The HURON is dead.

Though she may still be with us in body, her spirit has passed into that life where lives the memory of all famous lake ships of the past. She was never as majestic as the great passenger liners that swept past her on the river with their throngs of happy travellers. She never sailed to the many ports on the lakes which were so familiar to the freighters. But for ninety-six years, while other proud vessels came and went, HURON kept on at her task of ferrying railroad cars across first the St. Clair and later the Detroit River.

Yes, over a century of Detroit River carferry service by steam powered vessels has come to an end with the retirement of HURON as a self-propelled unit of the Canadian National Railway Company's fleet. All of the other ferries have since been retired completely or else converted to barges and it is with regret that we see HURON come to the same end. Though not yet stripped of her cabin or machinery, the veteran is now shunted about the river by the tug AMHERSTBURG while her running mate of so many years, LANSDOWNE, is pushed by the less-than-handsome MARGARET YORKE. Fans were, incidentally, amused by a stroke of poetic justice that put MARGARET YORKE aground in the Detroit River on her delivery voyage, an accident that saw considerable damage done to her outboard propulsion units.

And so it is that we bid farewell to HURON, or at least to the HURON we have known. Money talks with a loud voice, but economic considerations now seem to have taken just one more bit of style and flourish from an otherwise drab harbour and river scene.

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