Mini-cruise of Vancouver Island by mail ship delivers amazing sights

John Adam stands on the ship’s bridge on a cloudy morning and looks at his watch. “Let’s go,” the captain calls to his men, who are stowing cargo in the ship by crane – containers, construction timber, bags of cement, propane cylinders, food and boxes of post. Shortly after 8am, the MV Frances Barkley is loaded. Adam carefully manoeuvres the 36-metre (118-foot) mail ship out of the harbour basin of Port Alberni, on Canada’s Vancouver Island. A few minutes later, he reaches an inlet and starts up the engines. At 10 knots (18.5km/h), the ship heads along western Canada’s rugged coastal landscape towards the open sea, a breathtaking journey for passengers. Canadian mail ships such as the MV Frances Barkley cruise through some of the most beautiful maritime regions in the world, passing fiords, waterfalls and rainforests. The journey also offers insight into life in the midst of nature. The steamer, built in 1958, is more than just a supply ship. Adam also has tourists and day trippers on board for his nine-hour voyage, alongside the cargo. They are cooked for in a small galley, with two passenger rooms and a spacious sun deck. The boat has the capacity to cater for up to 150 passengers on what is a kind of mini-cruise through the wilderness, visiting remote regions that would be hard to reach by any other means. Eagles circle in the sky, building their nests in giant red cedars along the shore. The first bottlenose dolphins soon appear at the bow of the ship. “We fulfil an important supply function for the inhabitants of many coastal communities,” says Adam as he steers through the Alberni Inlet, a 40km (25-mile) fiord that stretches from the coastal town of Bamfield to Port Alberni in the interior of Vancouver Island. He sails the spectacular route through western British Columbia three times a week, passing wooded shorelines, steep cliffs, rocky islands and islets. He sees loggers’ camps, small beach settlements, houseboats and bright holiday cottages with jetties. Two hours later, the ship reaches Kildonan, a hamlet on a tributary of the Alberni Inlet once home to 300 people and a fish cannery, and a former landing stage for the Canadian Pacific Railway steamships. Today, the old factory site is deserted and overgrown and all that can be seen are a few houseboats bobbing along near the water’s edge. Adam sounds the ship’s siren – a welcome signal for the few sport fishermen and seekers of a quieter lifestyle who live here. “Nice to see you,” shouts one of the fishermen, who is busy with construction work on his house. The vessel is bringing him some valuable cargo – a cement mixer, quad bike and propane barbecue. For half an hour, Adam and the Barkley rattle around the jetties in Kildonan. Sometimes the crew drops off a mailbag, or a resident paddles up to the ship’s hatch in a kayak to collect their post. Finally, the mail boat sets off and ploughs its way through the fiord until it reaches the Pacific at Barkley Sound. A little further on, the ship reaches Bamfield, the largest settlement on the route, home to 200 people, most of them marine researchers, members of the coastguard, and fishermen and women. The captain moors there for an hour. That is enough time for a walk along an idyllic boardwalk that connects the colourful houses of the village. There are no tarmac roads here – most people arrive by seaplane or boat. John Adam starts up the engines again. A few backpackers have come aboard. They walked the West Coast Trail, a 75km wilderness hiking path that runs along the Pacific coast and ends not far from Bamfield. Newly piled up in the ship’s hold is Bamfield’s rubbish, which is taken by water to a landfill site in Port Alberni, the final stop on the mail boat’s mini-cruise. Lionel Hole is another local who runs a smaller boat to supply residents with mail and other goods. He crosses from the harbour town of Coal Harbour to Quatsino, home to 50 people including postal clerk Cheryl Andersen. She has been living in a wooden hut on the waterfront for 37 years. As the boat approaches, she grabs a wheelbarrow for the post. “Some days I have more than 10 customers,” she laughs. Until the 1960s, the residents here made a living from commercial whaling, but those days are long gone. Fortunately, though, the whales themselves are still around. As the boat leaves, dorsal fins emerge from the water. Three whales are doing their laps. The skipper slows down, allowing the whales to peacefully swim up and down with their flukes gleaming in the sun. Whether on board larger ships such as the MV Frances Barkley or small aluminium boats like Lionel Hole’s, few postal workers around the world see such sights during their working day, in the company of delighted tourists.

Mini-cruise of Vancouver Island by mail ship delivers amazing sights

Tourists can board the 150-passenger MV Frances Barkley and see fiords, waterfalls, whales and more on its journey along the Canadian island