Glade Cable Ferry

The Glade ferry waits at a landing on Highway 3A, 22.5 kilometres west of Nelson, and crosses the Kootenay River when traffic comes down to it. There is no timetable to learn. The service runs on demand, leaving Glade from 5:00 a.m. to 2:15 a.m. and leaving the highway side from 5:05 a.m. to 2:20 a.m. The trip takes about three minutes. It costs nothing, because the province’s inland ferries are free to users and run under private contract with the Ministry of Transportation and Transit. Western Pacific Marine operates this one. Weather can cancel the service, and the operator sends travellers to DriveBC for current conditions. Three highway cameras watch the terminal, facing north, east and west.

The vessel is the Glade II. By the provincial figures it carries 10 vehicles and 48 passengers, with a maximum load of 63,500 kilograms. Western Pacific Marine gives different numbers:

• eight regular sedans at most
• a load width of 15 feet 6 inches
• 90 feet from front tire to rear
• a weight limit of 110,789.75 kilograms, which weather or the river current may lower

The province said that when the new ferries lay at the dock in off-peak hours they would draw power from on-board batteries. That would quiet the terminal and cut emissions.

Ramps, bicycles and horses

The operator warns that the angle where the ferry ramp meets the shore ramp can trouble low cars and long rigs such as fifth wheels, motor homes and long trailers. Mobile homes may have difficulty loading from the highway side because of a 90-degree turn. Smoking is not allowed aboard. Foot passengers and cyclists wait in signed areas, and bicycles are walked on and off. Horses are led on and off, and the deck may be slippery.

In the fiscal year before January 2018, the province counted more than 141,000 vehicles and more than 191,000 passengers on this crossing. That month Claire Trevena, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, said the new ferry would let West Kootenay residents “get groceries, attend medical appointments and access other important services when they need to.”

Plodorodnoye on the south bank

Glade lies halfway between Nelson and Castlegar. The Glade Watershed Protection Society keeps the community’s history on its website. It says the place has no amenities beyond a community hall with a children’s playground, and that “a quick ride over the ferry though and you can find what you want.”

The Glade store stands on the north side of the river. On the south side, narrow roads run past organic farms, hobby farms and a growing number of horses, on properties of an acre and a half to five acres or more. Two trails are popular for walking and biking: the Skattebo Trail at the south end and the Ward Ferry Trail at the north end. With Glade Road, they form part of the TransCanada Trail here. There is a beach at the north end and a boat wharf at Campbell’s Landing.

Peter Lordly Verigin bought the land in 1909 for a Doukhobor settlement. By 1911–1912, eleven villages had been built for about 1,200 people. Each had two communal doms, individual residences, a barn, a bath house and gardens. The community also had:

• orchards
• a sawmill and a flour mill
• a linseed oil press
• a blacksmith shop
• a cemetery still used today
• a general store across the river

Its fruit went to the jam factory at Brilliant.

Glade entered the CPR timetable on June 4, 1911, as a stop on the north side. The settlement across the water was Dolina Plodorodnaya, “fertile valley,” later shortened to Plodorodnoye. The Russian name fell away, and Glade came to mean the south bank. A post office was announced for Glade in 1942 but never opened. Greg Nesteroff wrote in the Nelson Star in 2014: “Glade remains a distinctive residential community by virtue of its cable ferry.”

Eleven years without a ferry

The first crossing was a reaction ferry, driven by the river’s current. A photograph the society dates to about 1925 shows the Glade ferry with doms and orchards behind it. After the Brilliant Dam went in, the current was too weak to move it. For 11 years, by the society’s account, the only way to Glade was by private barge and tugboat, log raft or rowboat. A cable ferry was installed in 1955.

That boat held about 10 cars, or one logging truck and a couple of cars. The Ministry of Transportation did not allow regular industrial traffic on it.

Men born in Glade worked the crossing. Alex Koorbatoff, born there in 1930, worked on the Glade Ferry in his younger years before he apprenticed as a draftsman and land surveyor. Alex Sherstobitoff, born there in 1929, logged and worked at dams around the Kootenays. Then, in his family’s words, he “found his niche at the Glade ferry until his retirement.” His grandchildren went inside the ferry cabin to visit him.

Glade II and the logging trucks

In 2016 Waterbridge Steel of Nakusp won a $27.9-million contract to design and build four new cable ferries for the province’s inland routes. The province put the work at about 30 jobs over four years, most of them in Nakusp. Capilano Maritime Design Ltd. is credited as designer of Glade II and its sister vessel, Adams Lake II, with Waterbridge as fabricator. Capilano’s announcement said Glade II “made her first splash” in “the cold waters of the Kootenay River.”

Sources differ slightly on when the new ferry took over:

• On January 16, 2018, the province reported the vessel in final testing on site, with service to begin at the start of February.
• Kootenay Business placed the launch in January or February.
• The watershed society says the government replaced the old ferry in March 2018.

It was the second of the four new ferries to enter service.

The society noted that the new ferry fits one car more than the old one, and that the ministry now lets logging trucks and other industrial traffic aboard. It also reported the landings being rebuilt so that larger trucks and trailers could load at high and low water. The same page shows a “Glade Ferry” crafted in wood by a resident, R. Bartlett.