Watching the docks get taken out

There are things that happen on a regular basis, year after year. One of them is the taking out of the docks as winter approaches. Despite having lived in Moosonee for more than a quarter of a century I had never witnessed this. The obvious reason is that this task happens during daylight hours and during daylight hours I am sitting behind a desk.

This year I was lucky. I was looking outside and heard some geese. Could not see them but noticed a small Moosonee Transport Limited (MTL) tug near the public docks. Grabbed camera and came back out. The tug or utility boat was towing a group of sections of dock down the river, headed for winter storage. I got some shots of the tug and the dock sections as they headed by me.

Walked down to what was left of the public docks to wait for the boat to come back for the rest of them. I took some shots of the tug coming towards and tying up at the docks but then the operations took a break. The tug does not look immensely bigger than the canoes that are regularly on the river but it is a totally different kind of craft. The patterns of its waves were fascinating, especially when it was right in front of me and I could see how much water it was pushing out of the way.

I guess I could have gone back later to watch the rest of the docks get towed away but I figured that by coming out when I did I had pretty much seen the whole show and headed home.

In past years, when the removal of the docks was part of a contract handed out by the government from far away, the docks often came out much too early. Timing had nothing to do with local conditions and everything to do with the convenience of a contractor from out of town. Now that the Town of Moosonee has taken over the "Port of Moosonee", it seems that the docks come out much later in the year. This is convenient for people travelling back and forth between Moosonee and Moose Factory. The taxi boats stay in the water well after there is floating ice but getting in and out of them is less and less fun at that point.