Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
SURFING THE SEABUS
Sashaying between downtown Vancouver's Waterfront Station and the North
Shore's Lonsdale Quay, the 400-seat SeaBus vessels easily divide the locals from
the tourists. Vancouverites barely raise a glance when the boats arrive in their
little docks to pick up passengers for the 12-minute voyage across Burrard Inlet.
In contrast, wide-eyed visitors excitedly crowd the automatic doors as if they're
about to climb onto a theme park ride.
Once on board, it's a similar story: locals shuffle to the back and open their
newspapers, while out-of-towners glue themselves to the front seats for a panor-
amic view of the glittering crossing, with the looming North Shore mountains
growing in stature ahead of them as the voyage gets underway.
The pair of boxy, low-slung catamarans - joined by a third sibling in 2012 - first
hit the waves in 1977. But they weren't the first boats to take passengers over the
briny. The first regular private ferry covering this route launched in 1900. It was
taken over and run as a public service by the City of North Vancouver a few years
later, when the route's two vessels were imaginatively renamed North Vancouver
Ferry 1and North Vancouver Ferry 2. No prizes for guessing what the third ferry
was named when it was added in 1936. The opening of the Lions Gate Bridge,
linking the two shores by road, a couple of years later slowly pulled the rug from
under the ferry service, and the last sailing took place in 1958. It would be almost
20 years before a new public service was restored to the route, when MV Burrard
Beaverand MV Burrard Otter(and, later, the new MV Pacific Breeze) took to the
waves.
A fourth SeaBus vessel is expected to enter service in 2014, at which time the
older two vessels will be retired or kept on standby.
