It is late December. Down on the river, several bays are starting to ice over now. Open areas of water seem to be steaming, emitting vapour-like trails of rising mist river men call sea-smoke. Navigation on the St. Lawrence River is coming to a close. Outside, in downtown Brockville, it is beginning to snow.

If any of this unsettled weather bothers the man seated in front of me, he doesn’t show it. We’ve agreed to meet here in Brockville. Later this evening, he’ll pass through here again. Only this time, he’ll be on the river, guiding a 700-foot-long, 25,000-ton-displacement foreign ship outward bound for some port in faraway Europe, probably carrying a cargo of grain. But time is running out and bad weather is closing in.

Just imagine climbing out of bed at 3 a.m. in December, reporting for work in a small boat and then scaling a 40-foot steel wall by climbing a rope ladder hand over hand in freezing temperatures with icy water below. For Captain Pierre Boucher of Prescott, this has been a way of life for more than 30 years.

“They tried to make a priest out of me,” laughed the 61-year-old upper St. Lawrence Seaway pilot. “But I said, ‘Dad, you’re wasting your time. I want to be a sailor.’ ”

Although he didn’t fulfil his father’s wishes, Boucher stepped into his father’s shoes. Capt. Jean Boucher, Pierre’s dad, was a sailor himself.

“It was part of my upbringing,” Pierre says, “I knew from the time I was five years old just what I wanted to do. I remember collecting pictures of ships and pasting them up in my bedroom.”

Seafaring has been a way of life for the Boucher family. Pierre’s younger brother, Andre, is also a seaway pilot.

Growing up in Notre Dame de Pierreville, Quebec, on the south shore of Lac St. Pierre, it was only natural for most young boys to grow up to be either fishermen or sailors.

“My great grandfather was a lighthouse keeper in Sorel. My grandfather was a fisherman who also sailed for a little while,” Boucher remembers. “My dad was a captain for Hall Corporation. He was one of the original pilots in 1959 when the brand new St. Lawrence Seaway opened.”

Indeed, Pierre Boucher holds his father’s memory in high regard. The elder Boucher passed away about a month ago at 94 years of age.

“Dad sailed for 50 years, retiring in 1982,” Pierre said. “He began sailing at the age of 15 and worked his way up to captain. When the seaway opened, there was a need for many pilots. He was one of the guys who were called. He had a lot of experience in the old canals.”

Pierre also started sailing at age 15. “My first captain’s job was with the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company based out of Thorold, Ont.,” he said. “I was 26 at the time when the company said they had plans for me.”

Those plans involved the young captain bringing a foreign ship from Spain over to the Great Lakes to add to the fleet. By that time, Capt. Pierre Boucher had plans of his own.

“I had written the exams for pilotage on the river and was on the waiting list for the Cornwall-Kingston district,” he said. “Three months after I had this job, I got my call for pilotage. I called the general manager and said, ‘I have something to tell you.’ He looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to pilotage, eh?’ And I said, ‘What would you do if you were me?’ Well, he said he couldn’t blame me.”

Thirty-two years later, Boucher has never looked back. “I love my job. I love going to work. It’s wonderful.”

So, what is life like for a St. Lawrence Seaway pilot?

For Boucher, it means taking a foreign ship (a “saltie”) through some of the most dangerous areas of the St. Lawrence River. Night or day, good weather or bad, foggy or clear. On a ship he has probably never been on before with a crew he has never met.

“It takes about three years to get comfortable with the different ships,” he said. “When you get aboard a ship, instinct plays a big part. It takes you about two minutes or two movements of the engines, one movement of the wheel, and you pretty well know how the ship’s going to react. We do get the same ship now and then. But most of the time it will be something new.”

Changes have taken place in ship handling since his father’s era, too.

“In my dad’s time, they had the big steering wheel. Today it can be just a ‘joystick’. You’ve got the electronic autopilot and A.I. S. (Automatic Identification System). Prior to 1980, there were very few salties with a bow thruster. Today we have ships with thrusters both fore and aft. And, of course, there are the engines. Most back then were steam turbines and when you manoeuvre a ship with steam turbines, it takes much longer to get the engines to go ahead and back. The ships were much harder to handle then. Better engines today with faster response.”

Boucher’s district is International District No. 1 from Snell lock in Massena, N.Y., to Cape Vincent, N.Y., a travelling distance on the river of roughly 84 nautical miles one way. And he needs to have constant vigilance.

