With these facts in mind Alexander Watson and Joseph Bucey decided to build the BC Express six feet shorter and a foot narrower than the BX.

She continued to make trips between the Grand Canyon and Fort George until that September when the water levels dropped so low that Bucey decided that the Giscome Rapids were too unsafe to navigate.

This had created a great surge of traffic over the Cariboo Road and the BC Express Company's stages and automobiles ran day and night to keep up with demand.

Captain Bucey took the BC Express to Tête Jaune Cache that May and returned with just twenty passengers and a small load of cargo.

The BC Express began a weekly round trip service from Fort Gorge to Tête Jaune Cache, carrying capacity loads of freight and passengers.

[2]: 205  She was the only sternwheeler to offer freight and passenger service to the general public, as the Operator and Conveyor were strictly used for hauling their own workers and supplies needed for rail construction.

One afternoon in June, Bucey was returning from Tête Jaune Cache and had just passed the Grand Canyon when he spotted a white flag on the river bank.

The ousted passenger, luckily a strong swimmer, had made it to shore, but his companions must not have fancied the idea of following him into the frigid and swift water, as they all paid their fares immediately.

[1]: 80–82 Later that summer, a well known gambler from the Skeena River was aboard, and he spoke to Captain Bucey about the possibility of having a poker game on one of the lower decks.

Several hours into play, and when the table was covered with a drift of bills, this man abruptly announced his identity, declared the game illegal and confiscated all the money.

[1]: 68–70 One afternoon in August 1913, Captain Bucey was attempting to run the BC Express through the Grand Canyon when he realized that the current was particularly strong in the whirlpool.

Bucey decided that it would be necessary to line the sternwheeler through the canyon, and was pulling over to the side when a 70-foot-long (21 m) spruce tree, complete with root structure, appeared on the surface of the whirlpool and swept under the BC Express, jamming against her three main rudders.

Though Bucey had lost his main method of steering, he was still able to use the steamer's paddlewheel to maneuver backwards through the canyon, where he would eventually come to a place along the shore where he could tie up and his crew could disembark and remove the tree and check for damages.

Most of his passengers, knowing Bucey's skillful reputation, were untroubled by the BC Express's plight, but one man panicked and raced across the bow and leapt onto the canyon wall, where he was left clinging 6 feet above the whirlpool.

After landing, Bucey's first thought was for his stranded passenger, and he sent out a rescue party of three men, led by AK Bouchier, the BC Express Company's agent at Tête Jaune Cache.

The first thing the rescued man did was check his pockets for two small leather bags he was carrying, both full of diamond rings that he peddled along the new rail towns to brothels and private buyers.

[1]: 71–74 At the end of August 1913, Captain Bucey was taking the BC Express up from Fort George to Tête Jaune Cache when he encountered a cable strung across the river at Mile 141 where the railway would be building a bridge.

[1]: 82–83 Some historians have opined that the railway built these bridges to impede navigation out of spite and dislike for the BC Express Company because its owner at that time, Charles Vance Millar, had negotiated with the First Nation's people at Fort George to buy the land that the GTP wanted for their town-site.

In 1918, after an appeal from the Quesnel Board of Trade, the provincial government granted the BC Express Company a $10,000 per year subsidy to continue river navigation from Soda Creek to Fort George.

[1]: 93 The BX ran until August 30, 1919, when she was punctured by an infamous rock called the "Woodpecker" and sank with a 100 tons of bagged cement intended for construction of the Deep Creek Bridge.