walking around the Deck of a BC Ferries Ship

BC Ferries’ first route, commissioned in 1960, was between Swartz Bay, a small suburb of Sidney on Vancouver Island, and Tsawwassen, a part of the Corporation of Delta, using just two vessels. These ships were the now-retired MV Tsawwassen and the MV Sidney. The next few years saw a dramatic growth of the BC ferry system, as it took over operations of the Black Ball Line and other major private companies providing vehicle ferry service between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. As the ferry system expanded and started to service other small coastal communities, BC Ferries had to build more vessels, many of them in the first five years of its operations, to keep up with the demand. Another method of satisfying increasing demand for service was BC Ferries’ unique “stretch and lift” program, involving seven vessels being cut in half and extended, and five of those vessels later cut in half again and elevated, to increase their passenger and vehicle-carrying capacities. The vast majority of the vessels in the fleet were built in BC waters, with only two foreign purchases and one domestic purchase. In the mid 1980s, BC Ferries took over the operations of the saltwater branch of the BC Ministry of Transportation and Highways, which ran ferry services to very small coastal communities. This action dramatically increased the size of BC Ferries’ fleet and its geographical service area. The distinctive ‘dogwood on green’ flag that BC Ferries used between 1960 and 2003 gave …
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