Courtesy of Marilyn Korzekwa, Lake Superior.
On August 19th, Dr. Marilyn Korzekwa pioneered a new 29 km cross-border route across Lake Superior from Whitefish Point, Michigan, USA to Pancake Bay, Ontario, Canada. She left Whitefish Point, Michigan at 3:15 am in the chilly blackness on August 19th and arrived in the sunshine at Pancake Bay in Ontario 12 hours 9 minutes later.
The 29 km swim across the mouth of Whitefish Bay, in the eastern end of Lake Superior, covered the Edmund Fitzgerald route.
It is a shorter, but colder (16.5°C), route compared to the longer (32 km) and warmer western waters from Wisconsin to Minnesota within the USA borders which has been swum twice.
The Edmund Fitzgerald tanker is legendary in the East, immortalized by the Gordon Lightfoot song. Dr. Korzekwa explains, “My favourite line in the song is ‘Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?’ My swim passed within about 10 miles of where the tanker lies in two pieces in over 500 feet of water.
The legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains the most mysterious and controversial of all shipwreck tales heard around the Great Lakes. Her story is surpassed in books, film and media only by that of the Titanic. Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot inspired popular interest in this vessel with his 1976 ballad, ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.‘”
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