Powell River residents wishing to take a bus to the Lower Mainland will need to find alternative transportation after Malaspina Coach Lines had one of its buses seized.
Caroline Jobe, a resident of Powell River, said she was nearly stranded on the Lower Sunshine Coast Saturday night, June 20, after the bus she boarded in downtown Vancouver was seized by bailiffs.
“When we arrived at the Waterfront Station, a pony-tailed man wearing a sleeveless shirt that showed off his 20-inch biceps, stepped up into the bus and showed the bus driver some identification and then his young partner, very tall and imposing, asked for the keys,” wrote Jobe in an email to the Peak. “At first some of the passengers thought this might be some kind of takeover of the bus, commandeering us away somewhere but the burly guy turned to us and said ‘I’m a bailiff and this bus is being seized for non-payment.’”
Jobe said that she was sitting close enough to the front of the bus that she overheard the bailiffs telling the driver that they would be seizing the company’s other buses as well. The driver was instructed to transport the passengers to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal before surrendering the vehicle. Jobe was one of six passengers aboard who was going to Powell River and would have to make her own way home, she said.
“I decided that I would check out people I might recognize on the ferry and get a lift. Oddly, it was a day when I knew no one,” she said. “Two of the group got a ride. There was myself and a young man from Saskatoon who was going to Lund and had no idea of the area. I had struck up a conversation with another person and she said she would ask her son to come from Powell River to Sechelt to pick us up.”
Jobe said that they were able to catch the final ferry at Earls Cove and made it back home at midnight.
The Peak called Malaspina Coach Lines for comment, but the newspaper’s call was not returned before press time. There was, however, notice on the company’s website that there would be a “service interruption” on Sunday, June 21, and Monday, June 22 due to “shortage of equipment.” And a message on the company’s answering machine said that service both northbound and southbound would be discontinued until further notice.
For more information about the service interruption, readers are advised to call the depot 1.877.227.8287 for updates.
