St. David’s Anglican Church – a parish by the Salish Sea – has a congregation of residents whose Sea Sunday observance, July 10 at 10 a.m., will honour mariners around the world, and embrace new concern over supply chain disruption.
Guest preacher, Senior Port Chaplain Rev. Peter Smyth, is also deeply troubled by the effect current conditions are having on seafarers within his jurisdiction and beyond. Through his work at Missions to Seafarers - Flying Angel Club, Smyth’s concern is unprecedented.
Recent global events have created new levels of hardship in supply schedules within the world’s leading container shipping lines, whose vessels call at the Port of Vancouver and Deltaport providing regular service to-and-from Asia, Europe, Latin America and Oceania.
Parishioner John Horton, OBC, captain of the Delta Lifeboat and a senior lifeboat commander with Canadian Lifeboat Institute (CLI), will speak on the relevance of Sea Sunday when he addresses the congregation this Sunday. David Rushton, also a parishioner, will read the Lessons in a service of thanksgiving for They that go down to the seas in ships.
Here in Ladner/Tsawwassen, local dependence on seafarers is fairly obvious given the area’s proximity to BC Ferries, Seaspan’s barge/ferry terminals on the Fraser River in Delta and Surrey, tugs and barges hauling wood products, rock, gravel and cement, not forgetting the commercial and native fisher folk who provide food for the table.
The Order of Service includes the blessing of a wreath by Rev. Simbarashe Basvi in memory of souls lost at sea; parishioner Nick Robinson ringing ‘8 bells’ to mark the ‘End of the Watch’; and Veterans’ Naval Band bugler John More sounding the Last Post.
The ceremony of casting afloat the memorial wreath in the main channel of the Fraser River will take place from the upper deck of the Delta Lifeboat ‘to the sound of 8 bells, the Bosun’s call’ and prayers by Rev. Basvi.
St. David’s is located at 1115-51A Street, Tsawwassen.
