The Prince of Fundy: Maine to Nova Scotia

A distinct childhood memory when I was ten years old was when my Dad, Jack Siulinski, invited me to tag along with him on a work assignment. Jack was a commercial photographer who provided film for mostly local commercials and advertisements. More on the experience of being on the job with my Dad below.

Portland Headlight in the foreground

The Prince of Fundy was a 387 foot car, truck and passenger “cruise ferry”. It made daily trips from Portland, Maine to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The ship was operated by Lion Ferry AB of Halmstad, Sweden, and it’s crew and captains were mostly of Swedish origin. Lion Ferry operated similar cruise lines in Germany and Scandinavia. The tagline from a brochure from my Dad’s personal collection gives a compelling description: “The ocean ferry offering the excitement, luxury, and continental flare of an international cruise ship." The image to the left is from the personal collection of Jack Siulinski.

Photo advertisement

Life onboard included dining (including the staple Swedish Smorgasbord), dancing, shopping in the tax-free gift shop, and low stakes gambling (roulette, blackjack and slot machines). The round trip price was just $25 for an adult and $12.50 for a child. The charge for a vehicle was $32. One driver (passenger) was included in the vehicle charge. The saving of driving miles from Portland to Yarmouth was 858 miles. Passengers saved on time also; the one way voyage was ten hours. Today, the roundtrip cost of a car ferry from Bar Harbor, Maine to Yarmouth, NS is $210.

Back to my childhood experience on the job with my Dad: The assignment was for my Dad and I to board a small sport aircraft (a 4-seater similar to the image shown here) so that Dad could film the Prince of Fundy as it cruised out of Portland harbor into the Casco Bay Islands before heading out to the great Atlantic. This all sounded very exciting to a young child. Having never flown below, I was anxious what the experience would be like but I did not feel unsafe because I was with my Dad. 

Image Source: Pixabay

Once in flight the pilot putted along more or less in a straight-forward trajectory and soon were were several miles away from the coast. The view was spectacular but once we caught up with the Prince, the pilot started making these continuous swirling motions as the ship cruised along at full speed. I did not expect to experience a constant feeling of merry-go-round. With every turn, I began to feel dizzy. At first I kept the feeling to myself but when the dizziness turned to nausea, I told my Dad I was feeling sick. My suffering did not last too much longer as my Dad got the pictures he needed and we headed back to the landing strip. Was I happy to be on the ground! I remember telling my Dad that when I got off the plane, I felt like I was walking on the moon.

Fishing Boats in Yarmouth

Yarmouth, Nova Scotia is a port town located on the Bay of Fundy in south-western Nova Scotia, Canada. It lies at the Atlantic entrance to the Bay of Fundy, 210 miles by road west of Halifax. The site may well have been visited by Leif Eriksson the Lucky and his Norsemen around 1000 AD. The town of Yarmouth developed with the fishing industry and has a gorgeous heritage district filled with charming ex-sea captains' mansions with elaborately painted wood features, widow's walks and glass-walled turrets. 

During the heyday of the Prince of Fundy's operation, the service provided a boon to tourism in Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Today, there is no longer a ferry servicing Portland to Yarmouth but there is a high speed car ferry service from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth.

Referenced material and source citations: 

1. New York Times,  A New Car Ferry with a Difference, August 30, 1970: https://www.nytimes.com/1970/08/30/archives/a-new-car-ferry-with-a-difference.html
2. Source of Fishing Boats image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotia_Prince_Cruises
3. Press Release by Torben K. Anderson, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, Lion Ferry
4. Brochures and photographs from personal collection of Jack Siulinski
5. Source of paragraph about Yarmouth: https://tinyurl.com/y3zzvsaj

Remembering the Artistic Talents of Jack

Jack at work as WGAN-TV cameraman

For the anniversary post of my Dad, Jack William Siulinski, who passed away six years ago today, I would like to honor the passion he had for his work and his love of photography.

Yesterday, I delivered a speech to a large audience of genealogists at the San Mateo County Genealogical Society in California. The speech was persuasive with a focus to promote blogging as an excellent platform to share and preserve the writing of one’s family history.

For this event, I opened my presentation in a different way. In preparing for this event, I came to recognize that my father and I shared similar passions; that of storytelling. He told stories with the images he created in his photography and film work. I tell stories through my writing with careful selection of images. Although, I don’t have the added talent that my Dad had for painting and drawing, I consider that when I am writing a blog post, I am working on a different kind of canvas. Here are three examples of the creative talents of my Dad's work:

Portland Headlight image taken from a small chartered plane

1963 Christmas Photo Card

A simple but beautiful drawing...

Jack's love of photography began before his formal training at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he received an Associate in Applied Science degree in 1953. That I know because I am in possession of his carefully created photo albums that document his military life from enlistment to discharge. He would learn the technical skills of the craft after his days in the Navy. Here are just a few of the photography tools that were used by my father back in the day:

The author posing for the artist

Part of the legacy Jack left to his family are numerous portraits that he took of us during our childhood.  He was precise in the framing of his subjects. I believe he really enjoyed the tangible aspect to the craft when he was able to physically create prints from the filmed images he took. His work for the studio involved countless assignments on the road to cover news stories and special events. He also filmed several TV commercials often using his children as subjects eager to see themselves on the big screen! My favorite event that he filmed was a whale watching excursion in Casco Bay in Portland which was made into a television program.