LYALL HARBOUR -- When neat computer-generated models beloved of corporate efficiency experts encounter the genuine needs of real people, it generally isn’t a pretty sight.

And it was anything but pretty Monday night on Saturna Island.

About 250 of the island’s 300 inhabitants showed up at the recreation centre. The meeting had to be moved from the community hall because the building was too small. They were there to tell a team of BC Ferries managers what they thought of plans to revamp ferry schedules to increase the operational efficiency of a couple of new ferries.

“Not much,” said farmers, contractors, pub owners, lodge managers, preachers, vintners, chefs, shop keepers, mechanics, butchers, school superintendents, musicians, nurses, firefighters, garbage truck operators, retirees and people who have lived on the island so long they actually remember life before BC Ferries showed up with its “We’re experts and we’re here to help” mantra.

Disclosure: I lived on Saturna several decades ago – my daughter still owns the single share acquired as a kid to help capitalize the community general store – and I like the island and its colorful and fiercely independent inhabitants.

Under BC Ferries' plan, intended to “balance demand and capacity with operating efficiencies” (translation: accommodate two expensive new ferries that will enter service in the southern Gulf Islands in 2017), sailing schedules must be revised. Under the proposed schedule, Saturna is to be decoupled from the other Gulf Islands and “paired” with Galiano.

This pairing will sink Saturna’s connection to adjacent islands, residents say.

Imagine TransLink making a case for maximizing use of Port Mann Bridge by forcing people in Richmond who need to do business in Surrey to get there via North Vancouver.

And shortened time between key daytime sailings connecting Saturna and Vancouver Island, the main supply centre for off shore communities, would shrink the window for completing business from difficult to near impossible, residents say.

The ferry bureaucrats assured everyone these “tweaks” are only suggestions. Clearly, the community fears they are a fait accompli and such public meetings, ostensibly to obtain feedback, are tinsel and sham permitting BC Ferries to assure the Ferry Commissioner the public has been consulted.

John Gaines, a no-nonsense contractor with 45 years on the island, said his operations were built around the hub system connecting Mayne, Pender and Saturna. An arbitrary “pairing” with Galiano would mean “we lose all of that contact. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Gaines said under the new schedule time available off island during the business day was so tight that to complete transactions, he would either have to make an extra trip each week or have truck drivers wait for the next ferry, adding five hours to wages, most of it for waiting in a line-up.

“You are not just hurting this community, you are killing it,” he said.

Tom Campbell operates the oldest licensed abattoir in the Southern Gulf Islands, enabling 10 farms on Mayne, Pender and other islands to survive. He said it was a critical service because it minimized the distance livestock had to be transported to slaughter and enabled timely inspection.

Storekeeper Priscilla Ewbank said the changes in scheduling and the routing of traffic through Galiano would render her operations economically non-viable and that closing her general store would remove 16 jobs and $276,000 a year in annual wages from a small community.

John Money said he had lived on the island for 70 years, that his main business contract with B.C. Hydro would be unserviceable and that his heavy equipment would be trapped by a Catch-22 requiring him to have it weighed at Swartz Bay before it could disembark at Galiano but requiring him to go through Galiano so he could get it to Swartz Bay to be weighed.

“This new schedule will finish me,” Money said.

And so it went.

Finally, Eva Hage, head of the Saturna Island Ratepayers and Residents Association, offered some friendly advice to the ferry planners.

“Stop averaging. Your average customer does not live on Saturna. Come to think of it, neither does the average Canadian – you know, the one with one boob and one testicle.”

Ouch.

shume@islandnet.com