Who's Who In The Zoo, 1962

[Barnacle]

Recently obtained a batch of brochures on eBay from the early 1960s, including a few old schedules from your neck of the woods:

Black Ball - Summer 1961 - Effective March 29:
Vancouver - Sechelt Peninsula: Bainbridge, Smokwa
Vancouver - Bowen Island: Bainbridge
Vancouver - Nanaimo: Chinook II, Kahloke
Jervis Inlet - Powell River: Quillayute

BCFS, Summer 1962 - Effective May 1:
Vancouver - Victoria (Swartz Bay): Chinook II, Kahloke, City of Vancouver, City of Victoria
Vancouver - Nanaimo: Sidney, Tsawwassen
Vancouver - Sechelt Peninsula: Bainbridge, Smokwa
Sechelt Peninsula - Powell River: Quillayute
Vancouver - Powell River: Smokwa, Bainbridge
Vancouver - Bowen Island: Cy Peck, Smokwa, Bainbridge
Vesuvius - Crofton: Geo. S. Pearson
Fulford - Swartz Bay: Delta Princess OR Motor Princess (coffee shop on Motor Princess)
Outer Islands Service (Salt Spring, Galiano, Mayne, Saturna, dn the Pender Islands): Motor Princess

I'm starting to understand why all the vessel photos of the early BC years were shot at Horseshoe... I didn't realize that pretty much the whole fleet showed up sooner or later. ;D

The bundle also showed up with two brochures titled "Include British Columbia's New Ferries Vanocuver - Victoria in Your Vacation Plans," touting the new Sidney and Tsawwassen. Makes me miss the days when WSF used to advertise.

[Low Light Mike]

I love this type of info !

Many thanks for posting this.

[Mike C]

Hmm. Horseshoe Bay-Langdale did not exist. It was Vancouver-Powell River or Vancouver Sechelt Peninsula.

[Barnacle]

Sorry, I left that line out because I thought I might've been stating the obvious, but "Vancouver-Sechelt Peninsula" is Horseshoe Bay-Langdale. Bainbridge and Smokwa.

[Ferryman]

Interesting. I never knew the Bainbridge would stop at Bowen Island while en route Langdale/Horseshoe Bay.

[Barnacle]

Also interesting to note on the back of the schedule it lists the vertical clearances on the car decks of the various boats:

City of Vancouver, City of Victoria, Sidney, Tsawwassen -- 14'8"
Chinook 13'6"
Kahloke 12'10"
Smokwa 12'6" (I assume center lane only ;D)
Delta Princess 12'0"
Motor Princess 12'0"
Bainbridge 11'3"
Quillayute 11'3"
Geo. S. Pearson 11'0"
Cy Peck 9'0"

[Neil]

There never was a stop at Bowen enroute to Langdale. The Bainbridge was the Bowen ferry for a time.

[Barnacle]

Sure enough, closer inspection of the schedule shows that the Bainbridge and Smokwa each made one Bowen trip a day in between their duties at Horseshoe-Langdale. Otherwise it was the Cy Peck and nothing else.

[Neil]

Mr barnacle.... if you have a few moments some time, do you think you might be able to type out the Bowen schedule for us? As I've mentioned here before, my very first ferry memory was taking the old Bainbridge to Bowen when I was quite wee. Thank you.

[Barnacle]

Mr. Horn, the bigger problem is recovering the schedule from the drift upon my desk... ah, here it is:

Vancouver-Bowen Island

Cy Peck unless otherwise listed.

*Bainbridge
**Smokwa

Lv. Horseshoe Bay
7:20 AM
8:20
9:20*
10:30
11:30
12:30 PM
1:30
2:30
3:30
4:30
5:30**
6:30
7:30
8:30
9:30
10:30

Lv. Snug Cove
6:50 AM
7:50
9:00
9:45*
11:00
noon
1:00 PM
2:00
3:00
4:00
5:00
5:55**
7:00
8:00
9:00
10:00

enjoy.

Footnote: bloody auto-formatting! I had it all set up in a table but it stripped out the spacing.

[Mike C]

Mr. Horn actually refers to HMCS Nanaimo.

Thanks for posting that anyway, Barnacle

[Neil]

Thanks for that, Mr barnacle. Interesting that Bowen had later service than they do now. The early '60s was a quiet period for Bowen Island, as all the old tourist and picnic facilities that had been built by Union Steamships and others were either closed, or decaying away, and the population boom that has turned Bowen into a semi-suburb of Vancouver hadn't gotten under way. The Bainbridge later became the main boat on the route, before they put the first Bowen Queen (Vesuvius Queen) on.

