John Mackie June 4 2002

It looks like the end of the line for the historic Seven Seas floating restaurant in North Vancouver, which barring a last-minute legal appeal will be towed away from the foot of Lonsdale in the next week and demolished. The city of North Vancouver is paying a company belonging to former BC Ferries president Tom Ward about $260,000 to move the ship, take it apart and salvage parts of it (including its wheelhouse, funnel and neon sign) for a maritime museum. North Vancouver Councillor Bill Bell thinks this is "absolutely insane." "We're talking $260,000 for somebody to destroy a piece of heritage," said Bell. "We've got on the books a $10-million maritime museum going into the Versatile Lands [next door on the North Vancouver waterfront]. Here's a vital piece of heritage that would have cost us [almost nothing] if we had negotiated a few years ago to buy and restore it. Because we're fighting with [Seven Seas owner] Diamond Almas, we're destroying it. Yet we're spending millions of dollars on a maritime heritage museum right next door." At issue is the seaworthiness of the ship, which began its life as North Vancouver Ferry No. 5 in 1941. North Vancouver city council thinks the ship's wooden hull is rotten and in danger of sinking, Almas argues it's in fine shape and could just do with some minor repairs. North Vancouver wanted Almas to post a $150,000 bond for cleanup costs in case the boat sank. He balked, and the two have been fighting it out in court for several years. Faced with mounting court costs, Almas stopped making his lease payments on the city-owned water lot where the Seven Seas is moored, and eventually ran up more than $100,000 in back taxes and moorage. Last year the Federal Court of Appeal ordered that the ship be sold, and Ward's bid of $1,050 for the ship was accepted May 26 by the Federal Court of Appeal. Barring another appeal by Almas, it will become Ward's property, moved, and torn apart. North Vancouver Mayor Barbara Sharp said the city looked at numerous plans to save the ship, but none panned out. She said it could cost up to a million dollars to restore, and the city has other priorities. Bell pointed out the city has already spent $250,000 in legal fees fighting Almas, which brings the total including demolition to $500,000. "It's a horrendous story," he said. "One of those long stories where people become blinded because they become so bitter." Sharp defended the cost of the Seven Seas battle, because the city never imagined it would be so expensive to evict Almas and the ship. "Wouldn't it be nice to have a crystal ball?" she asked. "Wouldn't it be nice? Ten years ago, you could sit back and go if we do this, it's going to cost us a half a million dollars, what do you think we should do? "Who would have ever known that we would have so many barricades thrown up every time we tried to do something?" No one argues with the historic significance of the boat, the last ferry in existence that plied the waters of Burrard Inlet between North Vancouver and Vancouver. In 1942, three North Vancouver ferries carried seven million passengers, most of them workers at the North Vancouver shipyards building Liberty ships during the Second World War. After the North Vancouver ferry was discontinued in 1958, Almas' father bought the ship and converted it to a floating restaurant. At its height in the 1970s, the Seven Seas employed 50 people, and could serve 350 patrons. Almas, 63, has lived in a suite in the stern of the boat for the past eight years. He seems resigned to the fact the Seven Seas restaurant is history, but wishes something could be done to save the boat. "She's 61 years old," he said. "But there's still a lot of life left in the ferry. It's sad to think they're going to go to this extreme position to take her into a yard and destroy her. This is the last, there is no more. You know how it is with heritage, once it goes, it's gone, and you can never re-create that." Bell said there were other proposals that might have saved the ship and cost North Vancouver less money, including a company that wanted to convert it into a floating logging camp. But the Federal Court of Appeal rejected it for Ward's bid. jmackie@vancouversun.com