Superport Marine: $165,326 above the administration charge

A local marine engineer started Superport Marine Services Limited in 1971 to look after the ships working the Strait of Canso. Leslie MacIntyre bought it in 1988 and, in the affidavit that opened this proceeding, says he took it "from a one employee entity to a major business enterprise in the Strait area," per the Affidavit of Leslie MacIntyre, Jan. 22, 2025, paras. 6–7. By January 2025 the company ran a tug, work boats and barges out of Port Hawkesbury and supplied line boats, linesmen and stevedores to Nova Scotia Power's coal dock at Point Tupper. It also owned three survey ships of 195, 160 and 130 feet: the Strait Hunter, the Strait Explorer and the Strait Signet. The proposed monitor understood they were not in use, having been used by a sister company, McGregor GeoScience, until it went bankrupt, per the Pre-Filing Report of the Proposed Monitor, Jan. 29, 2025, paras. 30, 33, 38.

The tug and the working fleet were sold as a going concern in August 2025. The survey ships were never sold in the proceeding. In a Ninth Report dated August 19, 2026, the monitor, Grant Thornton Limited, set out a final waterfall. It sends $436,730 to the Canada Revenue Agency, $817,390 to the Bank of Montreal and nothing to Maynbridge Capital Inc. On top of that, BMO receives a $10,881 payment from Maynbridge, the $57,687 HST refund if it arrives and any future input tax credits. The waterfall assumes the court will raise the administration charge from $250,000 to $415,326, a question the report calls "the sole remaining issue to be determined by the Court," per the Ninth Report of the Monitor, Aug. 19, 2026, paras. 16, 21. The administration charge is the court-ordered security that ranks ahead of the secured creditors to cover the professionals' fees.

Two lenders and a tug

The affidavit estimates Superport's debt at about $9,904,000. Of that, about $3,407,617.33 was owed to Maynbridge, and $3,154,002.73 to BMO, plus $833,440.56 the bank claimed under Superport's guarantee of McGregor's debt. Source deductions owing to the Canada Revenue Agency came to about $463,000, and unsecured debts to about $1,008,000, including $167,000 owed to the Town of Port Hawkesbury as landlord, per the MacIntyre Affidavit, paras. 20–23. Under a 2018 intercreditor agreement, BMO held a first charge on the tug, the Strait Raven, up to a principal of $2,000,000. It also held a first charge on inventory and receivables, and a second charge on the other vessels and the equipment (Affidavit of Martine Langlois, Jan. 29, 2025, paras. 14–15). The internal statements the proposed monitor reviewed show net losses of $945,442 in 2023 and $649,925 in 2024 (Pre-Filing Report, para. 35).

Mr. MacIntyre traces the trouble to a slowdown in international shipping in 2020, made worse by pandemic restrictions during a seabed survey for Hydro-Québec that he values at more than $20,000,000. He deposes that the situation was compounded in February 2022, when BMO swept $2,938,025 from McGregor's bank accounts "without first providing a s. 244 BIA demand notice." McGregor made an assignment in bankruptcy that March, per the MacIntyre Affidavit, paras. 29–31. Martine Langlois, BMO's senior account manager, disputes that account. She swears the bank issued demands and notices of intention to enforce in October 2021. The set-off of $2,938,024.63 on January 25, 2022 came, she says, after counsel for McGregor and Superport wrote that day that McGregor would "cease operating immediately." She adds that $213,613.35 of it was later made available to Superport, per the Langlois Affidavit, paras. 18–20, 47.

In Mr. MacIntyre's telling, the company spent the months before filing caught between "two different and competing positions taken by the two lenders." Maynbridge supported neither a CCAA nor a receivership. BMO, he says, was "singularly focused on the sale of the Strait Raven" (MacIntyre Affidavit, paras. 36–37). On January 2, 2025, BMO appointed Ernst & Young Inc. as private receiver of the tug alone (Langlois Affidavit, para. 40). The Initial Order of January 31, 2025 set the administration charge at $100,000. The amended and restated order of February 12 raised it to $250,000, and a charging order the same day approved interim financing from BMO, per the Sixth Report of the Monitor, Nov. 4, 2025, paras. 3–5. The facility was $300,000, and by July 2025 it was fully drawn (Fourth Report of the Monitor, July 30, 2025, para. 46).

Superport Lite, and the ships left behind

The sale process split the assets in two: the tug-and-barge business, marketed whole as Superport Lite, and the survey vessels. Five bids for Superport Lite arrived by June 13, 2025, three of them en bloc. On July 2 the monitor accepted the bid of Cactus Ship Repair Inc., per the Fourth Report, paras. 20–23. Mr. MacIntyre had told the monitor on April 17 that he intended to bid together with Maynbridge. From then on the monitor treated the company as an interested party and stopped consulting it except as necessary (Seventh Report of the Monitor, Nov. 19, 2025, paras. 18–19). Maynbridge and the company opposed the Cactus transaction and sought approval of their own (Fourth Report, para. 32(b)). The monitor's analysis of the bids went into a confidential supplement, and on August 6, 2025 the court sealed certain information filed by the monitor and Maynbridge (Sixth Report, para. 8).

The court approved the sale to Cactus on August 13, 2025. The same day it expanded the monitor's powers so the monitor could close the deal, secure the bank accounts and collect the receivables. The deal closed on August 20. That day the monitor terminated the company's roughly 30 employees, and Cactus rehired most of them, per the Sixth Report, paras. 10, 20–21, 78. The price was $1,800,000, of which $1,260,000 was allocated to the Strait Raven. According to the monitor, that allocation was a condition of BMO's support for the transaction (Sixth Report, paras. 39(b), 60).

The survey ships drew three bids by June 27. On July 17, after consulting Maynbridge, the monitor declined all of them (Fourth Report, paras. 33–35). One offer, for $700,000, was rejected by Maynbridge. The stay was allowed to lapse over the three vessels, and Cactus later arrested them for non-payment under a berthage agreement, per the Sixth Report, paras. 27–30, 39(e). The Town of Port Hawkesbury wrote to the judge in November 2025 that the ships were tied to a dock barge. If the monitor were discharged before they were sold and they were abandoned, the Town feared that "the ultimate responsibility for removal and environmental cleanup would fall on the Town," per its letter to Justice Bodurtha, Nov. 24, 2025, pp. 2–3. The monitor answered that it "does not own and has never had possession of" the vessels. It said it would "vigorously defend" any assertion that the clean-up was its responsibility (Eighth Report of the Monitor, Nov. 27, 2025, paras. 17–18).