Through the Porthole – Canada C3 Vessel, Polar Prince

The mission of the Canada C3 expedition is to explore all of Canada’s vast coastline. C3 stands for three coasts, Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific. I had the good fortune to be aboard during the leg that covered the St. Lawrence River in mid-June. The weather was great, and the water was calm, but the rest of the journey is not going to be nearly so easy on the ship, the crew, and the participants. Great care was taken by Canada C3 staff in selecting a ship that can handle the journey. Obviously, the ship had to have ice-handling capabilities, and a ship registered in Canada was preferable. Expedition leader, Geoff Green, eventually settled on Polar Prince, and what a fine ship she is!

Docked at Ville de Quebec

Drone shot captured by Ryan Rizzo. Polar Prince is at anchor here, with Zodiacs in the water on the port side, ready to be deployed. The green shipping container on the forward starboard side is the science lab, and aft of it is a white shipping container that is the Mudroom. The helicopter hanger is the bright red structure on the stern.

History

Polar Prince was originally named Sir Humphrey Gilbert. She was built in Lauzon, Quebec for “the Department of Transport Marine Service in 1959 and transferred to the newly created Canadian Coast Guard in 1962, active until 1986. The icebreaker was sold to private interests in Newfoundland and the ship sat idle after 2001 until resold in 2009 to GTX Technology Canada Ltd and renamed Polar Prince.” (wiki) She is an icebreaker, with the look of a classic Canadian Coast Guard ship. Mac MacKay keeps a really neat blog on the comings and goings of ships of interest in Halifax Harbour, and he has written up this brief history of Polar Prince to coincide with the Canada C3 stop in Halifax. (FYI: Mr. MacKay’s Truckfax blog is pretty great as well.) Polar Prince is about 240 ft long overall, 50 ft wide (aka her “beam”), and has a draught of about 16 ft (aka how much of her hull is typically underwater). Her maximum speed is 14.5 knots (26.9 km/h) and has a range of about 10,000 nautical miles (19,000 km) at 12 knots. At that speed, she can carry enough fuel to stay at sea for about a month!

In the Saguenay Fjord.

View from the bow, looking aft along the port side.

View from the bow, looking aft along the starboard side.

Food stores being loaded in Montreal. 

The derrick lowers supplies into the hold. One of the zodiacs is being temporarily stored on top of the Mudroom until all the cargo is stowed.

Ship's Compliment

Polar Prince carried about 50 – 60 people aboard for Leg 2, divided roughly in three groups: ship’s crew, C3 staff, and C3 participants.

The C3 participants were people like me, folks who were only aboard for one leg.

Canada C3 Staff and Journey Participants at the bow. Photo by Mike Sudoma.

C3 staff included expedition organizers, hospitality staff (many of whom were volunteers, but were on for multiple legs of the journey), and the communication team. The Comms Team were the people who were video-recording and photographing everything we did, and editing it all together right on the ship to put out on social media, and to archive for later use. There was a media suite aboard (and by suite I mean very small cabin chalk full of gear), but the Comms Team would often tuck themselves away in a quiet corner of The Knot or The Legacy Room and work away on their laptops producing some really incredible pieces.

Joanne working away in the media suite.

The ship’s crew were the people who ran the ship; the captain, mates, bosun, ABs (able-bodied seaman), engineers, etc. Because the expedition is so long, and the crew don’t really get any days off, Polar Prince has two crews who alternate every few weeks. The crew who was aboard during Leg 2 were almost exclusively from the east coast – all Newfoundlanders and Nova Scotians with just a couple of exceptions. Al is from British Columbia. Roman is originally from Poland but has lived in Newfoundland for years. Captain Stephan Guy is from Quebec.

Polar Prince crew with the PM on June 30 in Charlottetown. Photo credit: Unknown (I swiped it from Facebook)

The crew was fantastic. Friendly, professional, and every one of them took great pride in their jobs and the ship. The finest kind.

Accomodations

Life aboard Polar Prince was great. The cabins, though spartan compared to a cruise ship’s accommodations, were very comfortable for a working vessel. Most cabins had two bunks, a bench seat, a wardrobe cabinet plus a couple of drawers, a desk and chair, and a sink. During the expedition, most journey participants stayed in one of two areas of the ship, while the crew stayed in another. Since the crew was working 12-hours on and 12-hours off, they were mostly assigned to their own area where signs were posted to keep quiet in case they were sleeping. Because of this re-arrangement, I shared the bosun’s cabin with Dr. Lyne Morisette. We loved our little room!

The actual bosun, Kevin Newell, dropped by a couple times, I think to make sure we were keeping the cabin tidy in his absence! Kevin is originally from Canso, Nova Scotia, and I think he was pleased there was a fellow Bluenose-er in “his” cabin.

Dining

Our cabin was conveniently located near the galley and the two messes, which meant a stumble of just a few feet every morning to the coffee pot. There was no organization by rank as to who ate in which mess – everyone ate together. The food was great, with lots of choices. Breakfast was my favourite meal because pretty much all breakfast foods were available every single day. Seriously. We were offered bacon, ham, sausage (link or patty), fried bologna, eggs sunny-side up, boiled eggs, veggie omelets, hashbrowns, bagels, toast, French toast, pancakes, fruit, cereal, smoothies and oatmeal. It was pretty fantastic.

