Canadian Port thread

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by casper

Yes, Victoria has a significant Port Authority. They operate cruise ship terminals, general cargo terminals (mostly for export of wood products) as well as a handling booking for pleasure boats in their marinas. In fact the larger cruise ships on the Alaska run can't fit in Vancouver so they home-port in Seattle and call on Victoria.

The interesting marine resource that is not owned by the Port Authority is the dry dock. It is actually owned by the Canadian Navy, I believe it is one of the largest dry docks on the west coast and Seaspan as well as others lease that space from time to time either for Ship construction/assembly or maintenance. Recently they have one the NCL cruise ships in there for a mid-life retrofit.
Prince Rupert would probably be the second largest port in BC behind Vancouver.

Nanaimo also has its own authority, with cargo terminals and a very nice cruise ship terminal that can handle large vessels.

The Graving Dock is owned by the Government of Canada and not the Navy. The smaller dry-dock at HMC Dockyard is owned by the Navy.

Seaspan has a long-term lease to use the graving dock but all of its operations are conducted by the federal government.
Seaspan does a damn good job (on time, on budget and high quality) unlike those thieving bastards Irvings on the east coast!

[megadude]

Originally Posted by vid

The reason Thunder Bay's port is so industrial (and likely Hamilton's too) is that in the late 1800s/early 1900s, the city engaged in a practice called "Bonussing", which was outlawed just before WWI, where they would give bribes (land, money, tax free status, etc) to companies to convince them to set up in the community. The most famous example is where Fort William, in about 1913, gave $600,000 (the equivalent to around $13 million today) to a company that almost immediately went bankrupt. It was supposed to build a factory that built tractors or something? Meanwhile, there was no sewage system and a large part of the city was an overpopulated slum with raw sewage running in ditches lining the streets.

All the land of our waterfront, even the undeveloped parts, are zoned for industrial use and owned by private companies. The exceptions, and there are three, are parts of the west ends of the islands in the river delta, a small park across the river from that, and Port Arthur's waterfront marina. These were created in 1981, 1994, and 1971 respectively. The location of the original Fort William is under the rail yard at the mouth of the river.

The breakwater and larger grain elevators were built in the 1930s to 1950s, a legacy of CD Howe and the men around him at the time. It moved port operations out of the river and into the lake, just in time for the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the beginning of international shipping to the port.

Interesting. I would have thought at some point in history some of that land would have been zoned residential even if just for apartments or condos. Maybe the land was already contaminated by heavy industry?

[megadude]

I like how Port Credit, Mississauga uses an old cargo ship as a break wall. Of course, it can barely be called a port anymore. But I do like how towns on the Great Lakes and the oceans still carry the name Port because it reminds us of their history as actual ports.



http://www.lakelandboating.com/ports...le-port-credit


https://ak0.picdn.net/shutterstock/v...90/thumb/1.jpg

[esquire]

Behold Manitoba's mighty ocean port, the Port of Churchill on Hudson Bay.

At one time there were some big dreams for this place but they never materialized... Churchill was a bit of a bit player in the overseas grain export business and whatever business there was mostly dried up after the Wheat Board was effectively shut down a few years ago.

These days Churchill is mostly a regional supply port serving isolated locales in Nunavut. But even that role has been jeopardized by the fact that the rail line serving it has been out of commission for a year with no real plan in place to restore it. So Churchill is on pretty shaky ground these days.

[suburbanite]

I'm a bit obsessed with freshwater ports. Most in Ontario have declined in importance and many are strictly recreational now, but there's still a few commercially significant areas left.

Goderich:



Ships from as far as Hamburg, Germany pick up grain from the harbour and make their way back through the St. Lawrence seaway. The other primary export is salt from the Sifto mine pictured above.

[niwell]

I do enjoy going down to Sugar Beach in Toronto during the summer, having some beers and watching the sugar being unloaded. They aren't even particularly big ships but still seem to dwarf the area.

[1overcosc]

Portsmouth Harbour in Kingston, in an urban neighbourhood west of downtown:



A huge trading port during the colonial era, nowadays exclusively recreational.

The massive stone complex in the lower right is Kingston Pen.

(Fun fact: my house is visible in this picture )

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

I'm a bit obsessed with freshwater ports. .

I find them fascinating too. As far as I know, nowhere in the world would you see ports located so far inland. Thinking that Duluth has a port connected to the ocean is just incredible. Sometimes I like to think of an alternate universe where Winnipeg is located on the shores of Lake Winnipeg and a canal connects the city to Lake Superior through Lake of the Woods. That would take the ships right to the heart of the continent.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by mcminsen

This thread needs some pictures!



