We made it! If you're currently on Vancouver Island you'll be impressed that we made it off island this snowy Sunday.
We checked into YYJ six hours early. We watched the flights cancel as the sunny day turned snowy white. Then we got our luggage back from Air Canada so as to try to make our Vancouver flight by ferry.
We caught a ride with a senior Air Canada crew member (thanks Sue!) who got us almost but not quite to the Swartz Bay ferry, the Pat Bay highway having become a parking lot. Next was a one-km trudge down the highway in a blizzard carrying luggage and dressed for southeast Asia, walking past hundreds of ferry passengers newly arrived from Tsawwassen and waiting for rides that couldn't get through the snow, a 90-minute ferry ride from Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen, a bus ride through deserted snow-covered lower mainland streets to YVR, and then, finally, into the air and onto our journey. Whew.