There was little reaction to the close of the river ferry era. It was hardly noticed by anyone at all, which caught the notice of local historian Trelle Morrow.
At the start of the 20th century, there were frequent places to cross the Fraser River and other main waterways of the region, but as the highway and railway systems developed, and personal watercraft became easily attainable, the need for the inland swiftwater ferry - called the reaction ferry - gently slipped downstream into the silty foam of time.
Morrow threw a rope to memory of the reaction ferry, or perhaps it was a cable. That was the simple machinery that anchored these fording boats. He has recently released the second edition of his book Silent Passage that tells this region's chapter of the reaction ferry story.
Reaction ferries were large barges mounted on pontoons.
Their route was affixed to overhead cables. They did not need a motor, because their wheelhouse "reacted" to the force of the river's current and pulled the barge's cables back and forth across the watery span.
According to Morrow's research, and that of B.C. historian Frank Clapp, there were approximately 75 reaction ferry sites in the province, starting from the late 1800s, peaking in the 1910 vicinity, and waning heavily by the 1960s as bridges took their place, although five sites were still in operation as of 2016 (Usk, Big Bar, Lytton, Little Fort and McClure).
Morrow found that the many ferries along the Skeena, Nechako, Fraser and Thompson rivers had importance to the Prince George area, mostly for hauling cargo, natural resources, vehicles and larger groups of people.
Canoes and freestanding boats took small amounts but couldn't handle the big loads that reaction ferries were capable of.
"Isle Pierre was the main reaction ferry in what you'd call the immediate Prince George area," he said. "It was a very important part of the transportation infrastructure of the area because of the agriculture going on in the Vanderhoof area. It was farther ahead than Prince George's agriculture industry, they had farming equipment sales and auctions and such that the Prince George area did not, at that time, so a connection between Prince George and Vanderhoof was really important to the people on the north side of the Nechako, especially."
There was another one in the Miworth area and another not far from where the Cameron Street Bridge now crosses within the city bounds of Prince George.
Also critical to the development of the area's economy were the ferries a little further upstream.
The Fraser River headwaters had no highway access to the Central Interior and the rail line followed the north side of the shoreline and, for most of the 20th century, had no connection to the south. The river was the one and only commercial-scale travel route.
"Robson Valley, Croyden, Crescent Spur, Dunster, those were important spots for their ferry crossings," Morrow said. "There was good farming ground on both sides of the river. There were enough people to warrant schools and stores. There were no sternwheelers going up the Fraser very far past Prince George, and you obviously couldn't have a reaction ferry if a ship was going to cut across the cables, so those were the only way to get back and forth from side to side."
Many of these ferries were situated by the provincial government was part of the formal road system. Others were installed and operated by private interests, mostly as part of logging operations. The Leboe forestry family was one such private operator, as was Bill Arnold in the McBride area.
"It was easy to build the things, they were cheap, too, because they didn't have engines, but it was tricky to learn how to operate them," Morrow said. "You had to know how to read the currents and gauge momentum and so on. Ted Brown (one of the reaction ferry pilots he interviewed for the book) said he had to have extensive training before he was given control by himself. He told me it was all of about two hours of instruction."
The Isle Pierre ferry ceased operation in 1982. If you drive to the Nechako shoreline on Isle Pierre Road, the physical hints of this one-time critical link are still clearly evident. The remnants most familiar to local residents, because it is in clear view of Highway 97 just south of Quesnel is the Marguerite site. That reaction ferry closed in 2002 when improvements were made to the road connecting the communities on the west side of the river. Quesnel bridge access is now their only crossing point.
Silent Passage is the latest in a long string of books written by Morrow, all of them focused on Prince George's history and much of that pertains to the way people moved.
"I don't know why it is but I have fallen into various phases of the transportation industry," said Morrow, an architect by trade and an area resident since 1954.
"That was not by plan or design, but I spot things that impact people, and human movement in a developing area is awfully important. I wrote the Cateline pack train story, the sternwheeler story, a book on the trains, then I got interested in the reaction ferries. All were major phases of our area's modern development."
Silent Passage can be found, along with other Morrow titles, at Books & Company and the CNC Bookstore.
