With the help of the British Columbia Ferry Authority, writer Garth Griffiths and researcher Captain H.L. Cadieux self-published Dogwood Fleet: The Story of the British Columbia Ferry Authority from 1958 (Nanaimo: Cadieux and Griffiths Ltd., 1967) as a Canadian Centennial project. Griffiths was a professional engineer and a staff manager for BC Hydro. He had previously published Boating in Canada (University of Toronto Press). Cadieux was a master mariner, photographer and the first curator of the B.C. Maritime Museum at Esquimalt. Their history of BC Ferries briefly touches upon the genesis of the provincial fleet after Premier W.A.C. Bennett, Fidel Castro-like, invoked the Civil Defence Act on June 23, 1958 to authorize his government to take possession of, and use the property of, privately-owned Black Ball Ferries Limited, thereby preventing the Black Ball employees from continuing their strike. When the employees persisted in another strike action on July 18, 1958, Bennett announced his government would commence its own ferry service between the Saanich Peninsula and the Lower Mainland. The government purchased the remaining Black Ball Ferries and their facilities in 1961 and established its own wage structure for ferry employees in February of 1962.

[BCBW 2005]