Editor:
As Sunshine Coast residents, we are required to go to North Vancouver for surgeries. The Lions Gate day surgery (neurosurgery) department is a great team of professionals who ensure the experience has as little impact on their patients as possible. The one thing they are understandably unable to do is know exactly when a patient will be released.
So, when you are told two hours before the ferry departs that you are being released, you cannot get a BC Ferries’ reservation because you are inside the two and one-half hour restriction.
The friendly staff at the hospital goes out of their way to ensure you are able to get to the ferry terminal on time, but although you arrive one hour and twenty minutes before sailing, you cannot get on the next boat. The reason given is the number of reservations people have to the Sunshine Coast – thus the flaw!
We cannot make a reservation because we do not control our release from hospital. So as I see it, BC Ferries is discriminating against local residents by selling reservations we cannot always utilize.
Blake Cyr, Sechelt
