I never imagined I would find myself working at BC Ferries, but sometimes life takes you somewhere unexpected and you discover it’s exactly where you needed to be.

For 25 years, I worked for myself in the coaching and wellness industry as a kickboxing coach, life coach, yoga instructor and yoga therapist. I also ran a martial arts and taekwondo school with more than 250 families. Then COVID hit, my business was forced to close, and I was devastated.

Quite a few of my clients worked at BC Ferries, and they kept encouraging me to apply. “Rebecca, you should come work with us. You’re already like part of our extended family.” When an opportunity came up, I applied, and voilà!

I trained at Duke Point, Departure Bay and Nanaimo Harbour, which became my point of assembly. Some of the women I’d known for years were working there and walking into that familiar community made me feel like I was getting a piece of my life back.

That was five years ago. Since then, I’ve become a SEA trainer, taken on the role of site safety secretary, completed my union training and become actively involved in my workplace. I absolutely love it. I get to connect with people every day and feel like I’m making a difference in my community.

Working downtown at Nanaimo Harbour, we meet people on some of the best and worst days of their lives. We see passengers dealing with mental health challenges, addiction, financial stress, relationship difficulties and countless things we may never know about.

It takes a certain kind of person to work with the public. One thing I wish passengers understood is that we’re people too. We genuinely do our best to make their travel go smoothly, but we can’t control everything that happens in their day. When people are stressed or expectations aren’t met, they sometimes react poorly.

I understand that. But I often think that if you met that same employee in the grocery store, you’d probably be standing in line having a laugh together. We’re all just people trying to get through our day.

A couple of years ago, I started keeping little cards in my ticket booth. I call them compassion cards. I designed them myself, each with a short message of kindness or encouragement. I make a point of asking passengers how their day is going. Sometimes they’re having a wonderful day, and sometimes they’re sitting in the driver’s seat barely holding themselves together. When I sense someone is having a particularly difficult day, I hand them a card.

I can’t tell you how many people have returned the next day, the following week, or even parked their car and walked straight back to the booth to tell me, “You have no idea how much I needed this today.”

Those cards took me maybe half an hour to make, sitting on my couch one evening with my dogs. Something so small has meant so much to the people receiving them.

That’s what I love about kindness. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to make cards. Sometimes a genuine smile, a little patience or taking an extra moment to listen can mean just as much.

Life doesn’t stop when we’re struggling. We still have to buy groceries, get into the ferry lineup and find our way home after a difficult day. Sometimes we just need someone to hold a little space for us.

That same belief is really where ANCHOR began. When my business closed during COVID, I struggled to navigate the services and resources I needed. I remember thinking that I was educated, had a support network and was fortunate in many ways, yet I was still having difficulty figuring out where to turn. If I was struggling to find help, how was someone in crisis supposed to manage it?

Then, a couple of years ago, I lost a friend who had been dealing with a health issue similar to my own. She had gone to the emergency room and died. She didn’t have a family doctor or access to the same care and support network I had. Her death affected me deeply. The next day, I decided I was going to do something about it. I wanted to create something people could keep on their phones to help them find support when life became difficult. So I did.

I spent the next two years creating ANCHOR. There are so many valuable services across British Columbia, but finding them isn’t always easy. Information is scattered across different organizations, websites and systems are fragmented. When someone is overwhelmed or in crisis, trying to piece everything together can feel impossible. ANCHOR brings trusted resources together in one accessible place. My hope is that people have it on their phones long before they ever need it.

Through our partnership with the BC Ferry & Marine Workers’ Union, members and their families also have access to a dedicated pathway with practical tools for everyday life, from recognizing when a coworker is struggling and supporting a friend to creating safety plans, managing stress and navigating financial challenges. These are skills we can all learn, particularly in workplaces like ours, where people can carry enormous amounts of stress without always knowing how to express it or where to turn.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned, both through coaching and my time at BC Ferries, is that we often underestimate how much the little things matter. Helping someone doesn’t always require a grand gesture. It might be asking a coworker how they’re doing and genuinely listening, showing a little extra patience with a passenger, or knowing where to direct someone who needs support.

