Texada Island ferry sailings
On Monday, April 18, my husband and I went to catch the 12:05 pm sailing from Texada Island to Powell River for a medical appointment with our doctor who comes over once a month from Courtenay.
As the Tachek was on the run instead of the North Island Princess and the capacity was considerably less, we went early [“Ministry officials hear same story,” April 20]. The Tachek was apparently already running half an hour late and so we proceeded to wait. I phoned over to my physician and was able to reschedule my appointment for an hour later. We waited and waited and waited when finally another customer, who was also waiting, informed us that the Tachek was not returning until the 3 pm run. We phoned the terminal and sure enough, even with 20 or so vehicles waiting for the ferry, they were not going to return because they were late.
We were furious. A lost day of work, a physician’s appointment that only happens once a month and the Tachek was not returning because it was running late? We left the terminal to find out later she did return. I have no idea when she arrived back on Texada but this is absurd.
The next day I also had a medical appointment. The Tachek was on time but when I came to catch the 11:05 am from Powell River back to Texada, she was already running 20 minutes late. I asked the attendant why they don’t post an interim schedule for the Tachek so that she can meet her sailing commitment. His response was it is impossible to predict.
This is not the first time the Tachek has been on this run and, in the past, she was able to keep to her schedule for the most part. This is certainly the worst ferry service I have ever had in the 35 years I have lived here. Couple that with the inability to find an engineer a few months ago that also caused my husband to miss a doctor’s appointment, makes me question management and intentions of BC Ferries to adequately serve the rural areas of our province.
The Texada ferry is in constant conflict with the morning sailing from Comox. Often the Texada ferry is left in the Strait of Georgia waiting for the Comox ferry to unload. I really have difficulty understanding why the schedule cannot work better than this even when we have our regular boats on these runs. When I first arrived in this area, and the ferry service was still the department of highways, conflicts like this were rare and the schedules were probably worked out by people and not computers. Now these conflicts in schedules are part of the norm. Are we dumbing down?
Leslie Goresky
Central Road, Texada Island
Splendor without diminishment
Am I the only person who would be totally heartbroken, if my one, clean, natural view of the ocean, which I get when I come to town, were taken away from me?
Not all of us are fortunate enough to live or work with an ocean view. When I come to town for business, I enjoy the view down Duncan Street, a very commercial and industrial outlook over Strait of Georgia. However, I live for the view down Alberni Street of the wide, uninterrupted, natural expanse of sea with its whitecaps, boats, birds, seals, islands, snow-capped mountains and sunsets.
I suspect that the people who sit and sip coffee or tea over their newly acquired book at Breakwater Books and Coffee, feel just the same way. Is reading well served, if we destroy a major part of the appeal of our one, locally-owned, first-hand bookstore, to relocate a library [“Council selects library site,” March 9] that would be better placed for so many reasons (see previous editorials), up the hill in the easily accessible centre of town?
City of Powell River council will have a hard time convincing me that putting a city and/or commercial building in the fairgrounds site is what’s best for this town, considering that to accomplish it, the city would be depriving a large percentage of the townsfolk and visitors of one of the magnificent panoramas of natural beauty that makes this place so extraordinary and unique. Instead, let’s choose to keep splendor without diminishment.
Wendy Pelton
Gunther Road
