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Three companies that are inextricably linked with the history of maritime commerce on the Great Lakes are celebrating centennials this year. On these pages we honor those companies and thank them for their unique and meaningful contributions.

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The Algoma Central Corporation

The Algoma Central Corporation had a dramatic and colorful beginning, told well in these comments by today’s CEO, Peter Cresswell, in an interview earlier this year with The Journal of Commerce:

President and CEO Peter Cresswell, aboard the M/ V Capt. Henry Jackman.

“Francis H. Clergue came up to Sault Ste. Marie [late in the 1800s] and brought a lot of money with him, from his friends in Philadelphia, and he saw the rapids here, where the water flows from Lake Superior into Lake Huron. He said, ‘I can make power out of that, ’ and so he got into the power business. He saw the woods above Sault Ste. Marie and said, ‘I could get into the pulp and paper business. ’ Then he discovered iron ore north of here and said, ‘I should get into the steel business. ’

“And then it was, ‘I need a railway to connect all these things, to bring the wood into the Sault and the ore. ’ And so he built a [350 mile] railway [the Algoma Central Railway Company], and a steamship company [the Algoma Central fleet], to get stuff up to Michipicoten Harbour on Lake Superior [near] where the ore was. In 1899, we were the railway and the steamship company.”

One of the company’s first acquisitions, the steamer Theano.

The company name was changed to The Algoma Central and Hudson Bay Railway Company in 1901, and from this point on Algoma Central carried on business as both a railway and a steamship company. Other changes followed, and in 1990 the company name was changed to Algoma Central Corporation. At the same time, Mr. Cresswell was appointed president and chief executive officer. Since then, the company has divested of the railway and its forest lands and has launched the Algoma Fleet Renewal Program to ensure competitiveness into the future.

Expansion of the fleet followed with the Seaway SelfUnloaders joint marketing operation and the acquisition of Marbulk Canada to provide ocean-going selfunloaders.

Today, Algoma Central Corporation, with revenues approaching $250 million, proudly flies its house flag on 31 vessels sailing the Great Lakes.

The corporation’s head office is in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Headquarters for the Marine Group, which has more than 1,000 employees, including 400 in the ship-repair division, are in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Says Mr. Cresswell, “Our centennial is a tribute to our founders, to our employees over the last hundred years, and to our customers.”