Alcan helps save wartime ship

Alcan Aluminum has become the first corporate sponsor of a plan to save the St. Roch, a retired schooner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The company and the vessel have an extended mutual history. During the Second World War, the Canadian government ordered the ship to travel from Vancouver, where it was docked, to the Northwest Passage to protect a cryolite mine in Greenland. The mineral was crucial to aluminum production at Alcan’s smelter in Arvida, Que.; the aluminum, in turn, was used to build materials for allied aircraft (most of the European mines were under German control). The loss of the mine might have crippled the Canadian war effort.

Although the plan was shelved before the St. Roch reached Greenland (leaving the ship frozen in Arctic ice for two years), the voyage marked the first successful west-to-east Arctic passage.

Alcan will donate $200,000 to help restore the ship and launch the “voyage of rediscovery,” a recreation of the ship’s trek through the Northwest Passage, scheduled to leave Vancouver on July 1 (Canada Day). The trip is being organized by the Vancouver Maritime Museum and will employ the Simon Fraser, an aluminum-hulled ice-breaker.