It appears as though the SS Keewatin will be leaving Port McNicoll.

Skyline Investments, the company that owns the historic Edwardian steamship, is actively working with representatives from the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes to relocate the ship from Port McNicoll to Kingston.

Multiple media outlets have reported that Skyline will be gifting the ship to the Kingston marine museum, pending approval from Heritage Canada, which caught local volunteers with the Friends of the Keewatin off guard.

“We had been led to believe we were still in the running. We knew the effort to move the ship to Kingston was real and is real. What we didn’t know is Skyline’s statement that the ship has been gifted. That came as a surprise,” said David Blevins, spokesperson for the Friends of the Keewatin.

Local volunteers have spent the better part of the last two years working to try and keep the ship docked in Port McNicoll. They had applied to Heritage Canada and received a list of deficiencies to address.

“Heritage Canada had left our application open. We could re-apply and we were working towards that,” said Blevins.

According to Blevins, the Friends of Keewatin had found a financial backer and was working to strengthen their application, before finding out that Skyline officials recently withdrew their application altogether.

“We couldn’t be more disappointed in the fact that Skyline has decided to turn their back on the community,” said Blevins. “Volunteers have worked tirelessly on this vessel to restore it to the world-class artifact that it is. To have it yanked away… it’s just not fair to the community.”

While the situation looks bleak, local volunteers aren’t ready to wave the white flag just yet. They have reached out to multiple levels of government and are making a list-ditch effort to keep the ship docked in Port McNicoll.

“Our disappointment is huge, but we are not going to give up. We are going to look at every possible option that may or may not be available to us,” said Blevins. “We are not done. It may look like it, but none of us are prepared to say we are finished.”