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Galcon marine7/30/2023 Once crews cleared the brush and assembled a barrier, their first demolition target was the wharf, “which was unfortunate because it was our main access” to the island, Campkin says. When crews reached the shore, they used two hydraulic towers to anchor the barge to the bottom of the bay. The full crew arrived for a first day of work in early September with a barge full of equipment, including a site trailer three excavators grapple, hammer and bucket attachments a rotary mower and eight 40-yard roll-off containers. Once Priestly assembled the barge and abated the site, the real work began. In addition to abatement, the crews also needed to clear overgrown brush and construct a wildlife barrier to deter animals from visiting. Meanwhile, a crew of five from Priestly dispatched to the island for asbestos abatement and preparation. Priestly crews worked with Galcon Marine Ltd., the marine construction company that provided the barge, to bolt the segments together with a 90-ton crane over the course of a week. The unassembled barge arrived to Ontario in eight truckloads in late August of that year. While the work required several pieces of heavy-duty equipment, one in particular was key to the entire operation: a 50-by-90 custom-built modular barge used to transport all the equipment and materials across 7 miles of open water. Along with an inoperative 57-foot-tall lighthouse built in 1884, crews had to demolish two residences, a generator building, a fog house and a 130-foot concrete wharf jetting into the bay. Priestly submitted the lowest bid to secure the $562,627 project, while the Montreal-based WSP Global acted as project consultant. In 2017, the Canadian government wanted to advance reconciliation efforts and demolish the island’s structures, which were past their useful lifecycles, as part of an environmental remediation project. Located off the northeast side of Lake Huron, Hope Island was one of three islands that belonged to the Beausoleil Nation, a band of Chippewa people, centuries ago. Though a straightforward demolition job once on-site, the complexities of working on a remote island required careful planning to transport more than 1,400 tons of material safely back to land through unpredictable weather and rough waters. The Canadian government tasked Priestly Demolition of King, Ontario, with removing a lighthouse, four smaller auxiliary buildings and a wharf on the island to turn its ownership back to the Beausoleil First Nation. “That was our first impression that this could be a challenging project.” We ended up having to turn around and come back to shore,” says Campkin, who served as project manager for Priestly on the job. “Halfway there, a storm rolls in, and we couldn’t see where the island was. Through brisk air and choppy waters of the Georgian Bay, the Priestly Demolition crew headed off for a site visit to plot how they would restore the island to its natural state. In the foggy mid-morning of a late August day in 2017, Daniel Campkin and a crew of five loaded up a boat and set sail for the uninhabited Hope Island off the coast of Ontario, Canada.
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