OPEN LETTER to Mayor Olivia Chow re: Toronto's terrible Ferry Service to Toronto Islands

August 25, 2024

Dear Toronto Mayor Chow, 

The state of Toronto City ferry service to the Toronto Islands is awful.   It seems like the management of the ferry service don't take seriously their responsibilities to provide predictable, reliable service at the advertised times and the result is an angry public, myself included.   

On two recent occasions, I've been trapped on the island with my partner as we waited hours for a ferry (for which we had already paid) to return us back to the mainland.  Advertised departure times on the city's website are COMPLETELY IGNORED by ferry staff as ferries seem to come and go when they please.  No apologies to waiting residents are ever given by any ferry staff I've seen after these long waits.   In early July, we arrived at Hanlan's Point on the island hoping to catch the 9:45 pm return ferry to the mainland.   The 9:45 pm schedule never came, nor did the 10:30 pm.  Only the 11 pm showed up with over 300 people waiting impatiently to board.  

On August long weekend Sunday, a similar occasion happened at Centre Island.  We arrived on time for the 9:45 pm schedule thinking perhaps the Toronto Ferry service would respect its advertised time for Centre Island as they don't for Hanlan's Point.  When we arrived at 9:30 pm at the Centre Island ferry port, there were over 400-500 people already waiting in front of us.  No ferry showed up until 10:10 pm, 25 minutes late, however only about half of those waiting made it onto that ferry, which angered and frustrated hundreds of people.   We had to wait for the next ferry which didn't show up until 10:40 pm.  

 

The waiting stall by the Centre Island port resembles a place you'd force animals to wait for slaughter.   It is dark, crowded and if there were some kind of emergency, or panic, hundreds of Toronto residents could be greatly injured or killed.  The conditions are that bad.  Furthermore, there was ZERO information from City of Toronto officials to help or guide the crowd.  No sense when the next ferry would arrive.  Calls to the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal were met with defiance and lack of empathy.  Our justifiable outrage at their pathetic service was ignored - in fact, city staff hung up on me rather than explain why ferry services were so different than advertised.   The staff person didn't seem to care about the dangerous conditions that the city was forcing people into waiting for a return ferry home.   I took the picture below of the giant stall where people were forced to wait for a ferry that may never come. 

Photo I took in waiting stall at Centre Island port on Aug 4, 2024

The number of frustrated Toronto residents is now in the thousands following this summer of incompetence.   I know we are not alone in our frustrations with the city's ferry service.

I know managers of the ferry service and Toronto city council have let down Toronto residents in recent years by not planning better to repair and replace aging ferries.  The temporary loss of 2 ferries this year really inconvenienced thousands of residents trying to get to Toronto Islands.  The level of incompetence in this mismanagement makes me suspect perhaps city officials are simply trying to help out private water taxi services make more money from residents' frustration with the public ferry service.  Because whoever is running Toronto Ferries does not care about public service.  

This also happens at a time when most city services seem to be in major decline, perhaps caused by lack of funding, but also mismanagement by city leaders, and laziness or lack of support for city staff. 

Toronto must do better than this sorry state of affairs. 

We need to build a pedestrian and cyclist bridge to the Toronto Islands immediately so the public can access this great park without having to experience the agony of waiting hours for an incompetent public ferry service to bother to provide the service they are being paid to provide.  

Enough is enough!   The option of going to the Islands these days is very risky as it's clear now that getting back from the island will be a torturous wait for a ferry to show up an hour or two after its advertised departure time. 

What are you going to do in the immediate short term to fix this sorry ferry service in Toronto?

Sincerely,

Matt Guerin

Very frustrated Toronto resident

Today's tonic: "If Pierre Poilievre gets his way, the next Olympics might not be so fun to watch - To eliminate the CBC would turn the Olympics into yet another product that must be paid for to be witnessed. "

Canadian beach volleyball Silver medalists

I haven't blogged in weeks and a lot has been happening, especially politically south of the border.  Please expect some thoughts soon on the ascension of Kamala Harris to the Democratic presidential nomination.

But for today, another topic: It's been a busy summer with work where I supervise a team of media librarians at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. Our team conducts media management of digital workspaces for two Toronto servers at CBC, one for News and one for all other production including CBC Sports.  We also manage several more servers at CBC locations across the country. 

Our team has been since late July setting up records and maintaining and archiving records of all Olympic events, plus any interviews, footage, stills captured, etc. our CBC crews have been shooting with athletes over in Paris.  We ensure the CBC Sports digital server has enough capacity to take in all of this content so that editors and producers can do their jobs getting Olympic shows to air.  

It is an immense responsibility, one we do every Olympic games (as long as the CBC hosts them for Canada).  We look forward to doing the same work for the Winter 2026 Games in Milano, Italy.  That is, if we still have an English CBC to work for.  

That is, if only Pierre Poilievre is stopped implementing his promise to destroy English language CBC.  The iconic cultural institution with other 80 years of branding and accomplishment, the best source of journalism for English Canadians in this scary world overrun with disinformation.  

Public broadcasting's aim should be to bring Canadians together, as we did these last two weeks with the coverage of the Paris Games.  Public broadcasting also ensures a clear source of reliable information, not tainted by association with private corporate interests.  CBC journalists go after stories to tell Canadians, regardless if those stories favour the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP, or any other points of view.  The CBC is as unbiased a media organization as you can get in English Canada and is structured to provide excellent national, provincial and local news coverage that impacts you in your communities. 

From far right wing eyes, the centre (or CBC) can look left wing.  From far left eyes, the CBC also looks fairly conservative and too safe.  I've always admired the CBC for its clear, concise, non-sensationalist approach to covering the news of the day.  

Today, I'm happy to share this article by Mark Hill in the Toronto Star, which details how the CBC's coverage of the Paris Games this year has brought Canadians together to share moments of joy, excitement, heartbreak and spectacle.  Over 13 million Canadians watched a part of the Opening Ceremony.  

Destroying the CBC would turn our backs on decades of Canadian-first media.  Poilievre's plan would ensure that "Schitt's Creek" for example would never have existed.  That popular English-language comedy became an international hit and its creator has said that CBC gave the kind of artistic freedom to create that show that made it so special and allowed it to find international audiences including several Emmy Awards a few years ago.  

The examples go on and on.  This will be a huge fight to save Canadians' right to journalism, to public broadcasting, to more English language news and entertainment and sports programming.   

Here's an excerpt from Hill's article: 

To eliminate the CBC would turn the Olympics into yet another product that must be paid for to be witnessed. For all their flaws, what’s wonderful about events like the Olympics and the World Cup is that their novelty and nationality attract reams of fans who otherwise couldn’t care less about sports. If Olympic coverage was subsumed by paid networks like Sportsnet and TSN, one more thread that unites us as a country would be severed, and yet another public service would be lost. 

A few weeks of sport won’t solve the country’s issues. But it is a reminder that we are all Canadian, and that the tedious jeremiads claiming the CBC is to the left of Mao are unmoored from reality.

Also, Olympic table tennis is wild. Don’t take that away from us.