JANUARY
• The 211 information and referral line was to be launched on the Sunshine Coast, a bc211 spokesman confirmed. The service — which provides free referrals to community, social and government agencies — has been available in the Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley and Squamish-Lillooet regional districts since 2010.
• An industrial property in the Port Mellon area could be the site of a large-scale medical marijuana production facility if the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board approved the property owner’s application for a zoning bylaw amendment.
Richnor Recycling Ltd. proposed a 12,000-square-foot (1,080-square-metre) medical marijuana grow operation that would be spread out over four to five floors in an existing building on Horsethief Road, south of Hillside Industrial Park.
• One day before a planned protest against BC Ferries service cuts and fare hikes, the cost of travelling to the Sunshine Coast went up by 3.5 per cent.
The fuel surcharge increased the fare from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale (Route 3) by $1.70 for vehicles and 50 cents for adult passengers, raising the basic fare for an adult and vehicle from $63.60 to $65.30.
• Residents in Sechelt were asked for their approval to borrow $7.4 million for the new sewage treatment plant, rather than the $2.5-million loan most were expecting.
The larger loan would come with a $1-million grant attached to it from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Green Municipal Fund. The grant would in effect pay for the interest on the loan calculated to be about $905,000 over 10 years and bi-annual payments would be covered by current sewer user fees. If approved through referendum, the larger loan would mean Sechelt could leave most of their reserves in place.
• The George Hotel and condo project passed its first major hurdle when Gibsons council’s committee of the whole voted 3-2 in favour of moving forward with the application.
But among the conditions, the applicant would have to pay for two technical reviews of the project’s impact on Gibsons’ prized aquifer.
More than 120 people packed town hall, which saw council split over accepting the recommendations of director of planning Andre Boel. These included giving staff the green light to prepare a draft zoning bylaw and development permit for the project’s form and character, and to report back on affordable housing and community amenities to be provided by the developer.
• Upper and Lower Sunshine Coast residents — with a little help from their friends on Gabriola Island — fired the first shot across the bow of BC Ferries in a coordinated campaign to roll back ongoing fare hikes and planned service cuts.
Aimed at Premier Christy Clark, the BC Ferry Coalition’s mass protest drew more than 2,000 people to seven rally points between Langdale and Earls Cove, as well as large demonstrations in Powell River and Gabriola Island, whose routes are both facing major cuts in scheduled sailings.
• The economic benefits of the proposed George Hotel and condo project sparked a testy debate at Gibsons council, as councillors split over a motion to request a third-party study of the project’s financial viability.
• The province gave the green light to the Narrows Inlet hydro project. Environment Minister Mary Polak and Energy Minister Bill Bennett issued an environmental assessment certificate for the project, subject to 26 conditions.
• The provincial government was ordered by the B.C. Supreme Court to pay $2 million in damages to the B.C. Teachers Federation in a ruling released Jan. 27. The ruling called for government to retroactively restore class size and composition language that was stripped from the teachers’ contract in 2002.
• The majority of Coasters who came to a public hearing about Target Marine Hatcheries’ plans for diversification were in favour of the idea; however, some nearby neighbours were not.
Target was seeking changes to a zoning bylaw and the official community plan to allow the company to process more kinds of finfish and shellfish and introduce aquaponics to their operation at 7333 Sechelt Inlet Road.
FEBRUARY
• The B.C. Ferry Coalition was vowing to ramp up its campaign for fiscal fairness after the Christy Clark government announced it was plowing ahead with fare hikes and cuts to sailings and the seniors’ discount in April.
Coalition organizer Jef Keighley, who called the Clark government’s decision “extraordinarily mean-spirited,” said preparations were already being made for a protest on the lawn of the legislature.
• B.C.’s grand chief and First Nation leaders on the Sunshine Coast were supporting a call for Ottawa to “systematically and properly” study the full impact of Fukushima radiation on the West Coast fishery.
Radiation from the March 2011 nuclear accident arrived off the B.C. coast last year, said Robin Brown, ocean sciences division manager with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
• The George came back to Gibsons council, with critics of the waterfront hotel and condo project putting Mayor Wayne Rowe on the hot seat.
