This week I’d planned on earning my humble keep by writing on two subjects: 1) my role as shift supervisor for the Friday and Saturday night 7-10 shifts at the new Small Mart store/cafe and 2) being a part of the search and rescue team that found Billie Lieske and her young son, Skipper on Mount Collins after they’d been lost eight days.
Over two dozen took part in that search, putting up posters, calling out, bushwhacking in difficult terrain. Dexter Harrison, Rob Forbes, Keelan, Laura, Mercia, Sawyer, Vickie, Walt, all performed like unselfish titans. It takes a village to raise a child, quibble endlessly about land use, and find missing dogs.
At any rate, despite plans to write on those topics, after my family had ferry mishaps due to the sailing cuts, and after hearing other tales of woe, I felt the need to address the cuts in this space. Naturally, the Slow Lane will travel the high road and not abandon decorum.
To begin: the schedule sucks.
It’s a bleeping mess, all over the freaking map. Is it not true that regularity is a key to human endeavours? We have regular work, regular visiting hours, regular bowel movements, regular times to tickle the cat on the couch; regularity translates to success. But this new ferry schedule is as predictable as the path of a supercell tornado.
Now of course some will say “just memorize it and move forward.” Yeah, sure, only it’s so confusing that mistakes will forever be made. And just how do we answer off-island family and friends who ask about the ferry schedule now?
Before: “It’s pretty much every hour, with a small break in the early afternoon.”
Now: “Good luck.”
Here are two quotes on solutions: “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” That is from Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State. And from no less a source than Albert Einstein: “When the solution is simple, God is answering.”
But in this case debate and doubt continue and God surely is not involved, in particular with Sunday’s mishmash of a timetable: the usual no ferry at 5:30 a.m. and then one at 6:30 a.m. and then no ferry at 7:30 but one at 8:30. That’s followed by no ferry at 9:30 a.m. and in the evening there isn’t one at 9 p.m. From Horseshoe Bay it’s the inverse of that, only don’t quote me on any of this.
Is there a simple solution? There is, and I offer it despite knowing BC Ferries is as prone to listening as a two year-old: to lose four sailings take out the Monday-Thursday 12:00 and 12:30 (pls. adjust for summer schedule times). I’m not the originator; I heard it from Rondy Dike, a simple solutions man who, along with his wife Dorothy, built up the USSC Marina almost from scratch.
It leaves a longer gap between the last morning sailing and first in the afternoon, but only of an extra hour. For those leaving island late in the a.m., they’ll simply have to leave an hour earlier; anyone coming back after leaving early must either make the 11:00 or find something productive to do and then get the 2:30.
Now we could adjust sailings a bit, turn the 11:00 a.m. into an 11:15 and the 11:30 into an 11:45, but while that would mitigate the loss of the last morning sail it may also prove confusing. Regardless, taking out that last morning sailing for four straight days is easily digestible and simple to adapt to.
Sure we don’t really want any change but again we’re dealing with that two year-old incapable of registering the needs of others. It’s a company that paid CEO Michael Corrigan $563,000 in 2012 and two of his 12 vice-presidents, Robert Clarke and Glen Schwartz, $492,207 and $491,643 respectively (factoring in bonuses, Corrigan got $915,000).
I recognize that what we say on Bowen gets ignored by the ferry corp., and even if heard they pay lip service to it, nothing more. But just so they know here’s this: their hodgepodge of a schedule isn’t appreciated, not by me, my family, nor, I believe, by most islanders.
And this, too: I don’t think BC Ferries is earning its not-so-humble keep.
