How a grounded hulk is floating everyone’s boat in Vancouver
It was a disaster in the making: fierce rains battered southwestern British Columbia, and residents of Vancouver watched in horror as a hulking barge broke free of its tethers and drifted perilously close to a bridge.
Instead, winds pushed it away, grounding it on a nearby beach.
More than a month later, and despite repeated efforts to dislodge it, the barge remains stuck.
But it has also emerged as an unlikely celebrity, placing it in the running for one of the most famous grounded vessels of the year – with the Suez canal grounding possibly beating it to top spot.
Earlier this week, Vancouver further elevated the barge’s prestige, temporarily naming the park where it lies stranded “Barge Chilling Beach”.
“No matter what storms life may send our way, we’ll always be here for you,” the park board wrote on Twitter, prompting residents to flock to the barge for photos of the new sign.
Vancouver Parks commissioner Stuart Mackinnon said the idea was inspired by a staff member and was a riff on an annual parks board Christmas card. He also explained that it is a homage to a park sign in Vancouver that simply reads “Dude Chilling Park”, the rogue creation of a local artist that was eventually adopted by the city and has been stolen multiple times.
“We thought that we could have some fun with this, and maybe even give a little bit of joy to the residents,” he said.
Removing the barge will require a feat of engineering that neither the coastguard, Transport Canada nor the owners have yet solved. A previous attempt to refloat the barge in early December, by taking advantage of strong tides, failed to dislodge it. Until a new solution emerges, residents will have to give up on the sprawling coastal vistas they once enjoyed.
“Lots of people are very upset by the barge,” said Mackinnon. “But Vancouver is a fun place with a wonderful population here, and they have just sort of taken it on as another quirky thing about the city.”
Residents have jokingly proposed converting the barge into a nightclub and given the barge its own profanityladenTwitter account. A Tripadvisor review praised the barge for its “beauty” and “grace”. A local woodcarver has designed tree ornaments in homage of
the stranded vessel. And one local company sold “Sorry to barge in” T-shirts for a disaster relief fundraiser.
In many ways, said Mackinnon, the barge, and the city’s embrace of it, has been a temporary distraction to the devastation of the province’s recent storms that displaced thousands of residents and killed hundreds of thousands of farm animals. “It’s been a tumultuous time,” said Mackinnon. “It’s small, but this is just a way for the park board to say, ‘Have some fun, have a safe holiday and be well.’”