Ship has sailed on transporting decommissioned navy vessel to Brandon

BRANDON — HMCS Brandon won’t get its final resting place in its namesake city after all.

Mayor Jeff Fawcett said the logistics and cost to transport the 55-metre Kingston-class vessel to Brandon through the Rocky Mountains was “just outrageous,” and would be in the tens of millions of dollars.

“It can’t be sailed, so it would have to be cut up and come from B.C.,” Fawcett said.

The ship was decommissioned at a ceremony in Esquimalt, B.C., in late September. In recent months, Fawcett and Brandon-Souris MP Grant Jackson have worked to find a way to transport the ship to the Wheat City.

Jackson said navy and Defence officials were “quite happy” the city was keen to get the ship and preserve its history.

Despite those positive conversations, Jackson said it became clear that getting the vessel to the city wasn’t feasible. That included a plan to sail it to Thunder Bay and then transport it by land to Brandon, avoiding the Rockies.

“Defence Department officials do not have confidence in sailing it on open seas through the Panama Canal up around (to Thunder Bay),” Jackson said Tuesday.

The City of Brandon will, however, receive items such as the anchor and propeller, from His Majesty’s Canadian Ship.

Costs of transporting those items, timelines and where they will be stored are still being figured out.

The bell is being kept by the Armed Forces to be displayed in museums, as is standard for ships.

The city has requested the navy designate a future ship with the same name and conversations have started about potentially getting a naval reserve base in the city.

Talks with high-ranking officials — including Defence Minister David McGuinty and Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, the highest-ranking member of the navy — have gone well, both the mayor and MP said.

“The Defence Department quite rightly needs to be prioritizing their new defence spending on acquiring new infrastructure and equipment that makes our forces more capable to deal with the challenges of today and of the future,” Jackson said. “That’s quite rightly where those tax dollars should be spent.”

He said the Prairies, and the Brandon area specifically, have a history of people joining the navy, and having artifacts to preserve that is important.

Jackson said the request for a new ship to be named the HMCS Brandon — which would be the third naval vessel with that name — has gone to a federal committee.

“The mayor and I remain optimistic that in the future, there could be another HMCS Brandon serving Canada in the oceans of the world.”

Fawcett said the officials he spoke to about the naming were “very open to it.”

In an email to the Brandon Sun in late October, a spokesperson for the Defence Department said when the government donates items to namesake cities, it makes it possible for them to be displayed as public art or an attraction at local museums.

“Iconic pieces capture the spirit and legacy of the vessel, making history accessible to the public in a sustainable way,” the spokesperson said.

“These contributions will allow the most meaningful artifacts to live on, while avoiding the long-term expenses of large-scale restoration and upkeep.”

Options for how the ship will be disposed of are being explored, “with careful attention paid to environmental, safety and financial considerations,” the email said.

Jackson said from his research, ships are often sold for parts, used for target practice by the navy or are included in artificial reefs. Some ships are sold, although that likely wouldn’t happen with HMCS Brandon because it can’t go on open water.

HMCS Brandon was commissioned in 1999. It was crewed mainly by reservists and served “a variety of national and international operations and exercises, including fisheries and sovereignty patrols,” the federal government’s website says.

Additionally, Defence officials asked Fawcett and Jackson if setting up a naval reserve base in Brandon would be something the city is interested in, Jackson said.

Jackson said he and the mayor plan to meet with officials at HMCS Chippawa in downtown Winnipeg — the only naval reserve base in Manitoba — to explore the feasibility of opening a base in the Brandon area.

HMCS Chippawa, which is called a “stone frigate,” is used by part-time sailors and is a recruitment centre for the navy. It was formed in 1923 as the Winnipeg Company Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve and became HMCS Chippawa in 1941.

“We know that the navy and all of the Canadian Armed Forces are quite short of people,” Jackson said.

“If another reserve unit in the city of Brandon would be helpful to overall recruitment, it’s certainly something that the mayor and I think would be good for the city, and it’s also good for Canada.”

— Brandon Sun