 passengers and 36 vehicles, compared to the Sandy Graham, which was rated for 99 passengers and 26 vehicles. The new ferry is also rated with a maximum speed of 11.5 knots compared to the old ferry’s maximum speed of 8.5 knots.
“It was such an amazing day when the boat sailed in there a couple of weeks ago on the Friday,” Monague says. “It’s something we never experienced before, a brand-new ferry that is made just for us with our specific needs, that is going to be safe and reliable for transportation for our community. People have been there for generations now and we’ve never had a brand-new multipurpose ferry ever. It’s always been old vessels that we’ve had to buy from the States and have to get them retrofitted.”
Monague says the new ferry is a beautiful vessel.
“It’s made for our needs, it’s just amazing,” Monague says.
Monague says her community used to have an ice road to the mainland up to about a decade ago.
“We used to have thick ice, so everybody used to rely on snowmobiles during the winter to get to and from across, and once it got really thick, people would use their vehicles,” Monague says. “But we don’t get ice that thick anymore where it’s safe enough to use vehicles — I would say it’s been over a decade since we had ice that thick where we’ve been able to travel on it safely.”
Monague says it took decades worth of advocacy by the Chiefs and Councils to get the new ferry.
“I know at least five different Chiefs that were advocating for this ferry,” Monague says. “It wasn’t just leaders, it was the entire community for a generation saying we need this.”
Monague says whole community attended the arrival of the new ferry.
“It was just such a great moment,” Monague says. “I went to go see it back in March when it was still in Superior, (Wisconsin), and I cried when I first walked on it because I couldn’t believe that it belonged to us and that finally, after all of these years, we were going to have something that was going to meet our needs and our community could be proud of.”