Lunch and supper usually consisted of many choices as well, but I won’t list them all here. The cook was a crazy Newfoundlander named Paul, and it was a real pleasure to get to know him and work with him in the galley a couple of times. (I use the term “work” very loosely here – he did all the work, I mostly just got in the way.) Journey participants were encouraged to sign up to be the helper for galley duty, and I managed to snag two breakfast shifts. It was really fun! For starters, you got to hang out with Paul, who is really funny and has a great laugh. The breakfast shift for the helper started at 6:45 am, although the hospitality crew were there hours before then, I’m sure. The first duty was to choose your apron. We had a choice of three, each with a different coastal theme and of course I liked the lighthouse one the best. Next it was take all the chairs off the tables, and start plating food. The diners would grab a plate, hand it through the window to the galley, and it was the helper’s job to load it up with whatever they wanted. It was a really great way to say good morning to everyone aboard. As folks finished their food, they put their plates in a bus-pan, and the helper did the dishes. It seemed like an awful lot of fun, and I kind of felt like a little kid being allowed to help their mom in the kitchen. Breakfast would last about an hour, from 7-8, and then it was time for morning briefing in the hanger.  

The Hanger

The hanger is a space in the stern of the ship that has a retractable dome-shaped roof, perfect for storing a helicopter. And, no, we did not carry a helicopter with us for the expedition. The hanger was used as our meeting space, morning and evening briefings, and special events aboard ship.

No helicopter, but we did have these beautiful kayaks and canoes with us, courtesy of the Canadian Canoe Museum.

The hanger, all done up for a special dinner in Saguenay. Photo by Christine Fitzgerald.

After our morning briefings we would participate in various community events and activities for the day, sometimes returning to the ship for lunch and sometimes picking up a brown bag lunch to take with us. We always ended up back at the ship for supper, and then it was either one last activity off the ship for the evening, or we would pull out of port and head down the river to our next stop.

The Knot

After our days’ activities, most of us (participants, C3 staff, and even some crew) would end up back at The Knot to wind down and hang out for the night. The Knot was a place to relax, and it was like a perfect blending of living-room-meets-lounge-meets-clubhouse.  

There were several musicians aboard, and there were a few guitars available in The Knot that lead to late night sing-alongs most evenings. The Knot was a place to laugh and joke and be noisy. There were also a few board games in there, including a Canadian trivia game. With Veronique-Marie as a very stern and dictator-like trivia master, myself, JR, and Dennis all ended up with negative scores one night despite managing to get most of the answers right. So many laughs! 

The Legacy Room

One of my favourite places of all time, The Gord Downey and Chanie Wenjack Legacy Room was a place to go and be still. Stepping into the Legacy Room felt like stepping in to a place of safety in a way I can’t describe.  The intention of the Legacy Room is to provide a space for Reconciliation, but that word Reconciliation doesn’t really do it justice. For all intents and purposes, the Legacy Room can be compared to a chapel, although that doesn’t quite capture it either. Many special, sacred, and revered items are kept here, like Paddle To The Sea. The room is very comfortable and welcoming, and is used for many things including discussions, smudging, journaling, working, and hanging out. 

We could do pretty much anything we wanted to do in the Legacy Room, so long as it came from a place of intentional respect. As I wrote about here, I experienced my first smudging in The Legacy Room. The Comms Team often conducted interviews and did editing here. I joined in with a group one night who were helping Dardia Joseph flush out ideas for her grad speech and it turned into a beautiful conversation I will hold with me always. (Dardia was one of Leg 2’s Youth Ambassadors who graduated that week we were aboard ship and was asked to do a slam for the grad ceremony!) My roommate, Lyne, was under a deadline and feeling frazzled about a project she was doing for the Science Channel in the midst of also carrying out her duties as Chief Scientist for Leg 2. She told me she wanted to find a quiet space to work so she went to The Legacy Room, and suddenly everything came in to focus for her. Within two hours both scripts were done and submitted. Hearing her talk about it was really cool, because she was totally re-energized and humbled by having access to such a magical little space. 

The Bridge

There are lots of other cool spaces on the ship, which made her a really cool environment to live in. Captain Guy and the crew generously invited C3 staff and participants to the visit the bridge anytime, with the caveat that it wasn’t a place for socializing, and if they asked us to be quiet or leave during tricky maneuvering, we would. In other words, no messing around! The bridge is where I spent a really fun evening with Jim (AB), Devon (mate), and journey participant Jennifer. The water was calm and the sailing smooth, so Jennifer and I (mostly Jennifer!) asked Devon and Jim dozens of questions about ship operations, navigating, the instruments and equipment, you name it. They happily answered all the questions, and even said it was the most fun they'd had on a navigation watch in a long time. It was really cool, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Bridge of the Polar Prince. Photo by Christine Fitzgerald

Zodiacs

Some of the small towns the C3 expedition is calling on don’t have wharves big enough to accommodate Polar Prince. In those cases, the ship would anchor and the bosun would launch tenders to ferry us all back and forth. The ship carries four tenders, three Zodiacs and a Hurricane, that can be lowered into the water in a matter of minutes using the ship’s derrick. The Zodiacs were really fun to rip around in, and it just wasn’t a Zodiac ride if you didn’t get at least a little bit wet!

Headed for shore in Grosse Ile. Photo by Mike Sudoma.

The Mudroom

When we went out in the Zodiacs, we all had to wear an inflatable PFD and usually rubber boots and rain pants. All this equipment would often end up being wet, and depending on where we were, muddy. Rather than wear those clothes down into our clean and comfy cabins, our gear was stowed in the Mudroom. The Mudroom was a repurposed shipping container that sat on the foredeck near the Zodiacs, and had the look of an east coast fishing shack, complete with shelves, lockers, and a Bluenose half-hull.

Lot's of little details around the ship, like this Bluenose half-hull inside the Mudroom, made her feel home-y and extra special.

The Lab

Just forward of the Mudroom sat another repurposed shipping container, this one on loan to C3 courtesy of Dalhousie University in Halifax. The Canadensis Lab is the brain-centre of all the science programs happening on the ship, and has some really cool equipment. There are about 23 science programs happening over the course of the expedition, and since science is near-and-dear to my heart, it will get its own post at a later date!