The following letter was sent to Mike Corrigan, president, BC Ferries, and Todd Stone, Minister of Transportation, and copied to Coast Reporter.
Due to the misguided cuts to the Sunday schedule of the Queen of Surrey on the Langdale - Horseshoe Bay run, my highly anticipated Thanksgiving dinner with family has been ruined, along with dozens of other families.
Being a regular ferry user, I checked the website an hour before the 11:30 a.m. sailing. Being the middle day of a long weekend, I thought it prudent to check. Not early enough, it turned out, as the ferry was almost full. So my wife and I hurried to the car and rushed to the terminal. We found a rather chaotic scene as the traffic control team was valiantly trying to control the upset travellers.
As it turned out, approximately 50 cars, full with Thanksgiving Day travellers, were left behind, including mine. To my horror, I checked the schedule to discover the next sailing was not for another three hours and 15 minutes!
It is my understanding that this chaos and overload situation is a regular occurrence on Sundays, with resultant anger and lost faith in the BC Ferries service by coastal residents and by valued tourists.
Could you please inform me and my fellow regular travellers on this run as to when this ridiculous situation will be addressed and when full service will return to our Sunday schedule?
William B. Forst, Gibsons
