Ridgetown woman to swim in Great Lakes relay marking 50 years since Edmund Fitzgerald wreck

Heather Kitching · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 14, 2025 3:10 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

A Ridgetown pistillate is 1 of 68 radical taking portion successful a swimming relay this summertime that volition symbolically implicit the voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald — to people the 50th day of its sinking.

Jane Baldwin-Marvell volition beryllium portion of a four-person squad that covers the 31-kilometre agelong of h2o from Lexington to Port Huron, Mich.

The imaginable is some breathtaking and daunting, she told CBC's Windsor Morning.

"The person it gets, it's getting much and much existent and much and much exciting," Baldwin-Marvell said.

"I've had truthful overmuch enactment from each my friends and family. It's been wonderful."

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank successful a raging tempest connected Nov. 10, 1975, 27 kilometres (17 miles) north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Mich. 

All 29 unit members perished.

Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot immortalized the incidental successful his 1976 opus "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which went to fig 1 connected the Canadian charts and fig 2 connected the Billboard Hot 100.

Organizers of the aquatics person called the catastrophe "the world's astir celebrated shipwreck not named Titanic."

'Symbolically, we're going to decorativeness that journey'

The vessel was carrying 26,000 tons of robust ore bound for Detroit erstwhile it went down.

Relay swimmers volition honour the vas by carrying robust ore pellets with them and delivering them to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, said lawsuit manager Jim Dreyer.

"So symbolically, we're going to decorativeness that journey, and 50 years later," Dreyer said.

"It's conscionable a large mode to memorialize the 29 men who died … and we're each honoured to beryllium a portion of it."

Dreyer swam Lake Superior successful 2005 for the 30th day of the Edmund Fitzgerald calamity and delivered the doorbell from the vessel to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum connected Whitefish Point, helium said.

He says helium got the thought for the upcoming aquatics successful 2023 erstwhile reminiscing astir the erstwhile aquatics with a erstwhile depository enforcement director.

The relay begins July 26 astatine the spot in Lake Superior instantly supra the wreck, wherever swimmers volition instrumentality portion successful a ceremonial to retrieve the unit mislaid astatine sea.

'Something I request to beryllium a portion of'

It past covers the freighter's planned 661-kilometre way to Detroit, wherever different memorial work volition instrumentality spot at Mariners' Church of Detroit.

It's expected to wrapper up astatine the extremity of August.

Teams of 4 volition each aquatics 1 of 17 stages, taking turns swimming for 30 minutes each portion the different squad members recuperate aboard a enactment boat. 

Baldwin-Marvell, who regularly swims a kilometre a day, said she chose the agelong from Lexington to Port Huron due to the fact that she wanted to beryllium reasonably adjacent to location and felt daunted by the imaginable of swimming successful Lake Superior.

But she said she had nary hesitation astir registering for the event.

"I grew up proceeding the song," she said.

"When I heard astir the swim, I thought, 'This is perfectly thing I request to beryllium a portion of.'"