The Apparent End Of The Port Alberni To Bamfield Ferry Service.

IfIt'sNotScottish

It's(S)crap!Ville

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Update: Looks like the service has been saved!

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Our Dad first took us on the Westcoast Trail in 1973, I think.

Back then there was little boardwalk and very few cable cars crossing over rushing water which meant that there was a whole lot of, as my younger brother, later the fireman, said at the time 'Mud a blowdowns!' as well as raft building for the fording of swollen creeks*. 

Given all this we decided that the only way that sane people travelled the trail was to start from Port Renfrew and trudge from south to north to get the worst of the thing behind you during the first few days before it all got a little easier once you crossed Nitinat Narrows, hung out at Tsusiat Falls for a bit, and then started heading towards the end at Bamfield.

I honestly can't remember if it was the first or the second time after finishing the trail that we took the trip on the M.V. Lady Rose, the old Glasgow-built combination people/cargo ferry, from Bamfield down Barkley Sound to Port Alberni on the way to civilization re-entry. 

The Lady Rose herself was taken out of operation about ten years ago and she sat tied up on the Tofino docks for quite awhile before she was towed over to Sechelt where a bunch of folks, spearheaded by a guy named Dick Clayton, are hoping to restore her.

But the ferry service itself is still going, using a different ship, the M.V. Francis Barkley, under the auspices of the Lady Rose Marine Services.

Still going until the end of the month, that is.

Susie Quinn wrote that story for the Alberni Valley News recently. Here's her lede:

An icon of Vancouver Island’s West Coast is poised to take its final voyage.

Lady Rose Marine Services will close its doors as of Aug. 31, after 75 years of freight and passenger service down the Alberni Inlet.

The company is yet another victim of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic strain of extended closures and restrictions, owner Mike Surrell said Monday, Aug. 9. The company posted a brief statement on its Facebook page after rumours started circulating about the closure.

“Seventeen months of basically no income going into the winter, which is traditionally slow…maintaining and running these vessels is very, very expensive,” he said.

“With COVID-19 we managed to hang on for 17 months. We’re not able to maintain this pace. Unfortunately, the Frances Barkley will stop sailing at the end of the month.”

Surrell bought the company and all its operations in 2008. He said while COVID-19 was the final strike, it has also been difficult finding employees with the proper certification to help keep the ship running. Working as a mariner is a specialty, and government regulations demand a certain amount of current training and certification...

Here's hoping something can be worked out for all those affected that decreases the impact of this latest development - There is a road up the inlet** but it is not great and there are remote stops that will likely lose their regular, scheduled goods delivery service pretty much entirely.

Now.

Don't get me wrong, based on the evidence, I'm still all in favour of getting as much of the population vaccinated as possible, invoking vaccine mandates in situations where folks will be interacting, indoors in close quarters, and to practice social distancing + masking + rapid testing when your interacting with folks outside your pod. However, unless things go completely off the rails due to new data emerging regarding the Delta variant or the wide, rapid spread of a new even more problematic variant (which doesn't look like it will be Lambda), I would be concerned if any future hard lockdowns were not geographically targeted and for as short a duration as possible. After all, we are not, unfortunately, not New Zealand.

Lastly, it really is important to understand and have empathy for a whole lot of folks, including small business folks, who have been truly negatively impacted by the steps we've taken, especially pre-vaccine, to deal with the pandemic so far. This is something that has to be kept in mind as the PHO and we all struggle to choose the best and most prudent way(s) forward.

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*The bare bottomed, pack-over-the-head crossing of the Cheewhat River, before they built the bridge, by my youngest brother, later the musician, would come on the next trip. 

**For one of our trips home from Bamfield our Mom actually drove that road, I think in the VW (notso) microbus, to pick us up. We probably still owe her for that one.

And here's something crazily modern, and I'm not sure actually good...Big chunks of the trail can now be traversed virtually via Google Street View...

Sub-header?...Blame it on Mr. Myers.

Tip O' The Toque to reader E.G. for the heads-up on the update.

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