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Listening to the B.C. government sing its own praises for promising to restore a northern ferry route it cut two years ago reminded me of an old Frank Sinatra joke that goes something like this:

“I’ll always be grateful to Frank Sinatra for saving my life one night,” the comedian says.

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“Four goons were beating me up in an alley until Frank said, ‘OK, boys, he’s had enough.’”

Like the comedian, the northern B.C. tourism industry is now supposed to be grateful to Premier Christy Clark for stopping her own government from beating them up.

But for the businesses hurt by the Clark government’s decision to cut the Discovery Coast ferry service in 2014, the damage to their livelihoods is no joke.

The idiotic move to cut the direct summer ferry from Port Hardy on northern Vancouver Island to Bella Coola on the province’s spectacular central coast dealt to a brutal blow to regional tourism.

The ferry was a crucial link on the popular circle-tour route taken by tourists who start their journey in Vancouver and visit Vancouver Island, the Cariboo-Chilcotin and loop back to Vancouver again.