Dogwood Fleet: The Story of the 

British Columbia Ferry Authority from 1958

Published by Cadieux & Griffiths

1967 Paperback

Very Good Condition. The book is clean, covers attached, uncreased spine, secure binding, unmarked, no writing, no highlighting, crisp inner pages, no stains, no ripped pages, no edge chipping, no corner folds, no creased pages, no remainder marks, not ex-library. Some very light surface and edge wear from age, use, storage and handling. 

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British Columbia Ferry Services Inc.,  operating as  BC Ferries  (BCF), is a former provincial  Crown corporation, now operating as an independently managed,  publicly owned  Canadian company. BC Ferries provides all major passenger and vehicle ferry services for coastal and island communities in the  Canadian province  of  British Columbia. Set up in 1960 to provide a similar service to that provided by the  Black Ball Line  and the  Canadian Pacific Railway, which were affected by  job action  at the time, BC Ferries has become the largest passenger ferry line in  North America, operating a fleet of 41 vessels with a total passenger and crew capacity of over 27,000, serving 47 locations on the B.C. coast.

The federal and provincial governments subsidize BC Ferries to provide agreed service levels on essential links between the BC mainland, coastal islands, and parts of the mainland without road access. The inland ferries operating on British Columbia's rivers and lakes are not run by BC Ferries. The responsibility for their provision rests with the  British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, which contracts operation to various  private sector  companies.

In the summer of 1958, a strike by employees of  CP Steamships  and the  Black Ball Line  caused the  Social Credit  government of  W. A. C. Bennett  to decide that the coastal ferry service in  British Columbia  needed to be government-owned, and so it set about creating BC Ferries. Minister of Highways  Phil Gaglardi  was tasked with overseeing the new  Crown corporation  and its rapid expansion.

BC Ferries' first route, commissioned in 1960, was between  Swartz Bay, north of  Sidney  on  Vancouver Island, and  Tsawwassen, an area in  Delta, using just two vessels. These ships were the now-retired  MV  Tsawwassen  and the MV  Sidney. The next few years saw a dramatic growth of the B.C. ferry system as it took over operations of the Black Ball Line and other major private companies providing vehicle ferry service between Vancouver Island and the  Lower Mainland. As the ferry system expanded and started to service other small coastal communities, BC Ferries had to build more vessels, many of them in the first five years of its operations, to keep up with the demand. Another method of satisfying increasing demand for service was BC Ferries' unique "stretch and lift" program, involving seven vessels being cut in half and extended, and five of those vessels later cut in half again and elevated, to increase their passenger and vehicle-carrying capacities. The vast majority of the vessels in the fleet were built in B.C. waters, with only two foreign purchases and one domestic purchase. In the mid-1980s, BC Ferries took over the operations of the saltwater branch of the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Highways, which ran ferry services to very small coastal communities. This action dramatically increased the size of BC Ferries' fleet and its geographical service area. The distinctive "dogwood on green" flag that BC Ferries used between 1960 and 2003 gave the service its popular nickname "the Dogwood Fleet".

During the 1990s, the NDP government commissioned a series of  three fast ferries  to improve ferry service between the Mainland and Vancouver Island. The ships  proved problematic  when they suffered many technical issues and cost double what was expected. The fast ferries were eventually sold off for $19.4 million in 2003.

A controversy began in July 2004 when BC Ferries, under a new American CEO, announced that the company had disqualified all Canadian bids to build three new  Coastal-class  ships, and only the proposals from European  shipyards  were being considered. The contract was estimated at $542 million for the three ships, each designed to carry 370 vehicles and 1600 passengers. The argument for domestic construction of the ferries was that it would employ numerous British Columbia workers, revitalize the sagging B.C. shipbuilding industry, and entitle the provincial government to a large portion of the cost in the form of taxes. BC Ferries CEO David Hahn claimed that building the ferries in Germany would "save almost $80 million and could lead to lower fares."

On September 17, 2004, BC Ferries awarded the vessel construction contract to Germany's  Flensburger shipyard. The contract protected BC Ferries from any delays through a fixed price and fixed schedule contract.  Coastal Renaissance  entered service in March 2008, while  Coastal Inspiration  was delivered the same month and entered service in June that year. The third ship,  Coastal Celebration, was delivered and is in service as well. On August 18, 2006, BC Ferries commissioned Flensburger to build a new vessel for its Inside Passage route, with the contract having many of the same types of terms as that for the Coastal-class vessels. The new northern service vessel,  Northern Expedition, has been delivered. On August 26, 2012, BC Ferries announced that it would be cutting 98 round trips on its major routes starting in the fall and winter of 2012 as part of a four-year plan to save $1 million on these routes. Service cuts have included the elimination of supplementary sailings on the Swartz Bay–Tsawwassen route, 18 round trips on the Horseshoe Bay–Departure Bay route, and 48 round trips, the largest number of cuts, on the Duke Point–Tsawwassen route, with plans to look for savings on the smaller unprofitable routes in the future. Free ferry trips for seniors were suspended from April 2014  to April 2018.

In the fall of 2014, BC Ferries announced the addition of three new Intermediate-class ferries to phase out  Queen of Burnaby  and  Queen of Nanaimo. These three vessels were to be named the  Salish class;  Salish Orca,  Salish Eagle  and  Salish Raven. In 2022,  Salish Heron, the fourth Salish-class vessel, entered service. All four ferries were designed and built by Remontowa Shipbuilding S.A. in Gdansk, Poland, and are dual-fuel, capable of operating on  liquefied natural gas  and marine diesel. These vessels are a part of BC Ferries standardized fleet plan, which will take the number of ship classes in the BC Ferries fleet from 17 to 5.  The proposed replacement classes are Northern, Major, Salish, Shuttle and Island. Additionally, there are three unique vessels. BC Ferries has stated that total standardization of the BC Ferries fleet will not be complete for another 40 years.