Port of Vancouver (Canada's largest), April 10 '18, my pics

And that's just the cruise ship terminal.
The largest port in Canada is mostly made up of the cargo/container port just east of these pictures. That is the part with the huge cargo ships from over 100 countries around the world. It is as large and busy as it has ever been.
Some pics of English Bay would show a bunch of cargo ships.

[ghYHZ]

Halifax Port Authority

http://www.portofhalifax.ca/

Besides having two container terminals it's a major cruise port. This year there will be over 200 cruise ship calls with 300,000+ passengers.

http://www.cruisehalifax.ca/our-visi...uise-schedule/

Up until the 1960's most immigrants came by by ship.....not air and Pier 21 in Halifax was the port of arrival for many.

Pier 21 is now the Canadian Immigration Museum.

https://pier21.ca/exhibitions

[Denscity]

Vancouver's cruise ship season is set to have 900 000 people this year.

[sunsetmountainland]

I love the old cargo ship used as a break water that is a great picture! I also like the fresh water ports like Godrich and Portsmouth harbour. Great picture also of the port of Churchill.

Ports Toronto

The Port of Toronto, one of Canada's largest major inland ports, is situated on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario. Its location at the doorstep of downtown Toronto provides access to 25 per cent of Canada’s population and is no more than 1300 km from many of North America’s largest cities.

In 2017, approximately 2.2 million metric tonnes of cargo passed through the Port of Toronto. 201 ships visited the Port of Toronto in 2017, bringing sugar, road salt, cement and aggregate directly into the heart of the city. At 2,172,750 metric tonnes, overall port tonnage was up more than 16 per cent in 2017 with cement cargo imports remaining strong for another year at more than 679,000 metric tonnes. Stone, aggregate and sand cargo levels continued to increase ending the year at 176,105 tonnes, while salt imports increased by 50 per cent since 2016. Sugar imports were also strong with a nine per cent increase at more than 561,000 tonnes of raw sugar delivered via the port. Project cargo of 1,736 tonnes, which consisted of parts for a paper plant, was imported from Europe using three separate vessels.

The Port and Harbour of Toronto attend to nearly 10,000 recreational boaters; the largest harbour tour fleet in North America; city and airport ferries; visiting cruise ships; and 220 metre-long lakers which are continuously delivering cargo throughout the year.

As one of Canada's major commercial ports, the Port of Toronto helps to ensure the safe navigation of more than 7,000 recreational boaters; 100 lakers; dozens of Harbour tour vessels; visiting cruise ships; and 35-45 international or ocean-going ships per year.
PortsToronto owns and operates Marine Terminal 51 and Warehouse 52 within the Port of Toronto.
The 52-acre PortsToronto marine terminals facility has more than 225,000 square feet of warehouse space and over 30 acres of paved marshalling area, for short/long-term storage, warehousing and project staging.
PortsToronto's Cruise Ship Terminal saw 16 cruise ships visit over the 2017 summer season, bringing more than 5,600 passengers through Toronto.
In 2017, the Port of Toronto moved approximately 2,172,750 million metric tonnes of cargo by ship, including salt, sugar, cement, and high-value project materials needed to support Toronto’s booming construction industry.
Serving primarily as a bulk cargo destination, the port moves goods from countries as far away as Germany, South Korea, China, Brazil, Australia, and the United States.
In addition to its economic impact, increased imports through the port has a positive impact on the environment and traffic congestion given that the close to two million tonnes of cargo delivered by ship takes approximately 54,000, 40-tonne trucks off Toronto's already congested roads and highways.
Through PortsToronto's Harbour Clean-Up Program, approximately 150 million pounds (more than 68,000 tonnes) of dredgate, debris and driftwood is removed from the Harbour each year – the equivalent weight of about 102 cars worth of material removed every day of the year.
In 2017, more than 25,000 cubic metres of sediment material was removed from the mouth of the Don River through PortsToronto’s dredging process. Dredging removes sediment in order to achieve a navigable river depth and allow the smooth flow of water and ice through the Keating Channel.

Located just a short drive from the heart of downtown Toronto, the Port of Toronto has increasingly become a destination for cruise ship activity. In 2017, 16 passenger cruise ships carrying 5,695 passengers, visited PortsToronto’s Cruise Ship Terminal last year.

https://www.portstoronto.com/home.aspx

[GreaterMontréal]

the largest cruise ships can't reach Toronto or the Great Lakes or even Montréal, they are too high. not enough clearance. 1 bridge east of Montréal , the Quebec City bridge ? is a problem for the largest cruise ships.

