Having once taken former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on an Arctic expedition, a charter boat operator is now facing a litany of upset creditors, as a notice of intention to file for bankruptcy lays bare the extent of financial ruin of his Squamish-based company.
Andrew Prossin’s company, One Ocean Expeditions Inc. (OOE), owes $29.5 million to creditors the world over – mostly would-be polar circle tourists and tour booking agencies, but also contractors and OOE staff. The company also owes $2.8 million to Export Development Canada, a government agency that provides small business loans.
The company, which specialized in chartered cruises to the Arctic and Antarctica, has also left several charities and local businesses in B.C. out of pocket.
It’s not yet clear what assets OOE has to repay the hundreds of people who pre-paid OOE in the ballpark of $20,000 to $30,000 per trip. Nor is it clear where the money has gone given the hundreds of cancelled trips. Prossin has closed OOE’s Squamish office, the OOE website email addresses do not work and Glacier Media has been unable to contact him.
On April 22, Prossin penned a letter to creditors attached to the Notice of Intention to make a proposal filed to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada, via trustee PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc.
In it, Prossin claimed the company’s problems are a result of “the sudden and unwarranted withdrawal of our (leased) Russian vessels in 2019.” He claimed the company’s been “further challenged under the current global pandemic.”
OOE has held a prominent position in Canada’s maritime community. It launched about 14 years ago, but it was in 2014 when Prossin gained national media attention by assisting then Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s pet project to discover the sunken remains of the 1845 John Franklin exploration of the Arctic. Prossin used his OOE vessel One Ocean Voyager in 2014 to help find the remains of the ship HMS Erebus.
The discovery was a well-publicized joint effort by the governments of Nunavut, Canada and Great Britain, as well as the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. The latter awarded Prossin a special Erebus medal alongside Harper at a gala in 2015, and in November 2017 Prossin received the society’s prestigious Lawrence J. Burpee Medal, alongside President Jimmy Carter.
The society has a “strategic partnership” with OOE. Its CEO, John Geiger, did not respond to Glacier Media for comment. The society is owed $209,408.
Other charitable or non-profit groups owed money include: The Vancouver Maritime Museum ($2,500); Ocean Wise ($10,233) and the Squamish Hospital Foundation ($6,500).
Among the first signs of trouble for OOE was when one of its vessels ran aground in the Arctic in August 2018. The company proceeded to cancel several trips thereafter.
In October 2018 the Chronicle Herald reported OOE had commissioned an old ship under the society’s banner – the RCGS Resolute.
In December 2018, OOE took a ship to Antarctica with Prossin and Harper aboard, according to several media reports.
But the ship was unable to get enough fuel and the trip was cut short.
On May 21, 2019, OOE announced that two of their three vessels, leased from a Russian company, had been suddenly taken out of service.
“Their decision comes as a complete surprise to OOE and is out of our control,” OOE manager Catherine Lawton said at the time. “The withdrawal of the vessels for the 2019-20 season is a breach of the owners’ contract with OOE and is now the subject of legal action,”
But Ivan Budarin, with OOE contractor Terragelida Ship Management Ltd., told The Chronicle Herald the firm pulled the charters early due to non-payment. The Cape Breton Spectator reported likewise. The two ships, Akademik Ioffe and Akademik Sergey Vavilov, are owned by the Russian government’s P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology.
Then, in August 2019, the company’s third ship, the RCGS Resolute, was arrested in Nunavut by the sheriff’s office, acting on a statement of claim and federal warrant in Halifax, for unpaid bills.
Numerous online maritime-related media outlets reported how cancellations began to pile up and people were not being refunded. Social media and travel forms blew up with angry posts about the company.
One of those cancellations was a trip from Argentina to Antarctica in October, 2019. Again, the company had reported issues fuelling.
Still waiting for his money from that 19-day trip is Banff resident Gary Doyle, who pre-paid in full $28,500. A friend of his did likewise.
Doyle at least didn’t spend money on a flight to Buenos Aires.
“We luckily started seeing things on the web about people questioning [OOE]. We tried to phone them in the office and they weren’t there anymore. Nobody ever got back to you. It was dead on the other end. We saw picture in the Squamish Chief of the empty office and it went from there,” said Doyle.
A statement, signed by Prossin and posted on the company’s Facebook page on October 29, 2019, spoke to attempts to restructure the company. It said, “The withdrawal of these [Russian] ships was an unexpected and destabilizing event, and the violation of our contract remains the subject of ongoing legal action.”
By then OOE had closed its doors to its Squamish office. And officials in Buenos Aires arrested the RCGS Resolute for unpaid debt.
The B.C. Ministry of Labour told The Squamish Chief that 37 complaints – up from an initial 19 – had been filed with the Employment Standards Branch for unpaid wages.
In another letter, Prossin directed a growing body of abandoned customers to contact their insurance provider.
“That’s either a genuine update, which is very vague, or it’s just stalling — I don’t know which one,” said John De Silva, who bought a trip for two last November.
“It doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy…. We don’t want to lose $24,000 [USD].”
De Silva’s voyage, slated for February.
There have been a total of four lawsuits filed against the company in federal and B.C. courts since Oct. 31, 2019, according to court records.
But prior to the bankruptcy-related filing it was not clear how bad OOE’s financial position was.
The company owes $862,982 to World Fuel Services Corporation, which could explain its problems fuelling in Argentinian ports.
It has creditors in Australia, China, Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, and Equador, among other countries.
Notably it owes $4.67 million to 321 passengers who were billed directly by the company. It also owes $1.5 million to Swoop Travel in the United Kingdom.
The filing shows 21 employees are owed $57,414.
