Arthur Milnes
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 18/98) - The Pisces is now safely back in port -- the Callas family port that is.

After an absence of almost 30 years, the Pisces, a 32-foot boat built by longtime city resident Ed Callas in the late 1960s, is now once again part of the family.

Son Chic noticed the boat while on a family trip to Cassidy Point about three weeks ago. Memories of childhood time spent on her in his mind, he stopped the car.

"I told the kids: 'Your Grampa built that,'" he said when asked to describe his reaction at seeing a vessel built so long ago by his dad. "So we stopped, one thing led to another and I bought it."

It's now located at the family Cassidy Point cabin. But, you won't find the Pisces out on the water. Far from it. Instead, the Callas' have turned the Pisces into a guest cabin.

It's that big.

"Dad built it on a bet," Chic says. "They said he couldn't build a boat in three days and he did... It's not going anywhere -- it must weigh at least a couple of tons... They (his kids) think it's great. They've been using it as a playhouse."

From his retirement home in Vernon, B.C., Ed, who served as the first-ever GNWT auditor, chuckles when asked about the Pisces.

"It was a nice boat," he says, adding he took home a cool $500 for winning the boat-building bet.

Ed says he travelled the waters of Great Slave Lake for about two years on the Pisces before he built another one.

Since then, it has had up to four owners outside the family. Last year, someone even lived on the vessel before another owner brought it to Cassidy Point last month.

All these years later, it's back where it belongs, with the Callas family.