A ferrytale existence
by Greg Nesteroff - Nelson Star
posted Jul 14, 2011 at 2:00 PM
The Glade ferry will get its biggest workout in recent memory this month as the community on the south side of the Kootenay River marks its centennial with a three-day extravaganza.
The celebration from July 29 to 31 will include historical displays, multimedia presentations, sports, live entertainment, and traditional Doukhobor food...
...A century after Glade was founded, the ferry remains the community’s symbol and lifeline.
The original vessel, a reaction scow, was installed by the Doukhobors soon after their arrival, and later replaced by a pontoon-type reaction ferry. There was no scheduled service. You simply yelled “Parome!” — meaning ferry — when you wanted it brought to your side of the river. “If anyone heard your repeated calls, you were fortunate,” according to a history of the Castlegar school district. “Otherwise your weekend trip home or other plans had to be forgotten. Since the teachers lived close to the ferry, they frequently got out of bed at odd hours, even in winter, to fetch latecomers from the opposite shore who were calling Parome.”
After the Brilliant dam was completed in 1944, the river’s current was no longer strong enough for a reaction ferry. For the next 11 years, unless you had your own boat, the only access was via a community-owned rowboat, and later a privately owned barge and tug. Eventually the provincial government began operating a single-lane, three-vehicle cable ferry, and moved the landing downstream to the centre of the community to make it more convenient for residents, who still mostly walked everywhere.
Service began on April 23, 1955 — a date Nick Denisoff and wife Mabel remember vividly. “We got married that Saturday,” he says. “But I didn’t know I would spend 30 years on that ferry.” When Denisoff began working as an operator, the hours were 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Then they were extended to 10 p.m., then midnight, 1 a.m., 2:30 a.m., and finally 24 hours.
The ferry was never out for an extended period except during high water, he says. One year, the Slocan River went on a rampage and large debris came floating down the Kootenay. “Those were rough times. Sometimes it got to the point where we had to chop the cable off and throw it in. We couldn’t take it apart. That’s how many stumps there were. Then we got a high line the ferry held on to and went back and forth.”
Although the river rarely froze, Denisoff does recall using the ferry as an icebreaker. On one occasion, he had just left the north side by himself because a car was waiting on the opposite side when a man walked halfway across on the ice and hopped aboard. “He didn’t make the ferry, and I didn’t see him — it was in the dark. He walked on the ice and caught up to me. He got in and I just about jumped off. Scared the heck out of me.”
In later years, the ferry’s capacity increased to five, and then in 1980, the present eight-car ferry began crossing the river. Denisoff retired about 20 years ago.
Periodically, the notion of replacing the ferry with a bridge is suggested, such as in 2002 when the BC government threatened to reduce service and slap tolls on inland ferries. Denisoff recalls one public meeting where he suggested they vote on it. “I think 80 per cent were for the bridge,” he says. However, “now that we’ve got a lot of new people, it’s getting to be pretty even.”
From The Nelson Star