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MV Mill Bay

ship built in 1956

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ6719821
Source-derived summary

MV Mill Bay was a Canadian ferry. At 37.49 metres (123 ft) long, it was BC Ferries' second-smallest ship. It held 16 vehicles (tied with the MV Nimpkish), 138 passengers and crew, and operated at a maximum speed of 9 knots (17 km/h). The Mill Bay operated in the Brentwood Bay-Mill Bay route across Saanich Inlet on Vancouver Island.

History

The Brentwood Bay to Mill Bay ferry started operation in November 1924 by two former naval officers, Kennaird and Williams, and it is the oldest continuous ferry service on the coast of British Columbia. Initial service by the Cascade Freight and Trading Company was provided with a 22-year-old 90-foot (27 m) wooden hulled coastal steamer the SS Cascade, which was altered to allow cars to drive on or off the bow and the stern. The Cascade underwent many more alterations over the years, including replacement of her steam engines with internal combustion engines,

and was eventually rechristened the Brentwood. Cascade Freight and Trading Company was bought by Coast Ferries Ltd. in 1945.

In the 1950s the more-than-50-year-old Brentwood was aging and in need of replacement.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “MV Mill Bay” is ship built in 1956. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mill, ship and built, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1924, 1945—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Mill, ship and built is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “ship built in 1956” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6719821. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1924 and 1945.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “MV Mill Bay”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow MV Mill Bay primary sources, MV Mill Bay archive and Mill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “MV Mill Bay”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from MV Mill Bay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.