Stories of ferry travel illustrate island life
Islanders in B.C have a love-hate relationship with ferries,
one that partly initiated Phillip Vannini’s four-and-half years of research into coastal ferry communities.
Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place and Time on Canada’s West Coast is a series of narratives and interpretations Phillip wrote and compiled through 400 interviews and 250 ferry trips to 36 island and coastal communities in B.C.
“I really wanted to go to islands, visit interesting communities, meet unique characters and get as many good stories as possible that show the folklore of living in small, ferry dependent communities,” said Phillip.
The book has a companion website, www.ferryresearch.ca, with audio documentaries, photos, maps and further essays. Feedlot Studios on Gabriola designed the site and book cover.
Nearly everyone Phillip interviewed said ferry routes should be public marine highways. “Generally [in the social sciences] there’s a lot of diversity of opinions, there’s a lot of grey areas. So it was really surprising to me to hear that these highways cannot be run for profit and that we should replace the boats with bridges.”
Phillip said he discovered that west coast ferry life varies place to place. “When I initially started this, I had a tentative title that was, We’re All in the Same Boat, and it’s not true.... Rather than a story of commonality, it became a collection of many different stories around the same issue, but different aspects of the same picture.”
As a gesture to the islanders who helped with the book, which is available at Page’s Bookstore, Phillip is donating profits from book sales to People for a Healthy Community and the Gabriola Elementary School PAC.
Having ridden ferries throughout the developed world, Phillip found that the way users pay, or don’t, affects attitudes towards island life. With tax-supported land highways, but user-pay marine highways, he concluded that “to live in a city and drive a car is normal; to ride a ferry and live on an island is not normal.”
“To me that is society telling us there is a preferred way of living, and if you don’t live that preferred way of living then you have to justify yourself.... There shouldn’t be a preferred method.”