[Deleted]

So here's another example of how things were more efficient in the past then they are now.
I've often thought that combining the Bowen Island Route with the Sunshine Coast would be a good idea. I also thought a bridge from Keats to Bowen to West Vancouver - Horseshoe Bay would be an option for disposing of two ferry routes.

Pipe dreams I guess. There are too many people now travelling to both places to ever combine them into one route.

[BrianWilliams]

" a bridge from Keats to Bowen to West Vancouver "

Oh please, say you're kidding!

Keats Island is one of the roadless paradises SO close to our big city. Though the island is privately owned (except for Plumper Cove), it is very welcoming to visitors, we've found.

Some scorching summer weekends, Vancouver hiways are traffic-jammed in every direction. The parks from Cultus Lake to Porteau Cove are packed. Slip into HB early, park the car and walk onto Q of Surrey; change to friendly little Stormaway at Langdale at enjoy a Howe Sound cruise for 4 bucks.



Chat with the skipper, the cottagers and the summer camp kids while riding in God's most favourite scenery.



Get off at Keats Landing, walk in cool forest for a bit -entirely alone- and see nothing but islands, ocean, and more islands just 6 air miles from downtown Vancouver. Eagles soar, squirrels chatter, and there isn't a gum wrapper or beer can on the ground.



Even Plumper Cove Marine Park is quiet on hot summer days. Its gravelly beaches and grassy uplands are a joy. Swim, run in the sun ...



... and snooze on a log.



A few more Keats pics:







-- and a reminder from neighbouring Gambier Island (included free in your Stormaway voyage):

[Deleted]

A bridge from Keats to Bowen to West Vancouver.
Oh please, say you're kidding!

Yeah, I knew I wouldn't fly. It just seemed like it could work because the islands are right there in line.

I knew Bowen Islanders would NEVER go for it. Being ferry dependent has it's advantages and those on Bowen and Keats and the Sunshine Coast often welcome the isolation from Vancouver. Myself included. I don't know how long the idea and reality of a ferry will stem the tide of development, but I suspect it has only been able to slow it down. More people are coming, living, visiting and commuting every passing day.

[BrianWilliams]

Unlike a lot of big cities in North America, we have the choice of benign restraint.

Vancouver has sprawled east into the Fraser Valley, south to White Rock and most horribly, I think, into Coquitlam's hills.



North and West Vancouver were saved from rapacious development 'cause we dithered over another bridge or tunnel in the 1960's, and got just the SeaBus link.

People pour into Vancouver for opportunity, but also because of its beauty. They will trample the beauty and make our city as faceless as Indianapolis - if we don't carefully decide where we'll build roads. Or not.

[Balfour]

The thing about North Van is that many areas can't expand any farther up the mountain because of the steepness.

[Scott]

That's a beautiful shot of Coquitlam:) I see it every day; what an eye sore. Even the roads can hardly keep up with the development. Take a drive down the Lougheed through Coquitlam and PoCo and you'll see what I mean. And they keep delaying the Evergreen Line year after year. I hope the Islands can manage their development successfully.

On a similar topic, when I've researched some info on the Queen of Capilano and Howe Sound Queen, it seems like Bowen Islanders have a history of not liking their ferries. The Howe Sound Queen was nicknamed the "Hound" and hated because it was slow and bad in rough weather. The Queen of Capilano isn't big enough and it's too expensive to run. Somewhere I read that they thought it would be cheaper to run two smaller vessels cheaper than running the Cappie. They always want the "new" intermediate sized vessel whenever it's built. Meanwhile they have the worst holding lot (none) of almost any terminal on the coast.

[Low Light Mike]

Here's some links to the sources that John mentioned:

www.firethorne.com/ferrycure/oldhome.htm

www.firethorne.com/ferrycure/index.htm

Warning, this is a passionate-issue-re-ferries-by-gulf-islanders page......so be ready for some precisely calculated statistics etc from the residents.

[Low Light Mike]

Here's what I'm talking about:
from: www.firethorne.com/ferrycure/bulletin/ov991202.htm

This is some good writing, I encourage you to read it. Remember that it's from December 1999.

==================================

Our noble provincial leader, the charismatic Dan Miller, has once again demonstrated his remarkable grasp of reality by pronouncing last week that the Bowen ferry is an expensive indulgence, because it often sails empty.

The formula Emptines = Expensive Indulgence may well be valid when applied to the brains of certain ministers of the crown, but not when applied to public transportation links; otherwise most bus and rail services, bridges and roads would have to be scrapped.

