Around the Circle This Week: August 3, 2018

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Our Favorite People: Davis Helberg, former executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, master storyteller and one of our advisers, is among our best-loved people here at

Lake Superior Magazine. He has been struggling with tough health challenges, which he and his wife, Stacey Carlson Helberg, have faced with grace and determination. Brady Slater of the Duluth News Tribune did a warm profile of Davis, well worth sharing to celebrate this amazing man. Davis has done a number of stories for our magazine over the years, including his most recent, “A Corner’s Worth of Hometown Pride,” about the creation of a definitive history book for his home of Esko, Minnesota. Davis was our 2003 Lake Superior Magazine Achievement Award Winner. (He was even a shirt model for us in 2002 as you can see in this "old" gift guide photo.) We send Davis and Stacey supportive thoughts and prayers – along with returns of all the smiles and laughter Davis has spread over the years.

What the Water Teaches: This week a dozen regional teachers and two instructional coaches from Wisconsin and Minnesota have been learning about the Lake Superior watershed, traveling the upper St. Louis River talking to researchers and scientists to gain outdoor education skills. The Rivers2Lake Education Program integrates the watershed into teaching what organizers call “Great Lakes literacy” and how to engage students in stewardship and watershed restoration. Staff from the Lake Superior Estuarine Research Reserve in Superior and the Superior Rivers Watershed Association in Ashland also do monthly follow-ups with the teachers during the 2018-19 school year. The teachers hail from Bayfield, Maple, Port Wing and Superior in Wisconsin, and Cloquet and Duluth in Minnesota. 

Lakeside Retreat 4 Sale: In Cornucopia, Wisconsin, a lakeshore estate large enough for a family compound has come up for sale. The house built in 2000 on the shore of Lake Superior has eight bedrooms, six full and two partial bathrooms on a 12.1-acre lot and with an asking

price of $2.17 million. The 7,500-square-foot home was designed to be reminiscent of an opulent, turn-of-the-century lakeside lodge.  Agent Doug Kman of Coldwell Banker East-West Realty says the hard part about showing this home is that there is so much to show. “It’s just being able to get somebody to see all the details in the short amount of time that’s a showing,” he says, noting the woodwork with no cross-grain cuts, the locally quarried brownstone entrance pillars, front entry and retaining walls and two master suites with lakefront decks, gas fireplaces, jet tubs and steam showers (opulent, indeed!). It's currently operated as the Siskiwit Bay Lodge, a bed-and-breakfast inn run by Bruce and Sandy Von Riedel. The business is not being sold, however, and the Von Riedels will take the name with them, though they are more than willing to share their experiences and show their success should the new owner want to do a B&B there, Doug says. “It really is a work of love,” he says of the lodge’s hospitality. As a big B&B fan himself, Doug should know. “My wife and I do it every year,” he says of a B&B stay. “It’s so much fun and romantic. It’s very comfortable, it’s always very homey and you meet nice people.” As to this location, he adds, “The seclusion and the privacy that you get is unreal.” Yet Duluth is not far (about 64 miles on Highway 13), nearby Bayfield has an airstrip and Cornucopia has a marina. For potential buyers, Doug has some advice about the still operating B&B: “They may want to stay at the Siskiwit Bay Lodge and take it in.”

Superior Sailing: BoatU.S. Magazine named five top cruising destinations on the Great Lakes and gave a nod to our own Bonnie Dahl, Lake Superior boating guru and author of Bonnie Dahl’s Superior Way (which we publish). Here’s the magazine’s summary of their pick for the Big Lake: “Lake Superior: CPR Slip, Ontario. You can’t find CPR Slip on Google map, and you’ll need some local knowledge to help enter the tricky small harbor, but Bonnie Dahl, widely regarded as the absolute cruising authority for the lake, says remote CPR Slip is a ‘prize.’ The former Canadian Pacific Railroad fishing camp on Saint Ignace Island with a protected harbor surrounded by Boreal forest can be a busy place on weekends with lively gatherings around a fire pit and the sauna getting heavy use. Many dinghy over to nearby islands to hunt for agates (crystallized quartz rocks).”

