Diving

"WATERFRONT ACCESS" FINALLY appears to mean more than a future proximate footpath in a City of Kingston planning document.

This may be the first time that accessibility for shore diving is mentioned in a City of Kingston planning document.

The latest Comprehensive Planning Report to Planning Committee about the proposed Queen's Performing Arts Building at the Tett Centre says the following:

...the residents of the City of Kingston have enjoyed access to the water from this location for many decades for both passive enjoyment and active recreation, such as scuba diving. The wreck of the HMS St. Lawrence, largest War of 1812 battleship to sail the great lakes is located in 2 metres of water in front of this property and has a close post war association with the subject property.

The easement for public access along the waterfront will be included as part of the Site Plan Control process.

It's one thing to compel others, like Queen's University in this case, to build-in waterfront access. It would be nice if The City of Kingston did likewise for its own waterfront properties.

BRACE YOURSELF: Waterfront accessibility appears to take significant importance in the Application for Zoning Bylaw Amendment for the Tett Centre which is on the Cily's Planning Committee agenda for tonight, August 5th.

Unfortunately there is no mention of accessibility for SCUBA diving, given that the Tett Centre property has been used for years to access one of Kingston's best shore dives.

CHALLENGES of shipwreck preservation.

MOORING SEASON is off to a great start according to the Preserve Our Wrecks blog.

PRESERVE OUR WRECKS, KINGSTON was featured on the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet last week.

THE 8-PAGE SUMMER 2009 NEWSLETTER from Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston is now available.

UNGENTLEMANLY CONDUCT via Preserve Our Wrecks, Kingston.

THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL today filmed a segment about the archeological work going-on in Kingston harbour.

DIVING INTO THE PAST in today's Whig, about the archeological work going-on in Kingston harbour.

See also CKWS-TV'S JUNE 4th REPORT, with video.

WATERFRONT ACCESSIBILITY DOWNGRADE according to a moronic report to Council last Tuesday night.

Get this:

Other City owned locations used by the public for swimming but not designated for swimming includes [sic]: Esplanade Park, Everitt Park, Patterson Park and Confederation Park. .... In non-designated swimming areas the signs will indicate that swimming is not permitted. Both designated and non-designated swimming areas will restrict certain activities, such as diving, due the potential. [sic]

Swimming flat-out prohibited at Esplanade Park, Everitt Park, and Patterson Park. Can you imagine?

City Hall in the Harvey Rosen era is led by idiots!

CKWS-TV'S JUNE 4th REPORT about the Kingston Harbour wreck that made news last summer. (Via Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston.)

LEMOINE POINT CONSERVATION AREA now has a Wikipedia page, thanks to the initiative of a user named SoftwareSimian, who created the page yesterday. This is great!

Whenever you Google something, have you noticed that Wikipedia always ranks very high in the list of returned results?

Wikipedia is highly authoritative in the eyes of Google. This means that if a Google search returns a million results, Wikipedia's entry is typically in the top-10, sometimes top-5.

Kingston's Waterfront continues to have a Wikipedia deficit. That needs to change.

If you care about something, document it. That, in and of itself, makes it harder for the clueless among us to mess with it.

TWO SEPARATE REPORTS from last weekend's apparently very successful Nautical Archaeology course.

It's good to see such a strong level of interest in this.

A NAUTICAL ARCHEOLOGY COURSE is being hosted by Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston on May 2-3 at the Military Sportsplex.

More information available from info@powkingston.org or by calling 613-767-7446

First-ever report from diving at the HIGHWAY 15 (CRUICKSHANK) QUARRY.

THE HIGHWAY 15 DIVE QUARRY is Kingston's newest recreational dive site.

The quarry also known as Pittsburgh quarry and Cruickshank quarry is just north of Gore Rd on Highway 15. It has a gravel bottom and crystal clear water. It is fairly well protected from any wind. It will be open for all types of diving and people are encouraged to come and enjoy the site for relaxation and training.

The QUEEN'S PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE DESIGN was unveiled earlier this week. According to The Whig, it's quite something.

A thoughtful reader points out that plans are unclear about its waterfront aspects. The waterfront here has long been a neighborhood and community park for the launch of kayaks, swimmers, windsurfers and scuba divers both east and west of the Stella Buck Building.

Now this area is controlled by Queen's. Here's hoping this doesn't turn into yet another loss of accessibility to the residents of Kingston.

Considering the number of CFB Kingston Scuba Club blog posts tagged with 'Tett Centre', this site is used 12-months a year, day or night, and it's evidently one of the nicer shore dive locations in the Kingston region.

