Scott Larsen has watched with fascination as tugboats ply the Mighty Fraser day in, day out.
Since moving to New Westminster with his husband in 2008, Larsen has been soaking up the action on the river in front of his Quayside home.
“We have a riverfront view,” he told The Record. “I can literally hear the sound of a tug coming.”
From his perch beside the Fraser River, Larsen started taking photographs of the tugboats in action. In the past five years he’s taken hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs of tugboats in all kinds of weather, at all times of the year.
“I post a tug picture on my Facebook page every day,” he said. “I have been doing this for at least a year.”
The tremendous response to the photographs from people all over the world prompted Larsen to create a 2014 Tugs of the Fraser calendar.
“I have InDesign on my computer. I dinged around, and I found a local printer,” he said. “The turnaround was fast, the quality was good.”
Larsen has a great appreciation of the hard work that tugboats and their staff do on the river.
“I think they are just an interesting part of our culture, actually. When I see tugboats at work, they haul log booms up and down the Fraser. There are log booms tied to pilings in front of our place,” he said. “There are big tugboats and small tugboats. They have interesting names and colours.”
Larsen said people shouldn’t be fooled by the power wielded by some of the smaller tugboats working on the river.
“The power these boats have to do what they do is amazing,” he said.
Larsen has ordered a small press run of the calendars but is able to quickly have more printed if he gets a flood of sales. He’s donating a portion of the proceeds to St. Barnabas Church for its emergency food cupboard.
“I don’t know how much I am going to make,” he said. “My hope is the citizens of New Westminster will respond.”
Larsen is unaware of anyone having done a calendar of New Westminster’s tugboats in the past. The calendars are $20 (including tax, postage and shipping) and can be ordered by emailing Larsen at [email protected].
While Larsen is enthralled with the work of tugboats, the freelance journalist is also smitten with other facets of New Westminster and is working on subsequent projects, including calendars about New Westminster’s waterfront, and sunrises and sunsets.