Dorothy Riddle, a certified management consultant who sits on the Town’s economic development committee, confronted Rowe during the first enquiries session at the Feb. 4 meeting, accusing him of trying to suppress an economic impact analysis of the project that she had prepared pro bono and submitted on her corporate letterhead. Criticizing Rowe for referring to the report in an email as “a submission from a resident,” Riddle cited her 27 years of experience and asked why the report was “apparently being viewed as unprofessional.”
• The Ministry of Education appealed the B.C. Supreme Court ruling that restored teachers’ collective bargaining rights, which were originally stripped away in 2002. Among those rights restored in court is the right of teachers to bargain class size and composition.
Madam Justice F. Griffin decided the case on Jan. 27. Her ruling came with a stipulation that $2 million in compensation be paid to teachers by the provincial government. Teachers celebrated the ruling, but government said it wanted to study the ruling in more detail to determine the possible implications and later announced its appeal.
• The operators of a controversial new provincial recycling system introduced more changes to reduce the cost and paperwork for certain small businesses.
Six months previously, small business owners were fuming over onerous reporting requirements, vague timelines and unknown costs. The new system, run by an industry-led, non-profit agency called Multi-Material BC (MMBC), was meant to shift cost and responsibility for recycling to the businesses that produce packaging, but critics from the small business community complained that the system seemed to have been designed only with large companies, like grocery store chains, in mind.
• Tagging was becoming an epidemic in Gibsons, and not enough was being done to deal with the blight, resident Jon Hird told council’s committee of the whole. During a 10-day period last month, Hird documented 254 examples of tags defacing public and private properties throughout the town.
• After working to change Canada’s citizenship law for most of his adult life, Gibsons resident Don Chapman was “guardedly optimistic” that proposed reform to the existing Act will finally allow many Lost Canadians to assume their rightful status as Canadian citizens.
• The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) should consider amalgamating its fire departments into one regional department, Roberts Creek fire chief Rob Michael told SCRD directors. With increasing time demands on volunteer members, the move would allow departments to better share resources such as equipment, vehicles and staffing, “instead of duplicating efforts up and down the Coast,” Michael told the infrastructure services committee.
• Dangerous levels of PCBs were found onboard the HMCS Annapolis, so Environment Canada was looking for contractors to remove the contaminant before sinking the ship to create an artificial reef. The HMCS Annapolis, a 115-metre decommissioned warship, was proposed as an artificial reef by the Artificial Reef Society of B.C. in 2009. The group pitched the sinking for Halkett Bay (off the southeastern shore of Gambier Island) and volunteers started what would be thousands of hours of work to strip the ship.
• Tears were shed by most of the more than 200 people who came to the Sechelt Nation’s showing of the movie We Were Children — a disturbingly honest portrayal of residential school life in Canada. At times the audience felt ill at the images on screen, made worse by the knowledge the troubling scenarios were lived by thousands of First Nations children. We Were Children is a film featuring two residential school survivors and their powerful stories.
• Teachers across B.C. would decide if they would strike in response to government’s appeal of a court decision reinstating contract language stripped from teachers in 2002 and a lower than expected wage increase offer.
• Children across the Coast donned pink to make people think about the negative effects of bullying on Feb. 26. The national anti-bullying day, also known as Pink Shirt Day, started on the Coast with a surprise flash mob on the 8:20 BC Ferries sailing out of Langdale.
MARCH
• Calvin Craigan, 69, was elected Sechelt Indian Band Chief on Feb. 22 with 115 votes, seven votes ahead of former councillor Warren Paull. His three-year term officially began on April 1. It was the second time in the last decade that Craigan had eyed a return to the role, having served as chief from 1974-83 and as councillor from 1993-96.
• The Car Co-op launched with 50 founding members, with four more joining during the AGM. There are two vehicles for use — a 2013 Toyota Prius C (hybrid car) and a new Dodge Grand Caravan (family van) — with a third vehicle to be added May 1.
• A new hotel development pitched by a company poised to purchase the Sechelt Golf & Country Club (SG&CC) was given first reading and referred to a public hearing. The proposed four-storey, 150-room hotel is planned for a 1.01-hectare portion of the golf course positioned between the restaurant and the driving range.