Wouldn't it be great to see active waterfront accessibility built-into the project?

PRESERVE OUR WRECKS' Spring newsletter is out.

ANNOUNCEMENT BY SAVE ONTARIO SHIPWRECKS (SOS) that it has formed a partnership with the Nautical Archaeology Society of Portsmouth UK to deliver maritime archaeology education programs developed by the society.

A committee of instructors has been established. Training will begin in 2009. SOS aims to provide opportunities for training across the province.

Save Ontario Shipwrecks is a Provincial Heritage Organization dedicated to the study, preservation and promotion of an appreciation of Ontario's marine heritage.

THE LATEST OFFICIAL PLAN for the City of Kingston contains much related to waterfront in its 35 PDF documents and hundreds of pages.

We're fast approaching the plan's "consultation" period, for what that's worth.

Looking through all the documents for its waterfront-related aspects, there are numerous general mentions of the recreational uses of our waterfront. Considering the vast majority of kingstonians have no meaningful relationship with the waterfront beyond the occasional glimpse, it all rings hollow.

The plan goes nowhere beyond cliches and platitudes as far as recreational waterfront is concerned.

For example, in the hundreds of pages of the plan, the words Swim, Sail, Row or Rowing, SCUBA, or Diving never appear. The word Wreck appears several times, always in reference to wrecking yards.

The word Beach appears just once in reference to Richardson Beach Bathouse but not in the context of swimming, its renovation, or any recreational aspect you might hope-for.

Don't look to the plan for mention of Ramps unless those ramps are for sidewalk accessibility.

The word Fishing appears once, in the context of some policy that would control fish farming -- probably text copied wholesale from some other municipality's plan.

The word Boating is used once, in a non-specific way, in one document titled "Downtown and Harbour Area Special Policy Area".

In that PDF you'll find doozies like this:

Public Access to the Water
10A.4.14. Access to the waterfront will be enhanced wherever possible, particularly at the ends of public rights of way. Publicly accessible docks also form character-defining elements of the Harbour Area and provide informal open space that will be preserved.

Bullshit!

Oh, there are good things in the plan. Lots of words about linking waterfront pathways, and acquiring waterfront properties. But everybody knows there will never be much money for that.

You can have a multi-faceted plan that makes everybody, especially its authors and the politicians, feel-good. But in the end, when it comes to implementation, there is only one group in Kingston that ALWAYS hoovers most of the money: Downtown Kingston. This plan ensures that this will continue.

The plan is crystal clear on this: the systematic and grotesque annual subsidies of Downtown Kingston, the land owners there, and those who run the related tourist-trappings, will continue unabated.

Looking for quality of life initiatives for the residents of the rest of amalgamated Kingston, especially addressing our waterfront-related recreational infrastructure deficit? Not in the plan.

PHOTOS FROM THIS WEEKEND'S HIGH WINDS have been posted by Chris Wamsley on Flickr. UPDATE: Check out this photo of the Confed breakwall and this Ferry carwash shot.

Also some members of the CFB Dolphins Scuba Club, which is active all winter long, went for a shore-dive to the KGH wreck.

Anyone else have photos to share?

GUENTER'S WRECK is the subject of a new Preserve Our Wrecks photoset on Flickr.

The photos, which are excellent, were taken in November.

This wreck has been known to local divers since the 1960's, and it was catalogued by Parks Canada as early as 2002.

Last summer, a self-promoter "discovered" it. A lazy, impressionable, and non-fact-checking mainstream media bought-into the story, including CKWS-TV, The Whig, The Montreal Gazette and beyond.

Recently, according to Jonathan Moore, an underwater archeologist with Parks Canada:

We have no real archeological evidence that it is HMS Montreal.

GUIDE TO THE STACKED HULLS WRECK has just been posted by Preserve Our Wrecks, Kingston.

The 2-page PDF explains how to find the 3 wooden steamer hulls with a shore-dive off KPH.

Related to local diving is the upcoming Talk on the War of 1812 Wrecks. Jonathan Moore, a well-known author on the topic and member of Parks Canada's Underwater Archaeology Service, will be speaking at the Marine Museum in Kingston on Sunday, November 30th at 2 pm to launch his new book on "Shipwrecks from the War of 1812 at Kingston: A Look Beneath the Waves".

CHRIS HARVEY, CKWS NEWSWATCH get suckered.

To be fair, it's all mainstream media reporting so far on the so-called HMCS Montreal and her sister ships.

