Inside Vancouver
Sail On
By Todd Parker published Jul 1, 2009
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With moorage fees rising, 2010 coming, and the local area booming, False Creek has no place for maritime squatters
Brian Sereda, 58, has lived on his boat for almost 20 years, most of them at False Creek. The wrinkles that radiate from his eyes are hard and deep; his smile is almost toothless. "Back then," he says of his early days as a live-aboard, "I could walk everywhere. It was easy to pick up fresh food, or beer. I could walk to VGH in 10 minutes if I needed help."
Born in Winnipeg, Sereda was raised in Thompson, Manitoba, by an "alcoholic and gamble-holic" father who was once shot in a dispute over a card game. Sereda dropped out of high school to help support the family (he has seven brothers and sisters) before a stint peddling dope in Winnipeg. A run-in with law enforcement scared him straight, and he spent the next two decades wandering across the Prairies from one town to another, much of that time living in the cramped confines of a fifth-wheel trailer. Expo 86 brought him to Vancouver.
After working as a labourer and saving his money for several years, he bought the 40-foot boat he still calls home. The boat, light blue, is long and low, the deck and roof flat; it looks not unlike the houseboats that churn around Shuswap Lake in summer.
Injured numerous times on construction sites, Sereda now scrapes by on a meagre pension and odd jobs; these days he keeps his boat tied to a decrepit dock up the muddy Fraser, at Shelter Island, 10 kilometres from the ocean. This is a working river-tugs and barges ride or fight the current, serving the dozens of warehouses and industrial facilities that line its banks. It's not a setting he loves. "Now I have to take three buses just to shop in Whalley," he says, over a pint at Tidewaters Pub under the soaring span of the Alex Fraser Bridge in the no-man's-land between Delta and Surrey. "I hate Whalley."
Sereda looks back on his stay at False Creek with fondness: neighbours looked after each other, shared meals, drank together. During the early years, he felt unfettered. The Canada Shipping Act gave jurisdiction to the Vancouver Port Authority. The act allowed boaters to anchor in False Creek as long as they didn't present a hazard to marine traffic, but it provided no enforceable restrictions. Not that it mattered much-the port authority had neither the resources nor the inclination to police the creek, which had ceased being an active port many years earlier.
But restrictions were looming. For a while, about 40 live-aboards banded together to form the False Creek Anchoring Out Society to fight back. Over the years the creek had grown busier as condos and marinas sprang up, attracting recreational boaters. One summer Sunday in 2001, more than 1,200 vessels were counted entering or leaving; as many as 60 anchored in False Creek. There was no way to know how many of them had been abandoned or who to contact if one went adrift. At public consultations, respondents equated the live-aboard situation at False Creek to unlimited camping in city parks.
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about 40 live-aboards banded together to form the False Creek Anchoring Out Society to fight back. One summer Sunday in 2001, more than 1,200 vessels were counted entering or leaving; as many as 60 anchored in False Creek.
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Really? Les Faux Bourgeois? submit free articles I was actually super-disappointed with them. Maybe it was an off night, but the service wasn't great, there was blood on my bread plate, and the food was only okay.
I just read Todds' article and wanted to comment. I've have been a liveaboard for just a year and spoken to many travelers who have arrived in Vancouver via their boats. The most frequent comment I here from them is that "Vancouver is the most boater unfriendly city in the world" BAR NONE! If you spout that line about Vancouver being a "world class destination" don't be surprised if you hear laughing. Most visitor's I've talked to have cut there visits short and left stating they won't be making any plans to come back.
