“and I shall watch the ferry boats, and they’ll get high, on a bluer ocean against tomorrow’s sky, and i will never grow so old again, and i will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain…”

When contemplating those lyrics, Van Morrison probably wasn’t sitting on the dock at St. Barbe, Newfoundland waiting to board the ferry that would take him across the Strait of Belle Isle to Labrador. He might have been writing about the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, England or maybe Roscoff or Cherbourg, France. Maybe not. Maybe he just made the whole thing up because it sounded good. He might have just as easily written “and I shall watch the merry lads, and they’ll get high,” but it doesn’t sound nearly as romantic.

Or, maybe he was referring to the ferry from Pembroke, Wales to Rosslare, Co. Wexford, Ireland. I do know that ferry. I took it with my mother to Ireland from Wales. I had come down from Belfast and met up with her in Wales to take her to Pontardawe so she could visit a woman whom she had never met but had been corresponding with for 40 years. Seems she had sailed to England when she was young when she and her friends had put messages in bottles and thrown them overboard. Years later, Anne Davies from Pontardawe, Wales had found that bottle and thus began a years-long writing relationship which was finally culminating in this meeting. Anne was in her late 80s, and was a gracious and tireless hostess, one for whom my vegetarian condition was one I felt no need to state and thus i skirted around the ham in the corn chowder and ignored the origins of the broth with the stealth of a politician. Anne also made us dinner and then we left in the evening and took a bus to the ferry in Pembroke. I don’t recall how long the trip was but we did get bunks and slept for a time. When we got to Ireland I parted ways with my mother; she went north to visit family in Belfast, and I was on my way to Cork and then Galway for the Arts Festival. Anne stopped writing a couple of years after that trip; we never did find out what happened but assumed that sadly, she had passed away. Sentimental journeys.

Ferries are what you take when there is no long way around, or when you don’t have the time it would take to travel the farther distance., or have the means to get there. If we have a choice of driving or taking a ferry, the ferry always wins. Is it because it’s just fun, or that it adds an interesting twist to an otherwise long car journey? There is something magical about our ride getting a ride of its own. The ferry is big and stable. We all get to take a break on the ferry. We have no control, and just need to let it do its thing. Comforting.

I’ve lost count of how many ferries I’ve taken. Between Tsawwassen and Sidney, British Columbia, to get from Vancouver to Victoria would be my most frequently used. I’ve taken the ferry over to Salt Spring Island and couldn’t wait to take the return one because of the crowds on that Saturday morning. By contrast we took the ferry from Sidney to Pender Island, a much more peaceful destination, where we stayed in a B & B that advertised stunning water views. The ‘views’ were a tiny ‘v’ that we could see at a distance through the trees, but that was OK. It’s a lovely place.

On the opposite coast I once took the ferry from Digby, Nova Scotia to Saint John, New Brunswick because me and my travel mate were fast running out of money and it was cheaper to take the three hour ferry than spend money on the couple of tanks of gas it would have taken to drive around (we were driving a 1979 baby blue Thunderbird and we wore feather earrings – I had two, he had one – in a car that was one of the last of the floating-world gas-guzzlers). On the bright side, just before boarding the ferry I took a picture of the hospital I was born in, in Annapolis Royal, a place I never lived in and haven’t been back to since that road trip. My father had been stationed in the Navy in nearby Cornwallis; if Cornwallis had a hospital, that would have been my birthplace. I’ll be there again in just a few days, but I know the hospital is no longer there. It was torn down just a couple of years after that trip. I don’t have my photo with me but found one from the archives. In my picture, the hospital is white with green trim, not sepia-toned. I’m not that old.

Closer to home, I love the little ferry that you take over to Prince Edward County in eastern Ontario, on Highway 33, I think. Or the Centre Island ferry that we take almost every summer to the island from Toronto. We took the Chi-Cheemaun ferry once between Manitoulin Island and Tobermory. I remember we had our dog Mia with us and she didn’t throw up. That was nice.

Up until this trip, my most memorable ferry ride was with the Delightful Ms. S. You remember it, dear girl. We once took it from Italy to Greece. We unrolled our sleeping bags and slept under the stars on the upper deck along with everyone else as broke as we were. There was a small pool on deck too. They also served booze. It was glorious. I remember waking up early and finding, much to our surprise, that we had the use of hot showers. It was a budget journey but it’s still the closest thing I’ve come to experiencing a cruise ship. And all that for a couple of broke 20-somethings.

We will take 6 ferries on this road trip, to and from Newfoundland, to and from Labrador, to P.E.I. and the shortest ferry at 3 minutes, between the Cabot Trail and North Sydney, Nova Scotia; the longest is from North Sydney to Argentia, Newfoundland. The one we took today, the one pictured just above is showing its age. Nevertheless, we felt secure and comfortable on its 1 hour and 45 minute journey from St. Barbe to Blanc Sablon, Quebec, a short drive from L’Anse Au Clair, Labrador, from where I’m writing this.

Looking forward to tomorrow’s journey back to the island. On our way down the west coast we hope to see moose. No moose yet. There are 115,000 of them in Newfoundland and Labrador. Maybe one of them could just come out for a minute.