Fisheries and Oceans Canada to visit shuttered Silver Islet dock

Officials with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Parks Canada are slated to visit the shuttered dock at Silver Islet, on the Sibley Peninsula, east of Thunder Bay, according to the community's harbour manager.

The site visit comes about three years after federal officials closed the large, over century-old dock that accesses Lake Superior, due to structural concerns.

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"They [have] agreed to come up and have a face-to-face meeting and actually view the dock on the 25th of August this year," Scott Atkinson said. "So we're looking forward to that meeting with them."

The local campers association has been trying for years to get Ottawa to fix up the dock one last time, then have the community take it over. Similar agreements have already been reached in Nipigon and Rossport, along the north shore, as Fisheries and Oceans Canada looks to divest itself of small craft harbours, Atkinson said.

Small, but busy harbour

Even though Silver Islet is a mostly-seasonal community of a few hundred property owners, it is only minutes away from Sleeping Giant Provincial Park. In addition, Atkinson said, a recent surge of interest in several lighthouses in the area means increased traffic to the nearby boat launch.

Even though the dock is closed with a large fence and signage across it Atkinson said people, mainly with larger boats, still use the structure.

"There's a couple of spots you can get on the big dock by stepping around the barricade, which I don't condone, of course," he said. "They pretty much take the risk on their own doing that."

The increased traffic using Silver Islet as a launch underscores the need to re-open the dock, he continued.

"Hopefully, we'll move up the chain a little bit and get that done," he said.

The Silver Islet harbour is one of six water entrances to the new Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area listed on Parks Canada's website.

Avoiding a Fort McMurray-type situation

The dock's closure already raised safety concerns for Atkinson when it first closed, but now with the devastation of the Fort McMurray wildfires still top-of-mind, Atkinson said not having a water-based evacuation route makes it even more worrisome.

"We get a fire on this peninsula,the only way you get 2,000 people out ofhere ...that's off a big dock down here on boats," he said, adding that number counts people from Silver Islet, as well as those camping at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

There's only one road Highway 587 through Pass Lake that connects the Sibley Peninsula to the Trans-Canada Highway.

Silver Islet residents, as well as the local yacht club, have put small docks into the harbour to try and make up for the large dock's closure, Atkinson said; as well, work has been done to the gravel slope into the harbour to help get boats into the water.