Photo: Steve Paikin. Retrieved from tvo.org
Manitoulin Island is a wonderful place to visit. But the unpredictability of the weather, to this day, ought to be a cautionary tale for everyone who wants to enjoy its offerings. Never was that more apparent than 59 years ago today.
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If you spend any time near Maple Point on Manitoulin Island, you cannot forget the tragic events of August 15, 1965. Two years later, Billings Township mayor Austin Hunt saw the movie Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck. In it was a church pulpit constructed from the bow of a boat. That prompted Hunt to gather his two sons, Wayne and Michael, plus a cousin, Harry Tracy, in hopes of reclaiming the bow of the Rhu. The Hunts took their boat, and Tracy took his boat — and off to work they went.
“As we neared the reef, they had me dive in, and then my brother, so that we could pull both boats around all the rocks,” Wayne Hunt explains. “We worked fast. The bow was loaded on [Harry’s] boat with a slip knot so that if heavy waves hit and his boat went down, we could quickly pull the cord and let his boat sink without pulling our boat down. An adventure, to be sure.”