Strange Transit

Having to rely on ferry boats to get you the rest of the world as well as get you to the rest of the world is a very strange way to live. The Sunshine Coast is on the mainland of Canada, but there is no continuous road up the west coast, so you drive a ways, then take a ferry, drive a ways further, take another ferry, etc. But most of the ferries on the West Coast go to the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island and, in the U.S., the San Juan Islands. One can imagine how they were settled originally when there were many people—the fishermen of the world--for whom boats were as ordinary as wheelbarrows. It’s not hard to see how they would have gone to the islands and stayed there because the fishing was good and the islands are beautiful and it wasn’t as if the places they came from had high levels of amenities: no city water, no sewers, no electricity, no phones, nothing more than they would find on a beautiful island.

But now, it seems stranger. Many of the small islands do not have good water sources or hospitals, e.g., and, although the ferries do bring an endless array of consumer goods, it is not quite like being in the city. So, when I yesterday made the 1 ¾ hours ferry trip to Vancouver Island on a Spirit Ferry (which holds 470 cars and over 2,000 passengers, and makes the trip every one or two hours, 11 times a day), I was surely thinking about what it was that compelled so many people (Vancouver Island has about ¾ million people, and B.C.’s capital city, Victoria, is located there) to move someplace that was so difficult to get to. Of course, many of the people are just vacationing or visiting there from Vancouver, but it is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing going on, a lot of money involved in running the ferries (which are not, of course, treated like roads that one drives freely on) and in using the ferries. It costs $56 each way for one person and a car to take the ferry from the mainland to Vancouver Island (Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay). The distance is only 27.6 miles. Imagine paying $56 every time you passed the 28 mile marker on a highway: I doubt if anyone would have ever been thinking that living in the suburbs was an interesting idea. Or going on a driving vacation was a viable plan.

Depending on a ferry to get you somewhere is a viable plan even now only if the ferry is available to take you. This week, when we came down from the Sunshine Coast, we arrived in time to catch the 10:20 ferry, but the 10:20 ferry could not get its electrical system to work properly, so there wasn’t a 10:20 ferry. The next ferry would have been the 12:20, but it’s the same ferry boat, so unless it got repaired, it wasn’t coming either. And there is no alternative. You just sit in the terminal lot, hoping that the repair will happen sooner rather than later, but you have no way of knowing what will happen. Imagine going out of your driveway of a morning not knowing for sure whether the highway will be open. Very strange.

In 1960, B.C. Ferries had only two boats; 48 years later, they have 38 vessels, with two more even bigger ones coming on line this year. Obviously they make it work, the government, the ferry corporation (which is kind of a private/public one), and the passengers, but relying on boats to get you where you need to go just seems strange to me. I don’t come from a fishing family, obviously.