Shipping Lines - Knitted poppy catches the eye at Canadian Remembrance parade

Over the years since the 1970s the offshore oil and gas industry has strengthened ties between several parts of Canada and Montrose. In more recent times these welcome connections have been fostered between the local Seafarers’ Centre with former port chaplain Peter Donald and his successor Mike Burleigh and Captain Bill Rowe together with his counterparts on sister ship Atlantic Kestrel.

Captain Bill, as he was familiarly known, will be moving soon to the other side of Canada and sailing along the Pacific coast together with the Canadian Coastguard service providing emergency towing services etc. should any vessel require assistance.

Several ice class anchor handlers of an earlier generation which were based out of Montrose have recently been acquired by the Canadian Coastguard to work offshore Canada due to a shortfall in their own domestic fleet. They were engaged in offshore support services while based at Montrose and identified also by their “bumble bee” black and yellow colour scheme.

At the time of writing, Captain Rowe’s vessel was berthed at Pier 16 in the port of St John’s and he took the opportunity on Monday, November 11 to attend the annual Remembrance Day Parade and Wreath Laying Ceremony in the City.

In a handwritten note with his email he comments: “After the Parade etc. the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, The Honourable Dr. Andrew Furey spoke with some of the watching spectators. When I shook his hand he asked where I had acquired my lovely hand-knitted poppy. I informed him that it was produced by the Womens’ Section of the British Legion in Montrose, Scotland.”

While his ship worked out of Montrose port I had quite a number of conversations with him. He was interested in the exports of fire resistant hydraulic fluids that Ultraglide Ltd. had manufactured for Calgary-based Dome Petroleum and contractors Canmar Marine Drilling. This took place in the Beaufort Sea up in the high Arctic when offshore activity was restricted to only several months during each year due to the sub-zero temperatures. Their order was received in the early part of the year to be at Hay River by June 1. It left Pugeston by 20-foot steel shipping container, then via Greenock, across the Atlantic and River St Lawrence by container ship, discharged in Montreal, with Edmonton the final transhipment point before Hay River.

We also spoke of the former Sound of Islay, a small ro-ro ferry which ran between Campbeltown and Ballycastle in Northern Ireland prior to working out of the Newfoundland area. We both knew the late Captain Lloyd Bugden of Topsail who purchased the former Dundee, Perth & London Shipping Co. coastal cargo ship London. Lloyd contributed a traditional Newfoundland recipe for Seafood Chowder for inclusion in a Montrose RNLI cook book published some years back.