PRESS RELEASES - Village of Brockport

Village’s Port Chosen to Accommodate Replica Canal Schooner

VILLAGE OF BROCKPORT, February 5, 2007

Lois McClure

The Lois McClure is coming to the Village of Brockport.

Through a partnership with the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, the New York State Canal Corporation and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, the spectacular 88’ canal schooner Lois McClure will embark on an unprecedented “Grand Canal Journey” this summer, docking at twenty-five historic ports-of-call on the Canal. The McClure will be docked at the Village of Brockport’s award-winning Welcome Center on the 4th and 5th of August.

Lori Duell, Project Manager for the Grand Canal Journey, said that the goal of the tour is to “educate the public about the historic and present significance of the New York State Canal System and its communities, to reinforce the canal system’s ongoing roles for transportation, recreation and tourism, and demonstrate how the Lois McClure and the Canalway are intimately tied together through presentations, exhibits and educational materials.”

The tour will cover one-thousand miles in one hundred days while visiting ports from Whitehall to Buffalo.

Brockport officials and members of the volunteer Welcome Center Management Committee are now working to develop distinctive plans that include the Brockport community to embrace the arrival of the McClure, a fully functional replica of an 1862-class sailing canal boat. "We’re delighted to have been chosen as a two-day stopover on the Canal for the schooner,” said Village Manager Ian M. Coyle, “and we look forward to extending the McClure a first-class welcome when it docks.”