HMCS Ojibwa: Tourism bucks are on the line, and a deadline looming, as two Lake Erie rivals go for the boat
By CHIP MARTIN, The London Free Press


During its 33 years in service, the Canadian submarine HMCS Ojibwa never saw combat.
Now decommissioned, rusting and only a step away from a Halifax scrapyard, the old sub has sparked a battle between two Lake Erie ports vying to turn it into a tourist attraction.

Rivals Port Stanley and Port Burwell want the economic boost of a sub whose sister boat, the Onondaga, drew 91,000 visitors last year to the port of Rimouski, Que.

Both Elgin County ports are trying to persuade the Elgin Military Museum to choose them as a home for the Ojibwa, the relocation made possible with a $1.92-million grant from a federal economic development agency set up to help hard-hit southern Ontario amid the recent recession.
The project is expected to produce 40 long-term jobs and another 40 to 50 for construction.

On Saturday, the museum will decide where it wants to put the submarine. If it doesn’t make the choice and back it up with paperwork by an Aug. 20 deadline, the museum risks losing the federal money.

Bayham, where Port Burwell is located, has aggressively pursued The Ojibwa Project, with a site ready to go and conceptual drawings.
Central Elgin, mother municipality of Port Stanley, held an open house about the plan Tuesday night, but faces timing issues and site problems.
"I just wish this sub proposal was two years from now,” Central Elgin Mayor Tom Marks said.

His council wants the Ojibwa located on one of two sites, neither of which the museum likes. The municipality won’t change its mind, Marks said before Tuesday’s meeting.

Port activist Dan McNeil was among the 180 who attended the gathering and said it was clear Marks and his council were not going to change their minds.
“They’ve got their heels dug in,” he said. “I’m infuriated.”

The sub and museum need a site a bit longer and wider than a football field, so museum curator Ian Raven prefers the “berm,” or east headland area, immediately east of the Port Stanley harbour mouth. “That was our initial preference simply because it was big, flat and was there,” he said.
But Marks said that site won’t work and his council parked school buses there this week (see site B in the photograph above) to show the immense area the sub would take up and how it might block the view of the lake.

In a poll, Port Stanley residents solidly backed getting the Ojibwa, a diesel-electric craft decommissioned in 1998. A show of hands at the Tuesday meeting indicated about 90 per cent want the submarine.

But Marks said environmental contamination of the harbour and its lands, being transferred to Central Elgin by Transport Canada, is why his council opposes it.
Marks said the federal agency is weeks away from turning the harbour over to local control and has vowed to clean the berm to “parkland standards” insufficient for a museum.

“We cannot jeopardize six, seven, or eight years of negotiations on divestiture,” he said. “We have a vision for that site as parkland.”
He said Central Elgin “has been raked over the coals” because of contamination of the harbour area and is promoting two other sites.
One is the proposed creation of new land south of the McAsphalt plant (see site C on photograph) with material dredged from the harbour on which the 1,400-tonne Ojibwa would sit.
But Raven said the museum has “engineering issues” with that idea, while others say dredged material is contaminated and must be dumped out in the lake.
A second site is at the former Omstead fish plant, just south of the lift bridge where the sub would remain in the water.
“That proposal was made and we instantly killed it,” Raven said. The project must be on land.

Marks said he’s aware of the museum concerns but his council insists one of the two sites must be used.
Central Elgin council meets later this week to send its final proposal to the museum.
In Bayham, Mayor Lynn Acre remained optimistic the pitch for Port Burwell will succeed.

The municipality owns a large site alongside Otter Creek and water and sewer services are readily available. And Bayham is taking preliminary steps to dredge to permit delivery of the submarine.

Acre said while she’s aware of logistical problems 35 km to the west in Port Stanley, “I would rather win just by having a better spot.”



A TALE OF TWO SUB-CHASERS

Port Stanley

Population: About 2,200 lying within Central Elgin.
Pluses: Proximity to Elgin Military Museum in St. Thomas and population base of London, many tourist diversions.
Minuses: Environmental concerns about site preferred by museum, other sites proposed, divestiture of port is incomplete.


Port Burwell

Population: About 1,200 within Bayham.
Pluses: Aggressive pursuit of project and readily available public land.
Minuses: Greater distance from museum and London, fewer tourist diversions, shallower harbour.