The Canadian government’s inventory of wrecked, abandoned or hazardous boats includes a U.S. warship, a derelict floating McDonald’s known as the McBarge, a human-smuggling ship and an old B.C. Ferries vessel rotting on the Fraser River.
But the most problematic aren’t the well-known vessels with colourful histories — it’s the fleet of mystery craft that have dogged the Canadian Coast Guard and Transport Canada for years.
The inventory has more than 1,700 entries, about 70 per cent of them in B.C., ranging from abandoned dinghies to yachts and fishing vessels. Many have opaque ownership, testing the skills of coast guard investigators. Some