Shaping the River
Tugboat companies have always been hired by businesses that need cargo —logs, pulp, gravel, wood chips, and scrap metal—moved along the river. Tugboat captains also help river pilots dock large cargo ships safely.
Captain Bob Olson is a tugboat captain who grew up in Queensborough and has worked on the Fraser for 53 years. Bob has helped move the materials used to build our local infrastructure. Today, he guides car ships to the Annacis Island auto terminal.
It's rewarding, very rewarding. Just to look at projects we've done over the years, and different things we've been involved in. Moved huge amounts of material that went into the construction of [the Alex Fraser Bridge]. The [old] Port Mann Bridge was being built just as I was starting in the industry... I’ve lost count how many barges we would have put in with cranes too big to move on the highway.
-CAPT. BOB OLSON, tugboat captain
Bill Burnett was a river pilot on the Fraser River from 1980 to 1996. His work was to steer cargo ships as much as 110’ wide from the open ocean to a dock on the Fraser shoreline. Bill recalls in the 1960s and 70s, during fishing season, the river was full of boats, sometimes more than 100 around New Westminster, and more than 1500 between the Georgia Strait and Hope. It was difficult to steer around the hundreds of gillnet fishermen, each with a large net stretching out from the back of their boats.
Travelling in the fog is one of the crazy things we had to do... I'd go out in zero visibility, and it was crazy. It was a foggy night, a ship coming out of Fraser Surrey [Docks] turned to go down river, [the pilot] sees what he thought was an amber light and tells the helmsman to stay on that light. As it happens, I'm on the Seaspan Greg waiting for the train to come down and unload, load me. And the train is never coming, so I get on the phone to the yard up at CN. He tells me there was a ship's bow on the tracks and the train can't get by it! The pilot, unbeknownst to him, when he said stay steady on that light, it was a headlight of a [train] coming up the track!
-BILL BURNETT, retired river pilot
RivTow Tugs
In 1976, Russ Cooper sold his family's company, Westminster Tugs, to RivTow run by Lucille Johnstone. Lucille, who was known as the 'Tugboat Titan', started working at RivTow in 1945 as the receptionist when the company had just 3 tugboats. By 1989, she retired as the CEO and president of one of BC's largest tugboat operators. Smit Marine Group, a Dutch firm, bought RivTow in the late 1990s, and operates in front of the River Market.
Every year, tons of sediment washes down the Fraser River. Dredging—removing this sediment—is essential. Bernie Jebson, project manager for Fraser River Pile and Dredge, has dredged the New Westminster waterfront for almost 30 years. For years, the federal Department of Public Works dredged the river, and the Fraser River Harbour Commission sold the sediment for construction projects.
There's a lot [of mills] over the last 30 years that have disappeared... Kruger Paper, when they used to have their log facility, which they've now torn down, we used to dredge that about every two years, again, because it's bark debris that builds up. Where they unload their pulp barge right now, about every two years we have to dredge that out because of sediment, just the way it comes down around Poplar Island.
-BERNIE JEBSON, Project Manager, Fraser River Pile and Dredge
Allen Domaas worked for the Fraser River Harbour Commission—the authority responsible for managing the New Westminster waterfront land. Prior to the 1970s, he recalls that there were three public wharves designed to support waterfront work, like fishing. As use of the waterfront began to change, the Harbour Commission began to collect lease fees to use these public docks, which were previously open to public use, at any time.