We never really know what another person is carrying into their day. The frustrated passenger might be heading to a hospital. The unusually quiet coworker might be struggling at home. The person who appears to have everything together might be having the hardest time of all.
If we could approach one another with the understanding that we’re all human and simply trying to do the best we can with the day we’ve been given, I think we’d find it a little easier to be kind.

When I reflect on the past five years, from losing my business to finding a new community at BC Ferries and eventually creating ANCHOR, I keep coming back to those little compassion cards sitting in my ticket booth.

You don’t have to change someone’s whole life to make a difference in it. Sometimes you just have to make one difficult moment a little easier.

Little things really can make a big difference.

Rebecca Stephens, Local 2

I never really planned to spend my career at BC Ferries.

I grew up in Nelson and moved to the coast when I was 18. We had visited Vancouver Island when I was younger, and I always liked riding the ferry. The whole process of going to the terminal and getting on the ship was exciting to me. I wasn’t used to the ocean. It looked different, smelled different. I thought it would be a fun place to work.

I applied to work at the terminal, but BC Ferries told me they were only hiring in catering and I didn’t have any catering experience.

So I went out and got some. Within a couple of days, I got hired as a prep chef at a new restaurant. I knew nothing about cooking and had no business getting that job, but I worked there for a little while, reapplied to BC Ferries and got hired in catering in February 1989.

My plan was to work at the ferries until I figured out what I wanted to do. Nearly 38 years later, here we are.

I eventually made it to the terminal, which was where I had wanted to be all along. I loved working with the public, even though they can sometimes be challenging.

I learned pretty early that most people can deal with bad news if you tell them what’s going on. When you’re loading a full ferry, people get anxious. They don’t know if they’re getting on. They don’t know why traffic has stopped. I learned that if you walked up to the first few cars and explained what was happening, people calmed down.

That became a bit of a philosophy for me.  Information matters. Communication matters. Transparency matters.

I became a shop steward when I was very young and still a casual. In those days, casuals were treated very differently. Your seniority was based on days worked. If you were sick, injured, on maternity leave or on vacation, you weren’t building seniority, so you didn’t take time off.

I fought to change that system. Eventually we moved to date-of-hire seniority. The funny part is the change took effect the same day I went regular, so I never benefited from it. But that wasn’t the point. It made things better for the people who came up after me.

Being a shop steward taught me more about life, and about myself, than almost anything else I’ve done. I loved the challenge of it. When I represented a member, I was always thinking: How do I win this argument? How do I make this situation better for this person?

One case stayed with me. There was a woman I worked with who had been off for almost six months with serious health problems. She could not afford to lose any income at all and needed to complete six days at work before she could qualify again for short-term illness benefits.

She was a ticket agent and had problems with her knees. She could do the job, but she couldn’t physically carry the weight of the cash from the cash-up room all the way out to the ticket booth. She tried driving her own car out there and was told she couldn’t.

She called me and asked what to do. All I could think was: I’ve got to get her through these six days. The terminal had a little electric vehicle that management used. We called it the bubble car. I met with the manager and asked if she could use it. He said he couldn’t commit to that long term. So I asked him to commit to a trial period. He asked how long. I said, “Just a shift.” A shift was eight days.

For years afterward, every time I saw her, I got a big hug and a smile. It seems like such a small thing when you put it down on paper, but it wasn’t small to her.

Over the years I also ran businesses outside BC Ferries, worked in finance and supply chain, and eventually became secretary-treasurer of the union. Treasurer was never something I particularly wanted to be. But I discovered I liked the challenge of it too.

The biggest thing I tell our local secretary-treasurers is that transparency is the best tool you have. If somebody says something wasn’t done properly, you should be able to pull out the paperwork and show exactly what happened. Rumours stop quickly when people can see the facts.

My job is also to make sure our treasurers feel supported. If they’re successful, their locals are successful. It all comes back to the same thing I learned loading ferries years ago. Give people information. Communicate with them. Be transparent.

I’m hugely invested in this union. I love it. I want the next generation to keep building its strength and holding people accountable. The union is different than it was when I was younger, but having a strong voice and sticking together still matters.

Mike Nelson, Secretary-Treasurer, BCFMWU

About a year and a half ago, I almost lost my life.