WE HAVE A NEW LOCAL SHORE DIVE off Kingston General Hospital.

Divers from Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston laid a line leading to the charted wreck yesterday. Quoting the POW Blog post about it:

The wreck is in very good condition; one of the more intact examples of what is certainly a sailing vessel and probably associated with use on the canal systems. It's almost a hundred feet long and about 24 feet wide. Care should be taken by visiting divers to avoid disturbing and damaging many upright features that have stood the test of time.

The wreck is well known already; it features on local charts, but it has not previously been of great interest, since it lies in the path of frequent boat traffic and didn't have any line to it from shore.

Update: New photos and video of this wreck.

See the updated List of Shore Dives near Kingston on the K7 "Wrecks" page. The list now contains 17 shore dives.

While you are there, there's a new Google Map pin on the position of the HMS Montreal which was supposedly "discovered" earlier this month leading to much fanfare in mainstream media.

THE SUMMER 2008 NEWSLETTER from Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston is available for download. Therein, among other things, is acknowledgement of the condiderable volunteer work done by the local dive community to the benefit of local tourism.

You'll also find information on the Kingston Underwater Event to be held August 8-10 at the Marine Museum and at City Hall. This is a showcase of Kingston's role as a premier freshwater dive location with a focus on diving, maritime heritage, conservation, and environmental issues.

THE MUSEUM OF UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY is a cool outreach by underwater archaeologists and maritime historians. It's an example of how the web is bringing otherwise obscure science and history to a wider audience.

They are currently conducting research in Lake Ontario on wrecks near Kingston. A recent jourunal entry from May 2008 describes work off Carleton Island, on the other side of Wolfe Island near Cape Vincent.

This entry from July 2007 has an intriguing drawing of Kingston waterfront circa 1813, looking from downtown over to RMC and Fort-Henry hill, pre-fort. Here's the larger version of the drawing.

AN ONGOING WRECK SURVEY IN NAVY BAY, from the Dolphins Scuba Club, and more from Preserve Our Wrecks.

SCUBA DIVING MAGAZINE has a brief article on diving near Kingston, now online from its March issue. The article covers three wrecks: The George A. Marsh, The Comet, and The Wolfe Islander II.

From the introduction:

With upward of 24 known moored wrecks, including schooners, barges and passenger ships, Kingston, Ontario, is a tempting destination for cold-water wreck divers. In fact, more than 400 ships are known to have wrecked in the area.

NEW WEBSITE for Preserve Our Wrecks, Kingston. Adjust your bookmarks, the URL is new: http://powkingston.org

Related: Preserve Our Wrecks, Kingston blog.

THE PRESERVE OUR WRECKS, KINGSTON BLOG was just launched today.

This is the first post to what I hope will become an active and informative resource for everyone interested in respecting and protecting the maritime heritage of Kingston, Ontario and neighbouring waters.

Mike Hill

Mike is also one of the folks behind the truly excellent Kingston Dolphins Scuba Club Blog.

Don't be surprised to see the important work of Preserve Our Wrecks brought squarely to the forefront of the ongoing public conversations about our waterfront.

IT'S NOT TOO COLD TO DIVE, or to partake in an ice diving course.

KEDCO'S KINGSTON ONTARIO WATERFRONT WEBSITE IS BACK ONLINE.

Here's the current home page.

Your tax dollars at work; five-figure dollars worth.

Apparently nothing's changed since last November when this first came to light, then immediately taken offline.

It would be interesting to find out: who is well-served by misleading potential visitors to Kingston?

Note the adult and two kids, in a what appears to be a 15-foot canoe, mid-Harbour at dusk in imminent weather. Seriously, how improbable is that? How wise is that?

International-14 class sailboats haven't actively sailed here for quite some time; all "14" sailboats come here from out-of-town, and they are here maybe one-weekend a year. The boat pictured here is Toronto-based, shown in no-wind, flat-calm conditions, which is insulting, a bit like picturing a slalom skier in a farmer's field.

Underwater here isn't blue, it's green or, if anything, it's dark green. There's blue-water diving, but certainly not anywhere near here.

Adding just one more link-button to that web page looks very expensive. Guess how many files you'd need to touch to add another little box to the left of the canoe.

Is the KEDCO "blue belt" website like other websites KEDCO isn't able to maintain?

Take a guess: what percentage of visitors to Kingston ever get their feet wet in Kingston Harbour? A single-digit percentage? One-in-fifty, perhaps?

Take another guess: what percentage of Kingston residents ever get their feet wet in Kingston Harbour over the course of a typical year?

