Any of you who might be travelling between the mainland and Vancouver Island and expect to catch one of the sailings of the BC Ferries, you might want to consider some additional type of transportation. There is an all-out strike by the BC Ferry workers and we are basically stranded unless we can fork out the bucks to fly or take one of the more expensive options.

As an information service for those of you who have not heard, I would like to point out the following options to anyone who might need to make other arrangements.

There is the Washington State Ferries that would route you through the United States. See one of the terminal cams here.

As well, there are the airlines. WestJet is my favourite, and then there are Zip, Harbour Air, Kenmore Air, and Canada's monopolistic air carrier Air Canada.

If ships are your thing, there is the Victoria Clipper to Seattle and the HarbourLynx from Nanaimo.

While these are available, they do not come cheaply so please be prepared to pay extra.

We sincerely hope that ferry service resumes soon. If you would like more information about the strike, please read this which is current as of Thursday, December 11, 2003.

Personally, I do not believe that a full-scale strike should be allowed. If they want to reduce service, that is fine, but don't strand the rest of us because of a labour dispute.

This strike action has been taken to the Supreme court and I heard yesterday that if the action is deemed illegal, the management is well within their rights to fire all of the striking workers. I don't know about you but in a world where job security is non-existant, I think I would be considering this.

Have any of you heard that this is going on here? I mean, the whole world heard about the fires in the interior of BC but one never knows what other type of news travels around the world. Let me know, will you?