[vid]

A few photos I took of Vancouver's port back in 2013:







Excuse the grain; I made liberal use of artistic license to obscure the low quality, second-hand nature of my cameras back then.

Originally Posted by megadude

Interesting. I would have thought at some point in history some of that land would have been zoned residential even if just for apartments or condos. Maybe the land was already contaminated by heavy industry?

Some of the land has been re-zoned. A portion in the north end is in the process of being subdivided and the official plan, without any clear explanation, basically zones out an entire downtown on the islands parallel to an existing downtown, as much of that area is zone mixed-use and has been since the 1980s. Nothing has come of it.

A lot of what looks like empty land along the port is old coal docks, petrochemical storage tanks and other industrial lands that were once occupied by polluting industries, and with an abundance of inland lakes in the area and plentiful land within city limits to develop, there's just no real political will to build residential up to the lake, with the exception of the north downtown core, where there are now some condos and hotels across from the marina.

Also, large parts of the waterfront are landfill, including the entirety of where our waterfront condos and hotel currently stand, and the "land" there has a lot of "not dirt" in it. They've found a lot of debris from buildings that were torn down at the time they made the landfill in the 1880s and just threw the rubble into the lake as filler, along with whatever else (ie, garbage) that was lying around at the time. South of the marina is a turning basin, which was supposed to be the site of an expanded marina, but there are a bunch of shipwrecks and historic artifacts in there so they've put it on hold.

Originally Posted by le calmar

I find them fascinating too. As far as I know, nowhere in the world would you see ports located so far inland. Thinking that Duluth has a port connected to the ocean is just incredible. Sometimes I like to think of an alternate universe where Winnipeg is located on the shores of Lake Winnipeg and a canal connects the city to Lake Superior through Lake of the Woods. That would take the ships right to the heart of the continent.

I think there were plans in the 1800s for a canal to connect Duluth to the Mississippi, allowing ships to travel through the centre of the continent from Quebec to New Orleans. Wisconsin has a lot of canals linking its interior cities, and they're not located in the Great Lakes Watershed either. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to connect them to the Mississippi.

Winnipeg could, theoretically, be connected by ship to Hudson Bay though they'd have to be small ships. Similarly, if a few locks were built, we could have gotten ships into Lake Nipigon.

Georgia, on the Black Sea, has a port 4,850km from the Atlantic, but it's on a salt-water body at sea level. That's roughly the distance from Duluth to Boston, by sea.

[Trevor3]

Stephenville's port started out as a freshwater lake with a small river running out to the bay. The US expropriated everything in 1940 to build the air base/port and widened the river from the lake to the bay to get ships in.

The US shipped in everything through there, especially fuels. After the Americans left in the late 60s, a paper mill was built at the port. We used to see ships from Europe coming in frequently to pick up newsprint, that ended in 2005 when the mill closed. Shur-gain also has a number of grain silos on the wharf for bulk grain shipping, but as far I know, they haven't been used in years. Nowadays we see some work for construction/maintenance of offshore oil platforms, exporting of scrap metals to the US, coast guard, that sort of thing.

There's a new 100,000 sq ft warehouse/industrial facility built at the port - hopefully that will help attract new business.

Penn No. 92 - Scrap metal carrier barge out of Philadelphia coming into Stephenville last summer:
Untitled

The silo set-up:
DSC_1123

We also get a lot of bulk carriers anchored out in the bay, usually waiting to get into the dock at Lower Cove on the Port au Port Peninsula (limestone quarry) or Turf Point in St. George's (gypsum mines):
DSC_0305

[GreaterMontréal]

Shipping: Maersk Line plans to double service to Port of Montreal
http://montrealgazette.com/business/...rt-of-montreal

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

Shipping: Maersk Line plans to double service to Port of Montreal
http://montrealgazette.com/business/...rt-of-montreal

Halifax as well.

https://www.newswire.ca/news-release...683426921.html

[Denscity]

With Vancouver or Prince Rupert after that.

[LeftCoaster]

Don't see too many Maersk ships in these waters, doubtful they have any increases planned for west coast ports.

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Don't see too many Maersk ships in these waters, doubtful they have any increases planned for west coast ports.

They mentioned Pacific Canada to Asia so just assumed.