Do you suppose it might be because of fundamental waterfront inaccessibilities that exist here? Just who is KEDCO trying to kid?

It's one thing to try and lure visitors here, but it's quite another to be overtly dishonest about what we really have to offer.

The movers behind this "blue belt" website, Ross Cameron, Don Curtis, and KEDCO, are the very same folks who thought putting the LVEC on waterfront, expropriating MetalCraft Marine, totally eliminating Kingston Marina, and comandeering part of Fluhrer Park for the LVEC was a fine idea.

THE AGM OF PRESERVE OUR WRECKS, KINGSTON is to be held at 1 pm on Sunday, March 2nd in the Ft Henry Room of the Day's Inn at Hwy 401 off Division St.

Light refreshments will be served to members attending.

The CFB KINGSTON DOLPHIN SCUBA CLUB remains very active with diving throughout the winter.

Yesterday, for example, members dove off the Kingston Yacht Club during the day and then practiced in the KMCSC pool in the evening.

The Dolphins regularly post accounts and photos on their blog, and they occasionally update their photo gallery on Flickr which has, among other things, a photoset of members ice diving in Kingston Harbour last February.

Incidentally, though it's a military club, it's membership is open to all Kingston residents. A yearly associate membership costs $65.00 for civilians, $45.00 if you're between 14 and 21.

The CFB Kingston Dolphin Scuba Club is one of the truly great things about the Kingston waterfront. Active year-round, its members always seem to be collaborating with others on the waterfront, and they have been systematically sharing what they do, see, and find.

HMCS TERRA NOVA, a 366-foot Canadian Restigouche-class destroyer escort, is to be scuttled to create an artificial reef for diving near Gananoque.

The target-time for that is late 2009.

The claim that "the sunken ship will attract some 10,000 recreational scuba divers to the region in the first year" seems implausible.

UpdateA meeting account from Chris of the CFB Dolphins SCUBA Club. The scuttling is planned to be just off Browns Bay Provincial Park, near Mallorytown on the 1000 Islands Parkway. That's about 60 km from Kingston.

The CFB KINGSTON DOLPHIN SCUBA CLUB is a great example of how many local organizations could better interact with their members and the public at large: by blogging.

Consider these accounts of three recent dive excursions, all posted yesterday.

• Night Dive at the Pump House
• Wolfe Island Winter Dock
• Morton Street Wharf this afternoon

Makes you want to do a lot more diving, doesn't it?

Consider too the cost of all this: zero dollars, just three paragraphs in total.

THE PRESERVE OUR WRECKS FALL 2006 NEWSLETTER is now online. Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston (POW) is celebrating its 25th year of protecting Kingston’s Marine Heritage through its preservation efforts of the local area shipwrecks.

THE 2nd ANNUAL LIMESTONE CITY MARINE HERITAGE SYMPOSIUM will be held Saturday January 6 2007 at The Ambassador Resort Hotel from 8:00 AM to 4 PM.

The theme of this years show remains ship wrecks of the local area with a special focus on marine archeology and wreck preservation.

The lineup:

• Locally:
  • Jeremy Jones - Shore Dive Sign Project. Jeremy reports on regional effort by divers to place in water signage for the protection of both wrecks and divers.
  • Scarlette Janusas, a professional underwater archeologist, on researching, working on, and protecting our Marine Heritage.
  • Ed Burt reports on his discovery of the almost mythical HMS Speedy
• Dr. Ed Reinhart presenting on his geological and archeologic efforts in Caesarea
• the always popular photograher Vlada Dekina show casing the wrecks of Belle Isle, Nfld
• Dr. Doug Smeaton on historic shipwrecks of Halifax

Tickets may be reserved by contacting wreckshow@ontariodiving.com. Seating is limited so please book early to avoid disappointment. Doors open at 07:30 am.

American boaters, on the other hand, are rightfully pissed at the idea since it affects them far more than it will ever affect Kingston.

If this goes through, it's just one more reason why the northern shore of Lake Ontario is a nicer place for boating, and for quality of life. On this so-called "issue" Kingston's current mayor, Harvey Rosen, would be well advised to zip it.

Click the chart below for a larger view or, better yet, see the US Homeland Security page. The box outlined with "blue" dots is the five-mile distance from the U.S. shores and/or U.S.-Canada maritime border. The boxes outlined with "yellow" dots, here shaded pinkish, are the proposed safety zones on Lake Ontario .

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CKWS-TV reports on a recent diving death near Rockport.

We've received some great pictures and a history of the shallow wrecks in Anglin Bay.