CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Capping Cruise Ships in Port Averill Debate

Each summer, the harbour town of Port Averill, population 9,000, receives as many as 110 cruise ship calls, sometimes two daily, discharging up to 6,000 passengers onto a waterfront built for a fraction of that number. Council has commissioned a study of a cap: one large ship a day and 80 calling days per season. The prospect has divided a town that for two decades regarded the cruise trade as its economic salvation.

Mayor Joanne Fitzgerald, who requested the study, protests that she is no enemy of the industry, crediting cruise revenue with rebuilding the waterfront after the cannery closed. “But there’s a difference between hosting visitors and being overrun by them.” “A cap would protect the character that attracts people here,” she contends, although its price, she admits, remains incalculable.

Theo Anagnos, who owns two Harbour Street gift shops and chairs the business association, finds that admission revealing. Passengers furnish over 60 per cent of his summer sales, and he doubts anyone would replace them. “Council is proposing to fix an irritation with a recession,” he charges. Still, the crush on two-ship days is undeniable, which is why he champions staggered arrivals and wider sidewalks, remedies that turn away no customer.

Tourism researcher Mireille Ouellet, who has studied ports in Canada and Norway, is skeptical of both camps. “Passengers spend little and eat aboard, and much of what they do spend flows to tour operators based elsewhere,” she reports, and wider sidewalks would only move the same crush down the street. Yet towns that restricted ships without courting overnight visitors merely acquired “quieter streets and emptier tills.” The decisive question, she argues, is whether anyone has a reason to stay the night.

For Callum Reid, a ferry engineer now retired and living two blocks from the pier, the argument over spending misses the point. He describes it plainly: “Idling ships foul our air on still days, and tour buses start before seven each morning.” His residents’ group demands a 50-day limit and mandatory shore power, an upgrade the port authority prices at $30 million, which Fitzgerald considers unattainable without federal assistance.

The consultants report in February. Meanwhile, the cruise lines are booking the season after next, and at least one is examining ports farther up the coast.

I have run a Harbour Street bed and breakfast for eleven years, and I tire of hearing that this town would collapse without the ships. Mr. Anagnos talks as though every passenger were a customer, whereas Ms. Ouellet’s research suggests that much of the money 6. Choose…never reaches the towncomes back through port feespays for waterfront repairsgoes to overnight stays.

His sales might suffer, I grant, but, like Ms. Ouellet, I see wider sidewalks as 7. Choose…a plan the mayor devisedcostlier than shore powermerely shifting the crowdthe answer to two-ship days. Nor would I follow Mr. Reid, whose 8. Choose…plan to stagger ship arrivalsstudy of other port townscall for a one-ship limitplug-in rule for ships carries a price the mayor says is unattainable without 9. Choose…a vote by the cruise linesmoney from Ottawaa loan from local merchantsa report from the consultants.

A cap seems a sensible start, but only alongside what Ms. Ouellet recommends: 10. Choose…fewer tour buses before breakfastlater arrival times for shipskeeping visitors overnighta ceiling of fifty days. My guests book rooms, not deck chairs. Port towns that think past the next docking tend to do better.