- by Richard Thomas

Today is the anniversary of the maiden voyage of the Norisle, one of the passenger ferries formerly owned by the Owen Sound Transportation Company. Here's an excerpt about the vessel from my book The Motorists Shortcut: 100 Years of the Owen Sound Transportation Company.

“In 1946,” Wib Barnard, former General Manager of the Owen Sound Transportation Company recalled, “after a lot of soul searching, we decided to build the Norisle, which was the first new passenger vessel that had been built on the Great Lakes since about 1911. The financing was arranged, the ship was built and she went into service. She could handle 50 automobiles per trip and we thought that was tremendous.”

“The Norisle was the first passenger ship built out of Collingwood after the war that wasn't a warship,” Ed Wagner recalled. “She was designed and built by the Collingwood shipyard. She was very much a Georgian Bay production. And the fact that she was brand new with corvette engines - the triple expansion engines - made her a very lithe boat. Anyway, she was designed for the ferry service. People had cars, they had disposable income and they wanted to see the country. The Manitoulin was ancient by then. I think she was steel but the other ones were wood…they all had to be replaced."

Built at a cost of $547,000, the Norisle was able to carry 200 passengers and 50 cars. It was a huge leap forward for the company and its ferry service. The new ship began the ferry run in the 1947 season and the Caribou was retired. During her first season, the Norisle carried almost 13,000 vehicles and more than 40,000 people.

Veteran Captain Osburn Long was called upon to take the helm of the Norisle; he was her skipper from 1947 until his retirement in 1967. His daughter, Ann Kelly, has many memories of summers spent at the family's summer home and recalls many of the stories her father told her of his time as Master of Norisle: "When anybody saw my dad coming off ship or on ship, they would approach him and remind him that they had sailed with him on the roughest voyage the Norisle had ever made. And dad, who was a very gentle man, said to the family, that if all those people were aboard the Norisle on her roughest voyage, she'd never have gotten out of the harbour!”