At noon Friday, with the sun shining overhead, with bullhorns blaring, and crowds cheering, the MV Kulleet pulled away from the dock at the Albion Ferry terminal for the final time.

Hundreds gathered throughout the day to pay their respects, and go for one last ride on the ferry. But this wasn’t a funeral, so much as it was a celebration, a heart-felt thank you for the past 52 years of service.

The ferries have plied the Fraser River between Fort Langley and Albion since 1957. Back then, fare on the original vessel, the MV T’Lagunna, cost 10 cents per passenger and 35 cents per car. The MV Kulleet and MV Klatawa were put into service in 1972, and the five-minute ride across the river was made free.

However, with the opening of the new $800 million Golden Ears Bridge down river, there just isn’t a place in TransLink’s transportation plan for the aging ferries.

While some commuters will not doubt be thankful they won’t have to wait upwards of an hour in rush hour to get across the river, Langley resident Diane Butler says she will miss the wait.

“It’s great to just turn off the car and relax, and read a book,” she says. “You can’t do that on a bridge.”

Gone will be the children tossing a football, or playing an impromptu game of street hockey as they and their parents wait in line for the next ferry with their car doors open. The wait provided a sense of community, Butler says, you got to take a break from the hustle and bustle and get to know your neighbour waiting behind you in line.

Butler decided to take her two young daughters, Jackie and Jenny, on one last ride Friday to say goodbye to the old boats.

Jackie says she’ll miss going across on the ferry to visit her family in Maple Ridge.

“It’s fun,” she says, giggling.

Bryan Smith of Mission has been riding his motorcycle across the ferry for close to 25 years, almost everyday of the week. He brought his son Mason along for what was his first and last trip.

“It’s nice first thing in the morning, especially in the summertime,” says Smith. “The sun is just coming up. It’s beautiful.”

There was never any shortage of action on the river, says terminal attendant Shannon Shields – bank robbers, escaped convicts, marriage proposals, cars going off the end of the dock.

“There’s been rescues too.”

Under Canadian marine law, all vessels in the vicinity of a marine emergency must respond. The MV Kulleet and MV Klatawa would regularly respond to distress calls from Barnston Island to the Mission Bridge.

“The Coast Guard is going to miss not having us around,” says Shields.

For her, like many of the ferry workers and terminal attendants, this week brings with it the spectre of unemployment. Some have found work elsewhere, while others are retiring. Some don’t know what they will do for work.

“We’re all unemployed and were all looking for work and were all just trying to get it together,” says Shields. “It’s sad for a lot of us because we never going to see a lot of these people again.”

For Captain Greg Gladwell, the ferries provided more than an income, they provided him with his wife Kerrie. Both are staff members, and their workplace romance blossomed into marriage.

The loss of the ferries means they will never be able to revisit the place they met and fell in love. It also means the two of them are without jobs.

“We’ve gone from double income to zero income,” said Gladwell.

The mood on the final sailing was manic. Somber tears at the thought of jobs lost and friends parting were followed by fits of laughter and joyful embraces with the retelling of some nearly forgotten anecdote.

Captain Dave Miller made sure his silver dodge pick-up truck was the last to be offloaded from the ferry, the last vehicle it ever took across the Fraser. For more than 20 years he’s been crossing the river, and though retirements await him, there is still a sense of loss.

“It’s very emotional,” he says. “I’ve almost broke down in tears a couple times.”

And in the end it wasn’t so much about the ferries. A steel hull and a diesel engine generally don’t elicit much emotion. But the moist eyes and hugs suggested something deeper than a mere transportation link was being lost.

It was about the people that will be missed, the familiar faces of the staff and crew, the regular patrons of the ferry.

Though impressive, the Golden Ears Bridge holds little of the humanity the ferries did. With video cameras instead of toll booths, there is no human face to the bridge. And while drivers take the bridge to their destination, it was the ferries that took the drivers.

Everyone understands why the ferries must go, says Shields.

But that makes it no easier to bear.