FORT FRANCES — The Hallett and Owandem tugboast will be getting their new homes along the riverfront, but the cost of potential renovation work means the public will have to be content to appreciate their exteriors for the foreseeable future.
During Monday night’s meeting of Fort Frances council, the boats and their final resting places in town were the topic of discussion.
Specifically, council was tasked with awarding the tender for the project, which had originally considered both the work to prepare the chunk of riverfront for new berths, landscaping and tourist-friendly additions as well as work to renovate the interior of the Hallett, which has deteriorated to the point the public will likely not be allowed to see its insides until the work is done.
According to a report prepared for council by environmental superintendent Craig Miller, the town released the tenders for the project in early 2025 in order to provide a new display site for the Hallett, Owandem, and accompanying anchor.
The Hallett has been resting on a temporary berth at the Sorting Gap Marina since flooding highlighted damage to the concrete berths it formerly sat on that were set in the river.
The Owandem itself has sat in the town's Public Works yard since restoration work was completed on it, a publicly-funded project that intended to see the smaller boat eventually displayed next to its larger cousin.
Previous tenders have gone out to secure a design for the new display/park area but were unable to move past the conceptual design phase and have also previously tried to secure interest in restoring Hallett, though it was met with limited interest and no submissions.
“To try and move the project forward, the original project has been broken into three sub-projects,” Miller wrote.
“The first two are the restoration of the Hallett Tugboat and the final design and preparation of the park design and tender package preparation. From these two projects, the third will closely follow in the spring - tendering for the construction of the park.”
Both of the first two tenders were posted, and the town received only one submission for the restoration work. Meanwhile, three companies submitted bids for the reberthing and park design projects: Scatliff, Miller & Murray, HTFC Inc. and North Rock Engineering.
“All three bidders are considered respectable and well-established in their industries,” Miller wrote.
“All proposals were evaluated and Scatliff, Miller & Murray are recommended by Administration for the award. The project will continue from the previously completed conceptual design and will prepare the final design, the preparation of a tender package and will include a Class B estimate for the construction component of this project that will be tendered at the completion of this project.”
However, citing the overall cost of the project, Miller set out four different options for council to consider.
The first option would be to award both tenders at a total cost of $689,330.38, leaving $37,993 in the capital budget to complete the park's actual construction later this year; option two would be to only award the design and preparation tender, pushing the restoration work to future budgets, leaving the Hallett to be available for exterior viewings only.
Option two would bring a cost of $50,004.86, including the town's portion of HST, to the town and leave $677,319 of existing capital funds to be used to construct the park.
Option three was to only award the Hallett restoration tender at a cost of $639,325.52, which would leave the town with significantly less money with which to proceed wit hthe remainder of the project, likely pushing it back to the next budget cycle.
Option four, meanwhile, would be to award no tenders, in light of the estimated cost of the endeavour coming in higher than originally anticipated and likely prompting a re-envisioning of what council would like to see for the boats.
In discussion around the chamber on Monday night, councillors were hesitant to have the Hallett closed for interior viewing, but looking at the overall cost and timelines of the project, were open to the idea that restoration work could still be undertaken in the future.
However, Miller cautioned that, while the restoration work is feasible in the future, it may wind up being more difficult to do down the road because workers will have to consider the new park design and berth elements, which could complicate restoration work.
“There's a few components to that,” Miller said.
“One really comes down to what the engineers design for foundation and access and whatnot, to to access the Hallet in the future. Depending how elaborate that looks it could impact how a contractor could go in and do the rehabilitation to the boat.
But on the flip side, that could also, I guess, work in their favour in terms of providing easier access. Regardless, they'd have to be much more diligent in terms of protecting the access, the new patio stones, or whatever the surrounding structures look like.
So it's definitely an option to push that, except I think we would want to be much more diligent in terms of the rehabilitation, as it does pose risk to new infrastructure that will be in the ground at that time.”
According to Miller, the Hallett will need to have different levels of abatement and hazardous substance control in place during the rehabilitation work, and whoever does the job will likely wind up going over the boat from top to bottom “painting, coating, rehabilitating.”
“I thought, what's use having a boat if we can't have people tour it and whatnot,,” Coun. Mike Behan said.
“It is a museum attraction, it had been, and we do get some revenue from admissions, so hopefully that would help a little bit, but to have a tourist attraction that people can actually go on and go through, I'm not sure I would support option two, just because of that.”
Mayor Andrew Hallikas noted that the community has a wealth of history tied up in the Hallett and what it represents, and he said he would rather see the project go ahead to both create a new home for the boats and bring the Hallett to a rehabilitated state.
“I think this community deserves nice things, and when it comes to our heritage and our history, I think that's very, very important to remind us of where we came from, who we are, and we can't keep letting our important artifacts deteriorate to not move forward on this,” he said.
“Those boats are going to continue to deteriorate, and the cost of fixing them and mounting them is going to continue to go up. I'm very cognizant of the fact that the money for the Owandem was raised by the community.
They've waited patiently for a long time while that boat has sat in the town yard. It needs a home. It needs to be placed in a proper context. The same thing with the Hallett. So I really would like us to go ahead with this one project and do something nice for our entire community.”
Council eventually voted to proceed with option two.
Local Journalism Initiative / Fort Frances Times
