WATCH ABOVE: Global’s Sarah Offin sailed around the Glenmore Reservoir in a smaller replica ship of the S.S. Moyie, which launched its ceremonial voyage in 1965.
CALGARY – A special ceremony was held at Calgary’s Heritage Park on Monday to celebrate the 50 years the S.S. Moyie has been in the water.
The original S.S. Moyie was built in 1898 to ferry miners to the Klondike gold rush. The Heritage Park website says the boat was instead used by the Canadian Pacific Railway to ferry passengers from the Kootenay Landing rail terminal to Nelson, B.C.
The vessel was named Moyie after a mining community in the region, which got its name from the French word for wet, “mouillé.”
With a slow four-and-a-half-hour trip across the lake traveling at about 11 km/h, the S.S. Moyie was eventually replaced and demoted over the next 40 years.
“In 1957, she was North America’s oldest sternwheeler still in service, and was retired and sold to the city of Kaslo, B.C., where she was made into a museum,” reads the Heritage Park website. “In 1965, Heritage Park commissioned the building of a half-size replica of the S.S. Moyie, which uses a diesel engine.”
Captain Andrew Hooper said sailing the ship around the reservoir keeps him “pretty busy.”
“By far and away the oldest ship I’ve ever sailed,” he said. “As far as actually sailing the ship, there are a lot of maintenance and upkeep issues, hiring and training the crew issues…it’s more than just sailing the ship around the reservoir. It’s actually a little project, if you like, for the summertime.”
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