The ThunderBlogs

The tinny beep-beep-beeps and hydraulic sighs of heavy equipment drifted onto the porch where Bert Bjorndal stood over an eight-burner grill, scorching salmon filets. Nearby, cyclists in stretchy shorts and riding jerseys milled, having returned from a 100-km bike ride for the Mission to Seafarers, the charity headquartered locally in the old house beside Vancouver’s port.

The ministry endeavors to meet every worker who arrives in the ships that pour into Canada’s largest port each year and to maintain this center, where they can get online, help themselves to a free paperback or buy a beer. Currency from around the world dots the wall by the glass counter where sailors can buy cough drops and postcards. It’s flanked by two racks of donated National Geographic magazines, about 1,000 of them, dating back to early ’70s.

Anything to make a wandering seaman feel at home, on a budget.

“I’ve been working around the water all my life,” Bjorndal said. The Abbotsford marine captain from now makes runs mostly up the coast of British Columbia, and serves on the mission’s board. The cat’s cradle of barbed wire atop the chainlink fence just past the house’s yard was unknown before 9/11, he said. Since then, security has not only kept visitors off the port, it has served to sequester men to boats on their months-long journeys.

“For a lot of the seafarers, they’re like captives,” Bjorndal said. “We’re a one-stop place for taking care of the practical needs of the seafarer.” He turned to the grill, and with a jab of one stout wrist raked the spatula beneath one of the final filets.

The fish moved quickly out of the steam tray – cyclists largely preferred the salmon to the burgers also on the table. But then, fish suited the setting.

The rear corner of the mission is dedicated to a chapel graced with a small pipe organ, six short pews and the same vestry book, its brittle pages now almost half-filled, that has rested there since 1966. A carved wooden triptych dominates the wall behind the altar. The first scene depicts sailors hauling empty nets aboard the side of their ship. In the central panel, the men pray to Christ. In the third and final scene, the nets bulge with fish, and they are whoppers.