Furthermore, it is not true that the Bowen ferry is often empty, or even ever empty. At a time when there are consistent overloads, even on sailings at uncivilized times such as 5:45 in the morning, it is puzzling that anyone, let alone someone paid to work full time in the interests of the province, could genuinely believe that the Bowen ferry is often empty.

I commissioned the Overview research team to look into possible reasons for this strange comment. Two-thirds of the team had nervous breakdowns as a direct result of their attempts to imagine the thought processes of Premier Miller. The survivors took the safer route of assuming that he had merely gullibly accepted facts given him by B.C. Ferries. These researchers came up with the following possibilities:

1) It was difficult to gather information on the loads on the Bowen ferry at Horseshoe Bay, because no-one could see past the repair crews milling around the Fast Catamaran.

2) No-one could gather load information at Snug Cove either, because the work day of B.C. Ferries managers wasn't long enough for them to wait through the overloads to get on the ferry at Horseshoe Bay in order to get to Snug Cove.

3) B.C. Ferries managers had never been able to get clearance from the union to go aboard ferries to make the proper passenger counts.

4) All B.C. Ferries computers are programmed to ignore, as insignificant, any calculation involving a total of less than two hundred million dollars. A premature Y2K error expanded this beyond dollars, to include any figure of less than two hundred million, and the Bowen passenger count figures were thus automatically reduced to zero.

5) All Bowen passenger counts were conducted between the one o'clock to 2:30 p.m. no-sailing crew change break.,

6) Premier Miller was innocently co-opted into B.C. Ferries' notorious Universal Passenger and Politician Management Strategy, known familiarly in B.C. Ferries management circles as “UPP Yours”. The strategy, purchased for less than two hundred million dollars from a consulting company co-owned by Judy Tyabji and the provincial government of Quebec, calls for the announcement of bad news, such as “We're replacing your ferry with a kayak”, or “We're taking your docking ramp away for two months.” Passengers are then left to simmer for several weeks until they accept once again that B.C. Ferries is The All Powerful One. The threats are then withdrawn or greatly watered-down, and grateful passengers and politicans are allowed to pay tribute of a fare increase or higher subsidies.

7) Bowen islanders, worn out by fighting B.C. Ferries every step of the way, are now too thin to be recognized as passengers. There is a ferrycure for this: all islanders are encouraged to eat constantly throughout the entire month of December, until they're bulky enough to stand up and be counted.

================

[Low Light Mike]

Here's some more. This link has Bowen Island ferry media articles from 1992 to 2000, from the "Bowen Island Undercurrent".

www.firethorne.com/ferrycure/ucurrent/underc.htm

[BrianWilliams]

The articles are fascinating - and reveal a little of Bowen's schizophrenia. Green island home, or real estate bonanza?

It is difficult. Most Bowen residents are working people with jobs in Greater Vancouver. A reliable, frequent, high-capacity ferry service makes it possible to live there.

But ... too much ferry service would lead to a Coquitlam hill-scalped nightmare. Just the horror that smart Bowen residents sought to avoid.

*sigh* I am guilty. I joined the first wave of Vancouver emigrés to forested Coquitlam in 1975. My wife and I bought a new house by the Coquitlam River -cheap, because we had only the two-lane Lougheed Hwy connecting to our Vancouver jobs.

Whoops. When I left in disgust in 1982, the Lougheed was building to 6 lanes. All the trees were gone, remembered only by names like "Pinetree Mall".

It's completely lost today. The anonymous Tri-Cities are as faceless as any USA suburb. Highways, condos and malls.

Those of us who are not wealthy can still live in and enjoy our marvellous city. The morning of New Year's Eve, Jeannie and I wandered in West Vancouver's Lighthouse Park.

From Juniper Point, we saw Q of Coquitlam passing the Bowen ferry in the morning drizzle. Two white boats against a solid wall of dark forest.

The sky lightened as we rambled in deep forest. We broke out to a grand view from Shore Pine point. A seal, loons and a long skein of waterbirds rode the tide from English Bay.

The alarm "skree-ahh" made us look up. Two eagles circled low over the trees. The goldeneyes and scoters in the drift panicked. The tightly-packed mob couldn't fly, so they paddled frantically.

It was amazing. The birds churned white foam and sounded like a hundred motorboats. They calmed after a minute and drifted back to the cliffs.

Vancouver is a big city. We have been more lucky than good planners -- but there is no city in the world, I am sure, where casual walkers can have such a fine winter morning.