[4] Built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan, Glasgow, Scotland as yard number 453, Keewatin was launched on 6 July 1907 and completed in September.

[6] Keewatin was originally designed to supplement the Great Lakes link in the Canadian Pacific Railway's continental route.

[5] She served this purpose by linking the Railroad's Owen Sound depot to Fort William Port Arthur on Lake Superior.

In the last fifteen years of her working life, like many passenger ships of that era on the Great Lakes, Keewatin and Assiniboia operated under stringent regulations imposed for wooden cabin steamships following the Noronic disaster in 1949.

[5][6] Along with South American and Milwaukee Clipper, Keewatin and Assiniboia were among the last of the turn-of-the-century style overnight passenger ships of the Great Lakes.

After languishing for a few years, in January 1967 Keewatin was bought by West Michigan entrepreneur Roland J. Peterson Sr.[9] for $37,000, $2,000 more than it would have sold for scrap.

The ship was known as Keewatin Maritime Museum, permanently docked across the river from the summer retreat Saugatuck, Michigan, from 1968 until its relocation in 2012.

This was possible due to cooperation of the local and provincial and federal officials in obtaining permissions and permits to dredge the harbour where Keewatin sat for 45 years to allow the ship to be moved.

Skyline Developments, a publicly held corporation that was rebuilding the 12,000-acre (4,900 ha) Port McNicoll site, funded the project.

[13] But by June 2020, Skyline Investments (owner of Keewatin and surrounding development properties) indicated CIM had defaulted on mortgage payments,[14] and would instead be pursuing plans to donate the ship to the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes in Kingston, Ontario.

[15] Local reaction to the relocation from Port McNicoll was mixed,[16][17][18] but ultimately the Marine Museum completed their acquisition of Keewatin in March 2023.