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Aidan Brame spent Monday night curled up in her Toyota Rav4, parked at the Tsawwassen ferry terminal with her husband, 20-year-old daughter, and two Labrador retrievers.
She passed the hours with little sleep and no bathroom access, unsure when she’d be able to return home to Nanaimo.
“There were vehicles parked all the way down the highway toward Tsawwassen, it was unreal,” she said.
They were just some of the thousands of passengers left stranded by the more than 75 B.C. Ferries cancellations on Monday between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver island.
Camping out overnight was a last resort to get home, Brame said, on the advice of one B.C. Ferries worker.
The wind storm on Monday afternoon that caused B.C. Ferries to cancel almost all sailings between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island came at the peak of the holiday travel season – leaving the fate of many passengers and their travel plans uncertain.
B.C. Ferries issued an alert on its website Tuesday morning advising potential passengers that anyone without a reservation can expect long waits throughout the day. By mid-day, many routes were full until the evening.
Aidan Brame and her two labrador retrievers. (Provided by Aidan Brame)
In a statement, spokesperson Akriti Tyagi said that due to the cancellations, a large number of people are trying to travel on top of those with existing reservations.
“Today is one of the busiest travel days of the holiday period, and sailings were already heavily booked before yesterday’s cancellations,” she wrote.
“We appreciate customers’ patience as our teams work to support them.”
Challenges with B.C. Ferries spark frustration
Three people who spoke with CBC News said they were not alerted by B.C. Ferries that their ferry reservation for Monday was cancelled. Instead, notice came from the news or highway signs on their way to the terminal.
Trish Fougher, a resident of Saanich, B.C., who was booked on a Monday sailing at 3 p.m., heard about the cancellation over the radio while she was on her way to the ferry.
“We’ve traveled lots on the ferries and when there’s something up, we usually get an e-mail,” she said. “There was nothing.”
Passengers looking to book a reservation on December 22, 2025 following ferry cancellations waited for hours on the B.C. Ferries booking page, trying to secure a new spot. (Submitted by Michelle Kirby)
Fougher never heard back on her reservation from B.C. Ferries, but managed to get a new early-morning reservation for Tuesday, after spending hours on the online booking site.
Other passengers said they have not been refunded for cancelled reservations yet. They also described their frustration reaching error pages after spending hours on the online waitlist for ferry bookings, and being unable to reach customer service agents.
B.C. Ferries said that by the mid-afternoon on Monday, the booking page had been restored and its customer service team was working to call everyone back. The company also said it rebooked the “vast majority” of people who reached out about cancellations.
Tyagi wrote that passengers whose reservations were cancelled “were refunded automatically.”
‘An absolutely brutal night’
After a night of little sleep, Brame and her family caught the 5:15 a.m. ferry on Tuesday morning back to Nanaimo.
As her car rolled onto the ferry, she said she felt relief as her anxieties about getting home lifted.
“In hindsight, although it was an absolutely brutal night, I’m glad we did it,” Brame said.
“I’m sure there’s still thousands of displaced people.”
She wishes B.C. Ferries had reached out to alert her directly that her reservation was cancelled, and that there was priority in rebooking for locals or people traveling for essential reasons like medical appointments.
While camping out in the car overnight, Brame said she and her husband decided ferry sailings were a battle they no longer wanted to fight.
“On the island, [we’re] relying on a ferry system that is extortionately expensive and continues to just continue to go up in price, and that’s not reliable…we want to move,” she said.
“So we’re going to be listing our house in the spring, and this all contributes to that.”