Bob Gilreath spent last weekend in the Soo, attending the 2022 Soo Locks Engineers Day. It was a weekend filled with freighters and locks. Since 1975, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been holding Engineers Day on the last Friday in June to honor the Corps June 16, 1775 birthday. Visitors get to tour the Soo Locks complex, the Soo Locks Canal Park viewing platform, the Visitors Center and it’s the only day of the year you can walk across the lock gates. Linda Hoath, director of the Sault Area Convention and Visitors Bureau said of this annual event: “The Soo Locks are so important to our history and our community, this annual event helps us celebrate that.”

You can see from Bob’s photos that there were a number of freighters going through the locks that day. He was on one of the tour boats that passed by the American Spirit while Bob filmed that passage. It really gives you a good idea of the size of those big boats that sail the Great Lakes.

Nice pics & video. Whenever I was calling on War
Memorial Hospital in the Soo, it always seemed like
the American Spirit and the Roger Blough were going
thru the locks at that time. It happened quite
often.

U.C.,
Secret rendezvous', EH?

These great pictures make my heart ache, remembering the great days I spent locking through several times in the Welland Canal, Ontario. It was 1979 and a shakedown voyage of the newly christened Canadian Enterprise (later to become Algoma Enterprise).

My company had just installed an 11 stop passenger elevator on some ship in Canada. I was a very young elevator engineer. The new elevators didn't work correctly. I drew the short straw. It was my only but best time ever spent on a Laker

It was such a great experience. I thought the 35mm photos I took were lost but I very recently found and scanned them. Here one's with me at the helm just after returning from doing Figure 8s in Lake Ontario as I signaled the Caption to go from full forward to full reverse, attempting to create as much vibration as possible...It was a long weekend and certainly no cruise.

Very sadly the Enterprise was scrapped out that year. (Not me in photo)

She was scrapped out last year, 2021.

Love visiting the Soo. Such an amazing place to see
and do!

We're going to try to fit that into one of
our getaways this summer. But, as always,
summer is flying by. Great pictures and
here's hoping we get there too. Always a fun
place to go. So much to do with so little
time.