Ferries may seem romantic or exotic to starry-eyed tourists looking at the beautiful postcard landscapes that slide, but for many children they are just the school bus.
“When the restless, restless, and evil thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm on all that is in me bewildered and confused.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
“I bet you’ve never smelled a real school bus before.”
– Ferris Bueller’s day off
The last departure of BC Ferries from Port McNeill was last night, which is good.
The crew of K’ulut’a Island delayed the departure for an hour, until 22:30, so that the students of Alert Bay and Sointula could go to their high school parties.
This is what happens to the boats that serve the small communities that float on Vancouver Island. Ferries may seem romantic or exotic to starry-eyed tourists looking at the beautiful postcard landscapes that slide, but for many children they are just the school bus. In this case, a school bus with neighbors who recognize this grade night is important.
Sailor James Glendale knows this. He has spent 32 years on the road, transporting students to North Island Secondary School, the same institution he graduated from in 1989. “You can see them when they first arrive as 8th graders: they look scared, without know what it’s like. they get into it. And every year, they seem to mature a little more. “
Children, crew and adult travelers know each other. “We all know them, say hello in the morning,” says Brooklynn Watson of Sointula, one of 18 NISS students taking the ferry from Malcolm Island every day. K’ulut’a Island’s timetable means that the approximately 70 students at Alert Bay on Cormorant Island usually take a 45-minute ferry ride to Port McNeill.
They are far from the only high school students who travel by water. Gabriola’s children will take the ferry to Nanaimo, the Quadra residents to Campbell River and a good handful of the Denman Island boat en route to Courtenay. Water taxis transport students from the outer islands of the Gulf to the high school in Salt Spring. (The pilot of a ship once told me that I was amazed at the ability of teenage girls to apply makeup in the dark black and a three-foot wave).
Sometimes travel is too much, forcing families to make difficult decisions. Teenagers from advanced places like Surge Narrows or Cortes Island or Lasqueti often go out to high school. Or, at times, their families just sign up.
Maintaining livable communities for families is a big problem on the coast. Without an elementary school, and without relatively easy access to high school, good luck attracting anyone other than retirees. That’s why important gestures like BC Ferries ’traditional late night graduation are important for those traveling from Port McNeill.
Transporting to school is still a challenge, however, as evidenced by this year’s dozen NISS graduates from Sointula and Alert Bay.
Take Watson. For the past five years, the 17-year-old has gotten up at 6 a.m., left the Malcolm Island school bus at 7:30 a.m., boarded the ferry to leave at 7:55 a.m. and at Port McNeill half an hour later. for classes beginning at 8:46.
At least the new Island-class ferry is more reliable than the one it replaced, he says. If it’s late, it has the ability to speed up and get back on schedule. The older and smaller ferry didn’t. “When he was left behind, he was behind all day.”
However, living at the pace of a ferry every three hours can be uncomfortable. Going to football, or working, or whatever, means arriving in Port McNeill very early or showing up late. Then you’ll have to wait for the next boat to take you home. “It simply came to our notice then. It just makes it a very long day, “says Watson.
Alert Bay classmate Giselle Alfred, 18, says the same thing. “In the winter, you go out in the dark and come home in the dark.” It was especially difficult when the rules of the pandemic forced students to remain isolated within the cohorts, which meant that the ferry on foot had to make two trips, which meant that it had to set the alarm at 5 p.m. : 30 in the morning and arrive in Port McNeill 1 hour and a half before classes begin. .
Winter can also mean hard weather, which Alfred says he likes, even though sometimes the winds are so high that the ferries can’t work. Given the marine forecast, children often stay home instead of running the risk of getting caught on the other side, although this is still the case.
“We’re all too familiar with being trapped in Port McNeill,” Watson says. She remembers having dinner with Mr. Noodles after school opened its vending machines. NISS maintains sleeping bags and sleeping mats for emergencies.
The fact is that both Watson and Alfred love the place where they live, in very close and supportive communities. The ferry has not stopped Watson from living a busy life, volunteering at the Port McNeill Pharmacy and Veterinary Hospital and as a young firefighter and at Sointula School, a place that sounds like Paradise. “It’s definitely worth it,” he says of the daily commute.
Alfred talks about the life lessons of the ferry: he teaches you how to manage your time and get organized, because there is no going back on what you have forgotten at home.
And then there’s the journey itself. Seeing otters rafting on the waves or having whales on the surface so close you can hear them exhale never grow old. “It’s still a magical experience,” says Alfred.
In the fall he will go to McGill University in Montreal, while Watson will head to BC University in Vancouver, giving them a taste of city life. None of them make the prospect seem more appealing than living in a place where your neighbors take care of you, delaying the ferry so you can go to grade.