How to sum up Port Burwell?  Hmm  Sleepy historic fishing village, great beaches, amazing ice cream, old lighthouse, a Red & White store that thinks of everything, did we mention fries to die for? Well Port Burwell is all of those things but I have come to the conclusion that the best way to sum up Port Burwell is that it has ‘the why not factor’. Here are three examples. Skepticism aside, why not be upfront and say there are fairies in the park, why not bring the wheelhouse from an old Great Laker to the village and why not welcome a 300 foot long,  five stories high Cold War submarine to the flats below the main street?

Impediments be damned! It’s a well- known fact that fairies are hard to see let alone get to fill out building permits, nevertheless, their residences are there for all to see and they even have a mailbox so the tiny community must be real. So the initial resting spot for the wheelhouse wasn’t easily accessible; where there’s a will there’s usually a way. It just takes a lot of patience and nerves of steel to make it happen. So, Lake Erie was at its lowest level in years and Hurricane Sandy decided to strut her stuff during the last stages before the submarine was moved from Hamilton to Port Burwell playing havoc with a summer’s worth of dredging. Not even a snow storm could keep HMCS Ojibwa - all 2.800,000 pounds of her from her final destination. Port Burwell is that kind of place.