A Gambier Island mother has enlisted help from the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) in an effort to lobby the province to reinstate a program that allows a parent to ride free on the ferry while accompanying a young child to school.
Kate-Louise Stamford, appearing before the SCRD's transportation advisory committee on April 29, said her five-year-old daughter will be starting at Langdale Elementary School in September, "and I have no safe way to get her to school unless I spend $400 a month riding Stormaway."
The supervision is needed, Stamford said, because students have to walk about 150 metres from the Route 13 ferry to the school bus stop in the parking lot, while in the afternoon, students are dropped off early and are left waiting for about 20 minutes before the ferry departs.
In the past, older children attending the elementary school sometimes provided the supervision for younger students or parents made informal arrangements, but those options are no longer available, Stamford said. Besides her daughter, she said, only one other student will be taking the ferry to school in the fall.
"There were three children who had to move off Gambier recently because it was too expensive for their parents to get them to school safely," she told the committee.
The program that allowed parents to ride the ferry free was cancelled about five years ago, the committee heard.
"In 2008 it came before the ferry advisory committee and at that time BC Ferries confirmed that it wasn't their policy, it was government policy," West Howe Sound alternate director Joyce Clegg said.
The committee passed a motion by Roberts Creek director Donna Shugar recommending the chair write a letter to the province supporting Stamford's request.
Stamford said she learned after the meeting that the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure's marine branch administered the program.
Stamford said she is not acting in her capacity as a Gambier Island trustee for Islands Trust, but strictly as a parent.