My girlfriend and I were driving home from a camping trip when we hit a thick fog bank just outside Hope. Our vehicle rolled three times and I was partially ejected. I woke up two days later from an induced coma, concussed with more than two dozen broken bones including my neck and spine, internal injuries, partial paralysis and severe internal bleeding.

That experience changed everything.

Today, I’m back on deck, and every time I check emergency equipment or take part in training, I know exactly why it matters. I don’t want anyone to ever end up like me.

I joined BC Ferries 10 years ago after trying to become a firefighter. It’s a very competitive career, and a friend who had recently been hired at BC Ferries suggested I give the marine industry a try. I sold my car to pay for my marine emergency training courses and rode my bike everywhere until I finished them. Luckily, I got an interview, and I started with BC Ferries in April 2016.

I began on Salt Spring Island, where I learned the ropes aboard the Queen of Nanaimo, the Howe Sound Queen and the Skeena Queen. Looking back, those years taught me skills that I still use today.

One thing I wish the public knew is that deckhands do much more than load cars. People see us directing traffic on the vehicle deck, but behind the scenes we’re constantly training, maintaining emergency equipment and ensuring that the ship is ready to respond if something goes wrong.

One lesson has always stayed with me. You don’t rise to the level of your adrenaline. You fall to the level of your training. It’s important to do the work before an emergency happens. We train so we can respond quickly, and we maintain the ship’s emergency systems so they’ll work when people need them most.

About a year and a half ago, that lesson became deeply personal.

Recovering from the accident was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I spent months rebuilding my strength and learning to walk again. I pushed myself in the gym for hours every day because I had one goal in mind: Doing right by the people who count on me.

When things got difficult, I pictured the ship I work on and the people I work with. I imagined what I would do if the ship was on fire or someone needed help. That helped me push one more mile on a run or lift and drag 10 more pounds than I thought I could.

Today, I’m in even better physical shape than I was before the accident. I don’t think I would have made it without my girlfriend – who had my back while recovering from her own serious nervous and physical injuries, and her mother – who opened her home to us when we had nowhere else to go. They both also work for BC Ferries, and the love and support they gave me made all the difference. I decided not to give up on myself, but more importantly, not to give up on them because they weren’t going to give up on me.

Coming back to work has been emotional. Physically, I was ready. Mentally, it took longer.

“This little painting is a gift to the crew and all the people who believed in me and cheered me on. It hangs in the mess now.”

A lot of people don’t know how to respond when someone has been through something like that. I understand it comes from a good place. I’m always happy to talk about what happened because I think it helps remove some of the stigma around asking those questions.

More than anything, my experience has reinforced why this work matters. I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through. If something happens on board, I want us to be ready. It’s easy to become complacent, but emergencies don’t happen because of one big mistake. They happen when lots of little mistakes stack up.

If somebody doesn’t stow a fire hose properly and there’s a fire, those lost minutes matter.

That’s why I tell people to take care of the vessel. If you take care of your vessel, it’ll take care of you.

Take care of the ship. Take care of your body. Take care of your mind. Take care of each other. If you see someone struggling, don’t be afraid to ask how they’re doing. Instead of gossiping, try to connect. Have each other’s backs.

That’s the kind of crew I want to be part of, and it’s why I’m proud to be back on deck.

Yegor Ludmilin, Local 3 – Tsawwassen

I was booted out of my home by the war. That’s not how I imagined my story would begin, or how I imagined I’d end up in Canada.

Before coming here, I spent 16 years working on container ships. When it was time to start over with my family, I had options. I received job offers from multiple marine employers across Canada, but BC Ferries was always at the top of my list. I wanted work that would let me be close to my family, help them settle, and be present while we built a new life.

What I found here was something different from deep-sea shipping. The work is different, the pace is different, and the cargo is different too. I always joke that passengers are cargo that talks. People can have bad days. They can be frustrated, upset, or angry about things that are completely outside our control. But I’ve found that when I take the time to really talk to them, most situations change quickly. When I can calm someone down, comfort them, help them feel heard and respected and then see them walk away smiling or shaking my hand, it gives me real joy. That’s something I look forward to every day.

One of the biggest reasons I keep coming back is the crew. We had a perfect crew in Tsawwassen, and we have a wonderful crew up north. When you live and work together for two weeks at a time, those relationships matter. People become more than coworkers, they become friends. Sometimes they feel like family. And when things go wrong, that bond matters even more.

