Just over four months ago, shortly after midnight on Saturday, March 23, a 34,000 ton laker passed under the lift bridge at the beach strip, through the canal and into frigid Hamilton Harbour with a load of iron ore from Minnesota.

That day, at the 72nd annual ceremony to mark the first ship of the season entering the Port of Hamilton, the captain of the "Algoma Spirit" was presented with the traditional top hat by harbour master Vicki Gruber.

The season is shorter here than at Canadian ports open year-round, closing for winter Dec. 31. And yet Hamilton still boasts the seventh largest port in the country, and is the busiest on the Great Lakes of any Canadian or U.S. port: 28 per cent of all Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway cargo moved through Hamilton last year, or 12 million metric tons of cargo worth $3 billion.

And of the 700 vessels arriving in port in 2018, one in five was from overseas.

Tugboats moored at Heddle Marine docks. | Gary Yokoyama/The Hamilton Spectator

One recent summer day, ships in port included the "Whistler" that last docked in Mexico and arrived in Hamilton at 1 a.m. at the P&H grain terminal on Pier 10, with its distinctive giant bulbous storage domes; that evening, a ship whose last call was Russia also docked for grain (at the G3 terminal); a tanker from Belgium carried steel into port; two other ships hauled asphalt.

(You can track what ships are in port, or expected soon, online, at www.hamiltonport.ca/ vessel-tracking/)

Ships are the most striking visual showing brisk business on the east harbour, but the port's economic impact flows deeper.

The Hamilton Port Authority — recently renamed the Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority (HOPA) after an amalgamation — has 130 tenants, ranging from fertilizer and agri-food industries to ship repair and a craft brewery.

According to port authority figures, 2,100 people work on harbour lands in Hamilton and employment there has grown 30 per cent the last ten years.

Also:

Hamilton's port generates $6 billion in economic activity in Ontario.

38,000 jobs are directly associated with goods that come in and out of the harbour.

34 per cent of all Canadian Seaway jobs are connected to the Port of Hamilton.

More than 4,000 people in the region have an employment connection of some kind to the Port of Hamilton.

You can spot the economic ripple effect in places like Binbrook.

Jeff Barlow, who owns Barlow Farms there, sells his wheat and soybean crops directly to agri-food companies at the port.

"It's a major advantage to local farmers, getting rid of the middleman, you can sell directly (at the port)," he said.

Work crews at Heddle Marine on the east harbour outfitting a deck barge. | Gary Yokoyama/The Hamilton Spectator

He sits on his harvested crops as necessary, waiting for ripe market conditions. Ultimately his processed grain and soybeans end up in markets in places as far flung as Europe and Asia.

During busy periods like mid-July and the fall, he books delivery times with a grain terminal like P&H, or G3, or Richardson; for soybeans, he sells to Bunge Canada, which processes soybeans into canola oil and other products such as livestock food.

(One crop Barlow grows that isn't delivered to Hamilton's port is corn, that he trucks to Port Colborne, where there is a sugar processor.)

He applauds the port authority for helping attract Winnipeg-based P&H to Pier 10 four years ago, where it built the first new flour mill in Ontario in 75 years.

"You can't move your farm," says Barlow, "so it's better if (a mill) is close by, it makes it a lot easier to sell locally; it's a bonus for everyone."

While some agri-food businesses are relatively new to the harbour, mainstays include Heddle Marine, on Pier 14 at Hillyard Street, just east of Wentworth Street.

Heddle performs "vessel lifecycle services" — building, repair, overhaul, and scrapping/recycling all manner of ships and boats.

The typical span of an ocean-going salt water vessel is 15-20 years, and on the Great Lakes, 30-35 years.

The business was founded in 1987 by Rick Heddle, who is still an owner and works there. He started on the dock with a single shipping container and a welding machine. Today the company has two massive dry docks for ship repair, made from salvaged Great Lakes barges.

One of the dry docks has capacity to mount 6,000 tons of dead weight, the other 3,000 tons; the two can combine to support 9,000 tons.

Lance Newton, a labour supervisor at Heddle Marine.| Gary Yokoyama/The Hamilton Spectator

Heddle employs up to 250 people in peak season, which is the winter months, including welders, electricians, labourers, and millwrights. In 2018 they serviced about 80 vessels, from commercial ships to tugs, barges, and Canadian Coast Guard vessels, said Ted Kirkpatrick, who is head of sales.

Kirkpatrick is a recent hire who worked as a ship's mate on the Great Lakes for seven years with McKeil Marine — a Hamilton-based shipping company, and also a mainstay at the harbour.

On this day, workers in Heddle's fabrication shop build two boats; a pontoon transport barge, and a small ice breaker. Out on the pier, workers rip the innards from an old laker. One of them is Lance Newton, whose last job was a manager at the Sears in Limeridge Mall.

"There's always something new working here, you work out in the weather, so if you like being outdoors (the job) is great," he said.

Heddle Marine has expanded to five locations, including a shipyard in Thunder Bay and two in the Maritimes.

McKeil Marine, founded in 1956, employs 400, operating a fleet of three ships, including two tanker vessels, as well as myriad tugs, barges, and workboats.

