British Columbia Ferry Corporation
 |
|
| BC Ferries | |
| Organized as a privately held company, with the provincial Crown as sole shareholder | |
| Industry | Transportation |
| Founded | Victoria, British Columbia (June 15, 1960) |
| Headquarters | Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
|
Key people
|
Donald P. Hayes, Chair Michael Corrigan, President & CEO |
| Products | Ferry service |
| Revenue |
 C$786.3 million (2013) |
|
C$84.8 million (2013) |
|
|
C$15.5 million (2013) |
|
| Owner | BC Ferry Authority (Government of British Columbia) |
|
Number of employees
|
3,153 (2005) |
| Website | www.bcferries.com |
British Columbia Ferry Services Inc., operating as BC Ferries (BCF), is a former provincial Crown corporation, now operating as an independently managed, publicly owned 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 and the second largest in the world, boasting a fleet of 35 vessels with a total passenger and crew capacity of over 27,000, serving 47 locations on the B.C. coast.
As BC Ferries provides an essential link from mainland British Columbia to the various islands, and parts of the mainland without road access, on its routes, it is subsidized by the Government of British Columbia ($151 million in the 2011 fiscal year) and the Government of Canada ($27 million in the 2011 fiscal year). 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, which contracts operation to various private sector companies.
In the late 1950s, a strike by employees of the Black Ball Line caused the Social Credit government of W. A. C. Bennett to decide that the coastal ferry service in B.C. 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.
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Wikipedia