Port McNicoll Ontario - The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston has the resources to preserve the SS Keewatin, the chair of the museum's board said.
 
The museum is to receive the 116-year-old passenger ship later this year after its owner donated it earlier this month.
 
The ship has been a museum ship in its former home port of Port McNicoll.
 
Earlier this week, a group called Keep Keewatin Home penned an open letter to the Kingston community asking that the community's "most-loved historic possession" remain.
 
"The SS Keewatin is the only one of its kind, the last British-built Edwardian passenger liner in the world.
 
Its owners have set a price tag on the ship, but to the people of Port McNicoll, its home port and its rightful home, it is priceless," the letter stated.
 
"Its presence anchors the community, both literally and figuratively, its image graces our murals, flags, stationary, publications, and community events," the letter added.
 
Built in Scotland in 1907 and arriving in Canada the following year, the 336 foot Keewatin had to be cut into two pieces to fit through the Welland Canal.
 
After being reassembled in Buffalo, N.Y., it entered service, and for 53 years sailed between Port McNicoll and Thunder Bay, linking the eastern and western railheads and carrying passengers and goods to ports for the Canadian Pacific Railway's Great Lakes steamship service.
 
The ship was valued at about $48 million by the Friends of the Keewatin, largely due to hundreds of volunteers who donated thousands of hours to restoration efforts.
 
"In the minds of many thousands in our community, a move to Kingston is an abhorrent act, the unjust appropriation of cultural and heritage property that is, in 2023, grossly out of synch with national and global opinion," the Keep Keewatin Home letter stated.
 
An online petition calling for the Keewatin to stay put has collected more than 15,100 signatures, and Keep Keewatin Home stated there are heritage groups in Simcoe County interested in operating and managing the vessel.
 
Chis West, chair of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes' board, said the museum has the funding and the facilities to accommodate the ship.
 
"The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes has both the expertise and funding to be able to preserve the Keewatin for future generations," West wrote in an email to the Whig-Standard.
 
"Critically, we also have an ideal place to berth her in our National Historic Site Dry Dock. We've raised several million dollars from our generous supporters to fund repairs, refurbishments, and towing of the Keewatin."
 
West said the ship is scheduled to leave Port McNicoll around the end of April, or early May, and the museum is working to return items on board the ship that were donated by members of the community.
 
The letter from Keep Keewatin Home noted that historical artifacts are being returned to their home communities around the world and promised that the people of Port McNicoll will not stop pushing for the ship's return.
 
"We wish the city of Kingston, and indeed the marine museum, every ounce of success in the future," the letter stated.
 
"We love your city, the marine museum deserves to be successful, deserves to be great, it deserves a display ship. But as a museum and a community that have felt the agony of losing a ship, namely the Alexander Henry, it is the perfect irony that they would seek to inflict the same heartbreak on our community."
 
Elliot Ferguson.