Port of Hamilton map with legend.| Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority

"Hamilton Harbour is a gift," writes Blair McKeil in an email to the Spec. He ran the company for years, and is now vice-chairman on the company board.

"As a natural port it has provided a livelihood for tens of thousands of men and women who benefitted from jobs created by industry located along the harbour."

McKeil donated a tug boat to Pier 4 park years ago as part of the public renewal of the west harbour, and he applauds connecting people to the water: "It is only natural that the citizens of Hamilton have access to the waterfront in areas where it is practical."

On occasion McKeil Marine works with a relative newcomer to the east harbour: Hooper Welding on Pier 26, not far from the shadow of the Skyway.

Hooper's journey to Hamilton's waterfront began, in a sense, at a very undersized dock near Oakville.

Founded in Toronto in 1952, the family company moved to Oakville in 1990, and the scale of their welding projects mushroomed, to manufacturing heavy-wall high-pressure vessels used in the petroleum and nuclear power industries.

In the spring of 2005, Hooper completed a massive cylindrical project at their plant measuring 24 feet in diameter, for a petroleum plant 2,000 km away in Louisiana.

They had to ship by water, but the question was how to get it on a barge into the Great Lakes and Mississippi River?

Chris Hooper, vice president of Hooper Welding. | Jon Wells/The Hamilton Spectator

The only option was shipping out of nearby Bronte marina in Oakville.

Chris Hooper, vice president at the company, can smile at the memory, but the tension from the logistics back then still shows on his face: how they had to inch the oversized load on a truck to the water, stopping to avoid wires and utilities.

"(Bronte) is not a commercial port; it's tiny," he says. "As the crow flies it was just 2 km to the water, but we left at 6 a.m. from our plant and didn't get to the marina until 10 p.m. And it was on a Sunday."

However, the transformational benefit of that odyssey, Hooper says, was: one, they realized the company was capable of repeatedly manufacturing on that scale — only a handful of companies in the world can do it — and two, they needed access to a major port.

They met with officials from the Hamilton Port Authority and it led to partnering to build a new facility on the east harbour in 2008, which opened the following year.

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With a second home on Hamilton's waterfront, leviathan water-shipped projects followed, such as bioelectric desalters and oil separators, with clients mostly in North America, but also the Middle East and Europe.

The shop includes a rail line for ground shipments as well.

Proximity of partners on the harbour helps: two stevedoring operations unload steel plate cargo from ships destined for reshaping and welding at Hooper's shop; McKeil Marine recently towed a barge holding a giant Hooper oil processing column to a refinery in New Orleans.

The location offers additional benefits: located off Eastport Boulevard, there is scant drive-by traffic, moreover, as with other businesses inside the boundaries of the port, it is controlled access, with security gates at every entry point, a feature introduced at all federal ports following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

Landon Klassen of Hooper Welding is a self-described "jack of all trades/master of none." | Jon Wells/The Hamilton Spectator

The plant superintendent who oversaw construction of the Hooper facility, including a stress relief furnace that might be the largest in North America, is Landon Klassen, a self-described "jack of all trades/master of none."

Klassen grew up on the north coast of Lake Superior and lived in Hamilton while attending Mohawk College. He lives in St. Catharines but says Hamilton remains in his heart.

On lunch breaks at Hooper, Klassen sometimes takes walks in nearby Windermere Park, which incongruously teems with birds and plants on the east harbour.

On weekends he often visits the west harbour, walks Bayfront Park, or puts in his fishing boat at Fisherman's Pier to entertain the bass.

Working at a welding shop located hard against the water has advantages in summer, with cool breezes off the harbour.

"Some days we're dealing with heat stress, in the Oakville shop they might send everyone home, but with the water here, it helps moderate the temperature, and in winter to an extent as well ... Although in winter, when that wind is blowing from the north, that's when you wish you were anywhere but."

• • •

Busiest Canadian ports by million metric tons (2018 figures) 1. Vancouver 146.9 m MT

2. Montreal 38.9 m MT

3. Quebec 27.6 m MT

4. Prince Rupert, B.C. 26.7 m MT

5. Sept Iles, Que. 25.3 m MT

6. Saint John. 25.1 m MT

7. *Hamilton 11.6 m MT

8. Halifax 9 m MT

9. Thunder Bay 8.7 m MT

10. Nanaimo 5.3 m MT

11. Windsor 5.2 m MT

12. Trois Rivieres 3.8 m MT

13. Toronto 2.2 m MT

14. Belledune, N.B. 2.9 m MT

15. Port Alberni, B.C. 1.5 m MT

16. St. Johns 1.7 m MT

17. Oshawa 508,000 MT (metric tons)

18. Saguenay 368,000 MT (metric tons)

* In 2019 Hamilton's port authority merged with Oshawa's to form the "Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority" (HOPA); ports like Vancouver's and Montreal's also have amalgamated port organizations.

• • •

About the series Harbour town: A six-part series examining Hamilton's diverse and evolving waterfront, from its port industries to recreational west harbour.

Part 1: A harbour in full

Part 2: Juggernaut on the Great Lakes

Part 3: West harbour waterworld

Part 4: The last inlet

Part 5: Working the docks

Part 6: Calm in the storm

jwells@thespec.com | 905-526-3515 | @jonjwells