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

Tribute for Cap't Jack - Family and Career

     

     Jack’s career, his marriage, and the start of his family all began around the same time in the early 50’s.  When he got out of the service in 1950, he bought a new car and started taking courses at Portland Junior College - which later became USM.  It was his high school friend, Bud McCue that introduced Jack to Pauline.  How that came about: Pauline was living at Pine Point, and spending much time with her friend Sue Breton.  Since Bud and Sue were good friends, and Jack and Bud were hanging out again, one Sunday they drove out to Pine Point in his new car, and here is where Jack meets Pauline - this was the summer of 1950. Not to date my mother but 60 years ago she married Jack, and they moved to NY where he finished his 2nd year of college at RIT.  He graduated in 1952 and their first child was born in 1953.

Jack was a real photographic artist and film man.  He loved it so much that for many years we had a working darkroom in the cellar on Sargent Street.  Because photography was a passion not just a job, it extended to his family life, and therefore we have so many great pictures from throughout the years. The following images come from Jack's portfolio of photographic talents.  Since I wrote the speech, I get to show a baby pic.  I do not know how he got me in that pose or in those clothes!

     Dad was proud of his work.  After the interviews in 2007, he gave me reels of film that he had saved.  I am looking forward to getting them digitized at some point.  Probably, he was most proud of the work he did for the children at the Pine Tree Society.  I think he was also very proud of a special he filmed on whales that he really enjoyed doing.  If I was to choose his greatest film accomplishment, it would be the work he did on whales.

     One of my most positive childhood memories was going on work assignments with my Dad.  A few years ago, I wrote a journal entry about one those times.  I wrote:

It was great having a father as a photographer working in television. A couple of times I tagged along with him when he was assigned to film the governor at the State House. I remember entering the exclusive grounds of the oval office and being introduced to Governor Curtis sitting behind the big desk as my Dad began testing voice and lights. I had always viewed my Dad's work as special, and it having a coolness factor to it. This was one of those times.

     The Siulinski kids got to appear in local TV commercials and be a guest on the Lloyd Knight show.  In Dad's obituary, I wrote about the time I went on a plane ride in a 4 seater while he was filming the Prince of Fundy cruise liner for a TV commercial (see the image above).  What I did not say was I got so dizzy from that plane ride that I almost got sick.  When we finally landed, I felt like I was walking on the moon!  Still, it was a unique experience I will never forget.

Source: http://www.clker.com

Speaking of the moon, another distinct memory I have of something I did with my Dad was watching the 1969 moon landing live on the monitors in the CBS television studio in Portland.
In 1990, Jack retired after 27 years as a commercial photographer and camera operator for WGME-TV.