Blog 2!

I will be spending this summer wandering the docks of the Port of Nanaimo, as a wharfinger for the Nanaimo Port Authority. Despite popular belief the Port of Nanaimo is not a government operated business. We operate under the umbrella of Transport Canada, but as an independent operator, so no...people who come into the office do not actually pay my wages and they don’t have a constitutional right to be mean. The Port is a fairly large organization that consists of roughly 8 wharfingers, 4 maintenance staff, about 4-6 harbour boat patrol people, and about 10 more people in the main office who range from secretaries, to accountants, to the harbour master. Initially I thought that this seemed to be a large amount of people at work, but once I actually realized how many different areas and locations that the Port of Nanaimo is responsible for the number of people justified itself. We deal mainly with transient boaters, most of whom (I have heard of a percentile around the 80% mark) are American boaters. We also have a commercial base, some local boaters who moor in the harbour annually, and the rough number says that roughly 450,000 people walk the boardwalk each year.