FREDERICTON — Tourism officials say the sporadic ferry service this year between Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia is hurting local businesses.
Corryn Clemence, chief executive of the Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island, said businesses in the eastern part of the province missed the first major tourist influx on Canada Day weekend because the one ferry across the Northumberland Strait was out of service.
This weekend will see visitors arriving for the Cavendish Festival's outdoor concerts, and there is still no ferry service. The company that operates the service between Caribou, N.S., and Wood Islands, P.E.I., said the MV Confederation will not sail until at least next week, leaving the Confederation Bridge as the Island's only link to the mainland.
"A lot of our visitors from away would use the ferry service as a means of arrival and departure to the Island," Clemence said.
"So to have that down again this year puts extra pressure on the bridge to be able to move that traffic through quickly and efficiently. There's a lot of challenges and intricacies that go with it." She said her association represents hotels, retailers, event organizers and other tourism operators.
Northumberland Ferries said the MV Confederation was removed from service because of a mechanical problem and that the required parts are due to arrive Saturday.
P.E.I. Tourism Minister Cory Deagle raised concerns about the reduced ferry operations in a June 20 letter to federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and federal Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault.
"As you can appreciate, the ferry service plays an important role in transporting tourists to and from Prince Edward Island, and with the current interruption, it is anticipated that a number of tourism operators in the province and certainly in the eastern region will be severely impacted," Deagle said.
A Transport Canada statement on Alghabra's behalf said the department is working with Northumberland Ferries to ensure that the MV Confederation returns to service as soon as possible.
The department is also working to identify options for a longer-term interim replacement for the former MV Holiday Island to ensure a two-vessel service during peak season.
"The new replacement ferry is still in the design stage and is expected to be in service in 2028 based on the work to be completed and the project’s notional timelines," it said.
Clemence said the ferry usually runs from early spring until late fall, but service has been inconsistent this year. Last July, a fire aboard the MV Holiday Island put that ferry permanently out of service at the height of the tourist season.
"We've been operating with one ferry," Clemence said. "As we ramped up kind of for that summer season, which is our busy time of year … now having no ferry service has been really challenging for a lot of our operators on the eastern end (of the Island)."
In a news release Thursday, Northumberland Ferries said a second vessel, MV Saaremaa 1, is scheduled to be in service by the middle of this month.
Clemence said the financial hit to businesses from the ferry disruption will be calculated later in the year. The last big tourism year was 2019, she said.
That tourism season ended with destruction from post-tropical storm Dorian, and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit the next year. Things were returning to normal when post-tropical storm Fiona caused major damage on the Island last September.
"Now this year, it's the ferries," Clemence said. "It just seems to be a lot of speed bumps along the way for our operators."
On the Nova Scotia side of the strait, the town of Pictou is feeling the absence of ferry traffic, said Mayor Jim Ryan.
With a population of about 3,000, Pictou is "surviving," he said, but since the town is about 10 kilometres off the main highway, the nearby ferry terminal is one of the reasons tourists come to the place.
"People have to make a conscious decision to come to Pictou .… When that's not happening, it's having an effect on our service industry," Ryan said.
"We need two ferries at this end. We need the redundancy. We need the reliability. And if it's not there, then it's going to affect all of us one way or another."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 7, 2023.
Hina Alam, The Canadian Press
