Now here is something you don't see every day-- a Cold War submarine, sitting on land, several hundred kilometres from the nearest ocean (though I do think the land in the foreground kind of looks like waves). But it can be found in the small Lake Erie town of Port Burwell, ON!
If you drive down the main street of the town, headed toward the beach, and you look out the passenger side window (as I so often do) there comes a point where there's a little break in the storefronts, and what you see sticking up in that break is-- of all things-- the fin of a submarine! If you turn off before getting to the beach and head down a pretty steep hill, you get to see the whole submarine-- HMCS Ojibwa.
Ojibwa is now owned and operated by the Elgin Military Museum as a Museum of Naval History. It's only open a few hours per week and we were not there while it was open, but if it's open you can tour it, and if it's not you can walk around the outside and see it up close, anyway. We were not the only people doing this on a random Saturday in late October, so I would guess it must be a regular enough occurance!
HMCS Ojibwa was intended to be HMS Onyx, but was sold to Canada before her construction was completed. She was launched in 1964, commissioned in 1965, and decommissioned in 1998. She's looking a little worse for the wear in this photo, but I think she might be in the process of being repainted right now.
Fascinating story. We lived in Canada for 7 years, including 3 months in Toronto. We are just watching Griff's Canadian Adventures. He's in Saskatchewan at present.