Downbound from Lake Ontario to Montreal, the pilot boards the ship from a pilot boat located at Cape Vincent. He then maintains contact with different seaway traffic control stations, both American and Canadian, reporting his times of arrival at each calling-in point as well as maintaining contact with different vessels in the area. There are some very tight corners where ships simply cannot meet.

“I would say the most dangerous would be the Brockville Narrows because of the nature of the bottom,” Boucher says. “There is no room for error. And the American Narrows, too. Small boats can also present problems. You wonder how people have enough brains to accumulate enough money to buy a big boat, but not enough brains to stay out of the way of a bigger ship.”

Knowledge of the river is essential. “You have to know where the rocks aren’t,” Boucher states emphatically. “You have to be able to close your eyes and visualize the river from one end of your run to the other — and be able to tell where you can go outside of the buoys if you have to. All the courses and the currents, you have to memorize.

“In our district, the one big thing is making the lock with the wind. I go in ‘on the fly’ straight in, without using the approach wall. I think more and more guys are doing the same. It certainly requires all of your attention. I started sailing with a lot of the older guys who would tell you, ‘When you’re here, you gotta steer there’. One engine, one rudder. Not like today with bow thrusters.

“The main thing is, you can steer anywhere, as long as you can control the ship … It’s like getting married. What’s the recipe for success? It depends on who you get married to. Same thing.”

What qualifications do you need to become a river pilot?

“Well, you have to have the appropriate marine certificate of competency,” said Boucher. “At least ‘Chief Mate Near Coastal,’ and then a certain number of trips through the district that you are applying for. Then there are the exams, both written and oral, for the district. If you pass, then you are put on a waiting list. When your turn comes up, you become apprenticed. This includes 50 trips one way through the district. Then you are assessed by the Pilot Corporation and by the Pilotage Authority.”

Would he recommend a career in pilotage for a young person today?

“Well, yes I would,” Boucher replies, “because it’s a good job. The problem for them would be to actually get in. There is no need for pilots right now. We’re on the downward side.”

Transportation on the St. Lawrence Seaway has changed dramatically since 1982, the year Boucher’s father retired. Although the shipment of freight climbed steadily after the seaway opened in 1959 — from about 30 million tonnes of cargo in 1960 to 74 million tonnes in 1980 — the recession of the early 1980s hit shipping hard.

“We lost 75% of our ships almost in one shot that year,” Boucher noted.

Then an event at the other end of the world put a stop to the transhipment of grain to the Soviet Union: That country invaded Afghanistan. The United States retaliated with an embargo on 17 million tonnes of anticipated grain shipments to the U.S.S.R. Unfortunately, the grain market never really came back.

The recession of the past year also hit the seaway hard. Shipments of iron ore were down 54% at the end of September of this year to 4.3 million tonnes, compared to 9.5 million tonnes at the same time last year. Overall, 19.3 million tonnes of cargo had been shipped up to the end of

September, which is down about 10 million tonnes from the same time last year.

“And this year [2009] is the worst,” Boucher said. “Bad to the point of being critical. The number of ships you see today is only about 10% of what we used to have back in the 1960′s and ’70s — the good years. [In those days] this time of the year at the anchorage in Prescott, there would be 25 or 30 ships waiting their turn due to a snowstorm or bad visibility. Toward the end of the season, at least that number at anchor, always.”

The St. Lawrence Seaway has been in business now for 50 years. Is there a future for “Highway H2O,” as it is now called?

“The seaway was built for two main cargos,” Boucher explains. “Grain and iron ore. Grain would go out of the lakes and ore and steel would come into the lakes. The grain goes west now and there hasn’t been much demand for steel. Most of the ships we pilot now are tankers. Liquid cargo is our main product being shipped. But I think you’ll see a reorganization of products moved in the seaway. We have to. Our highways now are overcrowded with traffic.

Boucher reaches for the cell phone in his jacket pocket. It’s a call from his brother Andre.

They’ll be taking the saltie at the Cape together tonight. This time of the year, when most of the light buoys have been removed for the winter, it becomes double pilotage for safety.

Hanging up, Boucher says, “I always tell everybody 25 more years. The day to retire for me is the day they call me at 3 a.m. and I don’t feel like going to work. That’ll be the day I call it quits.”

Until then, the Boucher brothers will continue to follow a family tradition. They have to. Just like their father, it was never a job. The river becomes a way of life.

Brian Johnson is captain of the Wolfe Islander III and past president of the Wolfe Island Historical Society. This column concludes his series on the stories and people of the St. Lawrence Seaway.