Wreck Saving: The Lake Superior chapter of Save Ontario Shipwrecks has added two heritage buoys above shipwrecks near Thunder Bay to serve as anchors for divers’ boats and to aid location of the wrecks, reports Heather Kitching of the CBC. A new buoy was placed at the wreck of the Gray Oak, and a replacement buoy at the site of the Puckasaw. In this photo are from right, Chris Berner, Michelle Willows and SOS chapter president Richard Harvey (who is also mayor of Nipigon). Five shipwrecks have been thus noted, the two mentioned above along with the Green River, Howard and Robert Fryer.

Good Samaritan: The passengers and crew on a sinking boat in DeTour Passage at the mouth of the St. Marys River on July 26 got aid from a good Samaritan boater, according to the U.S. Coast Guard Ninth District, Great Lakes. Crew on the Lee A. Tregurtha reported to the Coast Guard Sector Sault Sainte Marie that a 17-foot pleasure craft was capsized with four people aboard. Watchstanders at the station issued a marine broadcast, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Buckthorn was diverted to the area, the Sault station launched a response boat and an MH-60 helicopter was requested from Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City. By the time the Buckthorn arrived, another pleasure craft that had heard the marine broadcast arrived to help, picking up all four people, who were transported to DeTour Village. The 17-foot boat sank in 135 feet of water. The Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were monitoring for signs of pollution or hazards to navigation. Some people may not know of “Bucky,” the 100-foot inland buoy tender home-ported in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It is the only one of its kind on the Great Lakes, according to the Guard.

A Towering Achievement: Michigan Technological University in Houghton held a dedication ceremony Thursday for the Bernard Family Clock Tower located between the Memorial Union and the R.L. Smith ME-EM buildings. The dedication helped to kick off this weekend’s Alumni Reunion. The clock tower, surveyed by a webcam, is part of a beautification project started with the Garden Plaza by the library and the Husky Statue Plaza. All three were built with donations, the clock tower specifically with funds from the William and Ilene Bernard Jr. family. A William J. Bernard Jr. Family Endowed Scholarship Fund also was created with the family’s donation and Michigan Tech material science student Mathew Thomas received the first $4,000 scholarship. The university described the tower thusly in a press release: “The clock tower stands nearly 37 feet tall and sits on a three-and-a-half-foot base constructed of concrete and salvaged sandstone from the original central heating plant that was dismantled two years ago. Each face of the eight-foot-square tower will boast a four-foot-diameter clock to be seen throughout campus and from the highway. The tower will house a 37-inch-diameter cast bronze bell that will ring the 'A' note for special occasions as determined by the University Community. It was very important to the Bernard family that the tower design be in keeping with Copper Country elements and incorporate local materials within the plaza area of the tower. Hence, the design of the tower is reminiscent of a railroad trestle and the lift bridge truss with large mine rock placed within the base, and of course, the salvaged sandstone originally mined from Jacobsville.”

A Vision of Fairlawn: An impressive stormy sky shot of Fairlawn Mansion in Superior, Wisconsin, taken by Ken Harmon, shows off the Queen Anne Victorian in rare form with its fourth-story turret. “Built as the family home for lumber and mining baron Martin Pattison, his wife, Grace, and their six children, Fairlawn was completed in 1891 at the cost of $150,000; an equivalent of well over $3 million today,” according to Superior Public Museums, the city overseer of the mansion along with the SS Meteor Whaleback Ship Museum and the Old Firehouse and Police Museum. The museum is open year-round for tours and hosts many special public activities and private events. A real Lake Superior local treasure.

Photo & graphic credits: Steve Kuchera; Rivers2Lake; Siskiwit Bay Lodge; BoatU.S.; Save Ontario Shipwrecks; U.S. Coast Guard; Michigan Technological University; Ken Harmon.