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The Deer Island-Eastport ferry will not be operating this year but will resume its regular run next year. East Coast Ferries Ltd. of Deer Island, which operates both the Eastport and Campobello ferries, has accepted a contract from the provincial government to provide ferry service on the Saint John River this year and will use the Fundy Trail, which has been on the Eastport run.
Velma Lord, co-owner of East Coast Ferries, explains that the provincial government had approached her husband, Stan Lord, about running one of his ferries on the Kennebecasis Island run because the province had run into problems with maintenance work needed on its ferries. The ferry run links Kennebecasis Island with Summerville where the Kennebecasis and Saint John rivers meet. The run will begin the first week of June and last to the first of November.
The Eastport ferry "will be back in service next year," says Velma Lord. "It's just for this season." She says that they didn't know until May 1 that the company would be doing the Saint John River run.
East Coast Ferries usually begins the Eastport run the last weekend of June and continues the service seven days a week until the Pirate Festival. The ferry saves travellers nearly 50 miles of driving if they're continuing on in New Brunswick or Maine. The Deer Island-Campobello ferry, which will operate this year, begins in mid-June and runs until the end of September.
Lord expects that the lack of ferry service between Eastport and Deer Island will have some impact on tourism, but she notes that there has not been a great deal of traffic on the run for some time. She says that the number of users dropped off some since 9/11 and the implementation of the requirement for travellers to have passports to enter the U.S. Although traffic has been making "a little bit of a comeback," she points out, "It's not as easy as it used to be," as East Coast Ferries is required to have a security plan in place for the Eastport ferry.
Lord observes that the ferry service between Eastport and Deer Island has been in place for so long that "it was not an easy decision to make, even for one year." The choice to accept the government's offer, though, came down to a business decision.
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