Port Robinson ferry returns
On quiet days, Rick Giammattolla has time to get out his fishing pole while sitting in a comfortable chair along the canal bank.
It can be a laid-back job for the semi-retired man who spends the summer months at the helm of Bridge-it, the aluminium pontoon boat that carries passengers across the Welland Canal in Port Robinson.
“I do have a fishing pole. I do fish here when there are no passengers,” says Giammattolla, who retired from a career in the banking industry a few years ago.
But as the summer nears, Giammattolla suspects that his fishing pole will remain tucked away more often than not.
Despite a rainy start to the season on Saturday, about 20 passengers climbed aboard Bridge-it for the first ferry rides of the season.
And Sunday, cyclists arrived by the dozens to enjoy the free ride across the waterway.
On a typical day, Giammattolla says, as many as 75 passengers will cross the canal aboard Bridge-it, and as many as 150 per day on weekends. About 80 per cent of them are cyclists.
The ferry service — it began in 1977 to replace the Port Robinson lift bridge that was reduced to a pile of twisted metal in a collision with the Steelton cargo ship three years earlier — has become an integral part of cycling along Niagara’s trails over the decades, drawing cyclists from throughout the region.
“We’ve had days where there have been well over 300, the day the Freewheelers had a Bridge-it promotional day, and all of their riders and friends were encouraged to come down and go for a ride. We had 336 (passengers) that day,” Giammattolla says, referring to the St. Catharinesbased Niagara Freewheelers Bicycle Touring Club.
The ferry’s fame has reached beyond Niagara’s borders, attracting a growing number of people from other parts of the province.
Giammattolla recalls crossing the canal with a cyclist from Ottawa last summer, who told him he travelled to Niagara specifically to experience the ferry ride.
Meanwhile, shops on the far side of the canal have started posting advertisements beside Bridge-it’s dock hoping to lure customers over for an ice-cream cone or a cold beer, leveraging the fame of the only active ferry service on the canal.
Giammattolla suspects in addition to the increasing number of cyclists using the ferry, there might soon be an increase in local users, too — a result of huge residential development, a little more than a kilometre away.
Services and roads have been added to the Empire Legacy subdivision, and the first of more than 1,000 townhouses and single-detached homes planned for the site have been built.
In years to come, when people start moving in to those homes, “you’re going to need a bigger boat,” Giammattolla says, snagging a famous line from “Jaws.”
It’s Giammattolla’s second season at the helm of Bridge-it — rides are daily 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. until the end of August, and then 9 a.m. until dusk throughout September and October.