From a young age, all that Joshua Yeung ever dreamed of doing was work on B.C. Ferries. He grew up riding the ferry through the Strait of Georgia to visit his grandparents and fell in love with the waters.
Now, at eighteen years old, the young boy who built small-scale ferries growing up is now working as a deckhand on the 167-metre-long Spirit of Vancouver Island. “It’s been a dream come true,” said Yeung. “A common misconception is that all deckhands do is help people park their cars and then go get coffee. However, we do a lot more than that. I even get to steer the ship.”
The journey to his dreams wasn’t always smooth sailing, so to speak. Joshua was diagnosed with Autism when he was fifteen years old. By the time he entered Grade 10, even his parents were doubtful that Yeung would even be able to graduate from high school on time, let alone gain meaningful employment. Thankfully, Joshua would land in the right institution— Whytecliff Aglie Learning Centre. The school’s principal, Shelley Donald, took another approach with young Joshua Yeung, connecting as much of his learning opportunities to his love for ferries.
“In order to captivate Josh, we worked B.C. Ferries into almost every subject we could,” explains Donald. “He was able to learn the concept of scale, proportion, degree of error and other curricula through constructing the models.” As Yeung spent hours in school building ferries out of household materials, Donald would measure his works and use it as a mode of learning for the young boy. “Josh would go above and beyond what is expected in a normal classroom assignment because he was so focused on the topic of public transportation,” Donald added. “I had no doubt he would become a deckhand. Sometimes, it was all he could talk about.”
Today, Josh is now eighteen years old and having the time of his life on the Spirit of Vancouver. He has found reason to keep pushing forward, even aiming to become a captain of his own vessel one day. “Every time I put on my uniform, my steel-toed boots, my hat and jacket, I smile,” Yeung said. “It’s such a good feeling.”
