July 28, 2022
Although I haven’t been taking the long walks of last year along the jetty at Iona Island (I see an environmental project is splitting it up in an effort to improve salmon populations), I have been regularly drawn to Fraser River Park, where I enjoy watching the tugs go by.
After getting Covid earlier this month, I’m not up for long hikes, but have been slowly recovering with shorter ones, and reading. A friend loaned me a collection of issues of Western Mariner magazine, and I found myself yesterday reading one after another. Jack Hughes’ tug Hutowco Queen, I discovered, has found a new life as Bear I, for an aquaculture business, and was recently spotted having its engine refit at Port McNeill. I was pleased to read that! The tug was built in 1963 at Benson Bros. Shipbuilding in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour and is still working along the coast.
I remember in the late 1990s, stepping aboard the Hutowco Queen for the first time, while the tug was owned and operated by Thunder Bay Tugs in Lund. I had tracked it down for a radio documentary I was making for CBC, and in order to catch it, and its crew, I was up at 4am, and driving to Lund in the dark, with my uncle, Paul Hughes. The Heatley family had taken good care of the vessel, rebuilding the wheelhouse. I was happy to see it was operated by a family business, as Hughes Towing Company had been.