Last January we had a young passenger go overboard. It was freezing and she spent around 40 minutes in the water before we got to her. That day, our crew had to think beyond the training manual. Emergency situations never go by the book. We acted creatively, we worked together. I was standing on the side of the vessel, using a boat hook to keep her away from the spinning propeller while the crew got the rescue boat ready and we managed to save her. I’ve heard she’s doing well. That’s something I’ll always be proud of.

My journey here hasn’t just been about work. It’s been about building a life. My family is safe here. My kids are happy here. Recently, we completed our immigration process and became permanent residents of Canada. I’m deeply grateful for being welcomed and given that opportunity.

I’m grateful also to the people who believed in me when I was struggling, including SOC Vice President Andrew Conley, who pushed me to take my shop steward course and get involved in the union. He saw something in me before I saw it myself. And there were captains who stood by me when I needed support most. I’m here. I’m successful at my work. I’m successful in my immigration journey. My family is safe. A lot of that happened because people gave me a chance when I needed one. I’ll never forget that.

Ihor Usenko, first vice-president Local 15.

A friend of mine had worked at BC Ferries for years as a deckhand. He told me they were always looking for people and said I should apply. So I went out and took all the courses I needed. I went to a job fair and told the BC Ferries staff there I wanted to be a deckhand. They started listing all the certificates I’d need, and I slid mine across the table and said, “I’ve taken them already.”

They gave me a recruiter’s number and told me to call the next day. When I did, they said they could probably get me into the terminal. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned, but I really enjoyed my time working terminal. It was a great group of people and every day was different. You got to interact with the public and work with a strong team. The only reason I moved to the boats was because I was only getting a shift or two a month at the time and I had a mortgage to pay.

These days I work in the engine room.

One thing people might not know is how much happens behind the scenes to keep the ferries running. When people ask what we do on graveyard shifts, they’re often surprised. They assume the boat is just sitting there, but that’s when a lot of the work happens.

We’re bringing fuel on board, pumping sewage ashore and doing maintenance on engines that have been running all day and finally get a chance to be shut down. A lot of that work has to be done in a five or six-hour window while the vessel is docked. When the crew arrives in the morning, the boat is ready to go. Most people never see what it took overnight to make that happen.

When people do get the chance to walk through the engine room, they’re shocked by the size of everything. The engines are the size of a small school bus. From upstairs, it’s easy to forget what’s underneath you.

This job teaches you how important it is to stay alert. I remember a situation where one of the guys doing his rounds noticed a small fuel spill that hadn’t been there earlier. It’s the kind of thing you only catch if you’re paying attention, if you know the space and what’s normal. We dealt with it right away, but it’s a good example of why our checks matter. There are a lot of systems running on board and catching things early is a big part of keeping passengers safe.

One of the challenges of the job is working with a constantly changing crew. I change start times every couple of days and often work with newer employees, so a big part of the job becomes teaching. If someone hasn’t done a task before, then it’s a learning day. I’ll show them how to do it so next time they can handle it themselves. Eventually, they can teach the next person.

That’s how I learned when I started. On my very first shift, Eric McNeely walked me around the engine room and showed me what he did and how everything worked. He basically went through it piece by piece and said, “This is what I do.”

At the time you’re just trying to take it all in. Later, once you’ve been doing the job for a while, you realize the order he showed things in makes sense. Eric’s our president now, but back then he was the one showing the new guy around the engine room on day one.

Now that I’ve been here longer, I try to pass that knowledge along whenever I can.

I stay involved in the union as a shop steward and the second vice-president of Local 2. I also sit on several site safety committees and our local grievance and convention resolution committees.

Last year I also helped organize the Golf for Graeme tournament, in memory of Second Officer Graeme Barnes, which supports a scholarship in his name to help students pursuing marine careers. We raised nearly $13,500 in under two years. In a close-knit industry like ours, losses are felt deeply. Events like Golf for Graeme are also about reminding each other that mental health matters and that none of us are alone.

Long shifts, changing schedules and time away from family can take a toll. It’s not always something people talk about but sometimes people are going through a lot and nobody realizes it. That’s why it’s important to look out for each other.

Alex Yates, ERR on Watch 9, Nanaimo