B.C. Ferries was announced after the two privately owned ferries to Vancouver Island both went on strike
Phil Gaglardi never met a bulldozer he didn’t like.
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The Social Credit highways minister was known for flying around the province to check out new highway projects the Socreds were constructing in the 1950s and 60s.
Sometimes he flew by plane, sometimes he flew by car, which is why he was known for getting speeding tickets. In any event, this led to lots of great photo ops.
On Feb. 5, 1960, “Flying Phil” took the controls of a “giant bulldozer” during the construction of the new B.C. Ferries terminal in Tsawwassen, helping to connect the “10,000-foot Tsawwassen causeway with the mainland.”
“The minister plugged the gap with 50 yards of gravel pushed by the ‘dozer blade,” reported The Vancouver Sun. “After the ceremony Gaglardi said the $4 million ferries project is well on its way and practice runs will be made in mid-May.”
Gaglardi said he saw the causeway as part of the “gigantic highway system” the Socreds were building “for the people of B.C.”
“He predicted the ferry terminal, coupled with the Deas Island tunnel, will lead to tremendous development in the area,” said the Sun.
This may explain why Socred premier W.A.C. Bennett chose to build the B.C. Ferries terminal in sparsely populated Tsawwassen, rather than in White Rock or Steveston, the other possible locations.
The Socreds had spent $16.5 million building the Deas Island tunnel which had come under flack from people who wanted to build a Fraser River crossing on either Annacis or Tilbury Island, closer to the existing population centres.
Building a ferry terminal at Tsawwassen would help justify the Deas Island tunnel, which Queen Elizabeth officially opened on June 15, 1959. (It’s now the George Massey tunnel, after the Social Credit MLA who pushed for it to be built.)
Choosing Tsawwassen had its critics as well, including the White Rock Board of Trade, which the Sun said “flatly challenged” Gaglardi’s cost estimates.
“Mr. Gaglardi admits that Tsawwassen is, as critics claim, the most expensive terminus site, beset by the greatest difficulties with rough weather,” said a Sun editorial on June 30, 1959. “But he said the government hopes to overcome those difficulties by skilled engineering.”
Gaglardi also claimed that because Tsawwassen was closer to the Vancouver Island ferry terminal at Swartz Bay than White Rock or Steveston, fuel costs would be $300,000 cheaper a year.
Vancouver Sun photographer Bill Dennett took an awesome aerial photo of the construction of the causeway in Nov., 1959. Basically, it seemed to start in the middle of the Straight of Georgia.
“The causeway’s core will be sand, dredged up from the bottom in adjacent waters,” write Jim Hazelwood in the Sept. 1, 1959 Sun. “The core will be covered by … a blanket of gravel six inches or less in diameter.”
Three Vancouver tugboats were working “round the clock” to bring a million tons of gravel to the project. The gravel came from Sandy Point, near Ferndale in Washington state, “the nearest place where material could be found to meet engineers’ specifications.”
The cost of the causeway and terminal seemed to be different in every story about B.C. Ferries, which was announced on July 17, 1958, by W.A.C. Bennett when workers at the privately owned Canadian Pacific and Black Ball ferries went on strike.
Bennett went to court to get the Black Ball employees back to work after four days, and thundered he would launch his own ferry service so that British Columbians “shall not be subject either to the whim of union policy nor the indifference of federal agencies.”
Bennett said the ferry service would be running in a year, but he was overly optimistic — the ferry service officially launched on June 15, 1960. But that’s still under two years.
The Tsawwassen causeway and terminal cost $3 million, and the two ferries that launched the fleet cost $5 million.
The first ferry was launched from Burrard Drydock in North Vancouver on Nov. 28, 1958. Socred MLA Buda Brown “energetically heaved” a bottle of champagne at the bow, but it bounced back — it took her three tries to break it.
Thus what the press dubbed “Bennett’s Navy” was launched.