After pulling out of Bar Harbor 13 years ago, and trying unsuccessfully the past few years to bring seasonal international ferry service back to town, Bay Ferries says it plans to accept passengers on The Cat this spring.
Starting May 19, the Canadian ferry company will offer service between Bar Harbor and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, four days a week, company officials said. Daily trips between the two ports, leaving Nova Scotia in the morning and returning at night, will increase to seven days a week in late June and then decrease to six days each week for most of September and early October.
If the ferry service does resume this summer, it will be the first time a passenger ferry has motored between Bar Harbor and Canada since 2009. Local ferry service to Canada used to be a staple of the town’s busy summer tourist season, dating back to the inaugural trip of the Bluenose ferry across the Gulf of Maine in 1956.
The Canadian ferry company has faced a gauntlet of challenges as it has tried to continue carrying vehicles and passengers back and forth between Maine and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
Its subsidies from the Nova Scotian provincial government were cut off for several years. When Bay Ferries resumed operating from Portland in 2016, it had to contend with low passenger counts, high costs and congestion on Portland’s waterfront.
There has been no ferry service between Maine and Nova Scotia since 2018.
In 2019, when Bay Ferries wanted to start operating The Cat again out of Bar Harbor it was sidelined again by high costs in renovating the terminal building that had gone unused for a decade. A year later, it ran into COVID-19.
Bay Ferries publicized its intent to carry passengers and vehicles in both summer 2019 and summer 2020 across the Gulf of Maine, only to cancel each season before it began. Last summer, it made no such predictions.
But now, with renovations finished at the customs building in Bar Harbor, and with pandemic travel restrictions eased, the company expects service will resume this year with hopes for continued service in future years. In December, the company’s lease with the town of Bar Harbor to use the local ferry terminal was extended to October 2026.
“Customers will be required to comply with all current border restrictions and requirements imposed by the country of entry,” the company said. “These requirements will likely evolve between now and the start of the operating season.”
Despite the complications and delays, the resumption of ferry service between Maine and Nova Scotia has been a top priority for officials in Yarmouth, N.S., where tourism is heavily dependent on the ferry. The service has been supported by elected Nova Scotia provincial officials in recent years, though some have raised concerns about the amount of taxpayer money that has helped fund it, according to the CBC.
The Nova Scotia government has spent nearly $100 million in Canadian currency — or roughly $79 million in U.S. dollars at today’s exchange rates — since 2015 in supporting ferry service to Maine and associated costs, Global News has reported.