Malcolm Bunting has a salt-and-pepper beard and a face creased by years of wind and sun, characteristics you would find on a stereotypical Hollywood ship captain.
Add to the mix the crisp blue uniform he has worn while patrolling Ontario's Niagara Falls at the helm of the Maid of the Mist and there remains no doubt the man has spent years on the open water.
Bunting retired this week after 36 years captaining the iconic tour boat, more than 110,000 trips and more than 16 million passengers on board, not to mention a movie appearance or two.
No longer will Capt. Bunting, 63, shepherd waterlogged tourists through the splash zone at the base of Horseshoe Falls – arguably the most picturesque destination in North America.
"It's been quite a run," Bunting told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday, his final day of service.
"When you look at the Falls from this perspective, from the bottom up, it is very impressive. It is a whole different view from when you look at it from the top down.
"It is spectacular; every trip is a little bit different."
During Niagara Falls' hectic summer tourist season, eight captains shuttle Maid of the Mist boats along the mile-long cycle. As senior captain, Bunting has operated the newest Maid of the Mist vessel for the past eight years.
With precision and confident borne from a lifetime spent negotiating turbulent tides, Bunting brought 22 boatloads of tourists each day as near as 300 feet from the falls themselves.
"You have to have nerves of steel," Bunting said. "Taking boatloads of passengers that close up to Horseshoe Falls, it goes against all your common sense and seamanship.
"A lot of people say, ‘I though you were never going to stop.'"
Over the course of his career, Bunting has welcomed world leaders, celebrities and royalty on board his vessels. He has met Princess Diana, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.
Joan Rivers and Al Pacino have been on board his ship, as have Jeff Bridges and soap opera actor Tony Geary – who was lowered onto the upper deck during an episode of the soap opera "General Hospital."
His Maid of the Mist appeared in "Superman 2" and the captain even had a small speaking part in the film "Search and Destroy."
A life on open water
Malcolm Bunting was born in 1948 in Chesterfield, England and moved with his family to Niagara Falls four years later.
He began his life as an aquatic journeyman working at a marina in Oakville, Ont., at the age of 14. As a teenager he was a hand on a lobster boat in the Florida Keys and later joined a tug boat crew working on an off-shore oil rig near Galveston, Tex.
In the 1970s, Bunting returned to Ontario to work on a small government research vessel and eventually found his way back to Niagara Falls where, in 1975, he became a mate on the iconic steamship.
He was made captain 14 years later and has since trained almost every active Maid of the Mist captain and first mate.
Bunting says the most anxious he ever got onboard the ship is when he was training a new recruit and being forced to take back command when he slipped into turbulent waters. When he was in charge, he says, everything went smoothly.
"The main thing is to watch the current. We watch the current more than anything else here. Keep the boat in the fast water, keep out of the fast eddies and away from the rocks. It actually takes about five years for a captain to perfect the job."
Bunting said that he has missed out on nearly 40 years worth of summer vacations while captaining the tour ship. Next year he and his wife, Carolyn, will take a motorcycle trip across the country.
"Once you are retired you can pretty much play it by ear," he said. "I'll probably be staying away from the water for a while."