• An incredibly close referendum vote was being examined by some residents who questioned how much money the District of Sechelt spent on a yes campaign and if any election-day improprieties took place.
The March 8 referendum saw 1,721 of the 7,639 eligible voters in Sechelt cast a ballot on whether they were in favour of the District borrowing up to $7.4 million to help pay for construction of Sechelt’s new wastewater treatment plant.
• Premier Christy Clark stole the show when an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people descended on the B.C. Legislature grounds for the Defend Our Marine Highways protest against BC Ferries service cuts and fare hikes.
Clark did not appear in person at the rally, but a video clip of Clark from her 2008 CKNW talk show, presented by Strathcona Regional District chair Jim Abrams, brought home the same message that protesters came to her doorstep to deliver.
• The Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF) unveiled the most comprehensive assessment to date of the Chapman and Gray Creek community watersheds at a public meeting in Sechelt.
And while president Glen Bonderud reiterated SCCF’s pledge not to log within the community watersheds for the next 25 years, environmentalists who attended the meeting raised a number of objections and concerns.
• The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) projected a nine per cent overall increase in property taxes for 2014, with residential rates expected to rise by an average of just over seven per cent.
• The SCRD should not rush ahead with a bylaw to restrict medical marijuana production facilities to large rural lots, but should also allow smaller scale grow operations under any new zoning rules that are adopted.
That was the message SCRD officials heard when more than a dozen residents came out for a public hearing on a zoning bylaw amendment that would permit medical pot production only on rural lots in the RU2 and RU3 zones that are eight hectares (20 acres) or more.
• Gibsons council’s committee of the whole voted 3-2 to endorse the form and character of the George Hotel and Residences, giving staff direction to continue with environmental and economic impact studies based on the revised design.
An estimated 300 people attended the March 25 meeting at the Gibsons Public Market, with almost half of them standing or sitting outside on the patio, watching through glass doors and listening on outdoor speakers as council debated the controversial project. The new design included a stepped-back hotel roof and facade on Gower Point Road, along with other changes aimed to address issues raised by the Town’s advisory planning commission in November.
• Metro Vancouver was aiming to hold a public information meeting on the Sunshine Coast in late May for a proposed $500-million garbage incinerator project at Port Mellon.
Metro was in the process of finalizing dates for three “community-specific” meetings, Paul Henderson, Metro’s general manager of solid waste services, said. Two other sites, in Nanaimo and Delta, were being considered, while a proposal for South Vancouver was dropped from the list of possible sites.
APRIL
• Residents on the Sunshine Coast provided lots of feedback regarding the possible name change of St. Mary’s Hospital. But the decision was still a long ways from being decided. VCH started its community consultation regarding a potential renaming of the hospital after the Sechelt First Nation made a request. The final decision rested with the provincial government, who would make their decision after a final report was presented by VCH.
• The SCRD board approved the rezoning of a Port Mellon property for a large-scale medical marijuana production facility.
The decision allowed Richnor Recycling Ltd. to set up a 12,000-square-foot (1,080-square-metre) commercial grow-op in an existing industrial building on Horsethief Road, south of Hillside Industrial Park.
• Chief Calvin Craigan welcomed “a new era” for the shíshálh (Sechelt) Nation in a traditional swearing-in ceremony for the new council at the Band longhouse. Children and grandchildren of the newly elected chief and council accompanied them as they were “sung in” for the official ceremony, with Elders, family members and about 100 guests looking on.
• Through songs, scripture and celebration, the parishioners of St. Mary’s Church in Gibsons dedicated their new church building. Archbishop Michael Miller from Vancouver was on hand for the dedication mass alongside Father Vincent. The mass brought together the whole congregation, young and old, and many invited guests to the new church, which held its first mass in the new building after a 14-month construction phase.
• Buddy Boyd, owner of the award-winning Gibsons Recycling Depot, said Multi-Material BC (MMBC) would not only put recyclers like him out of business and nail consumers with new fees, but could ultimately spell the end of zero waste efforts in the province by feeding Metro Vancouver’s garbage incinerators.
MMBC was scheduled for launch on May 19, when the Ontario-based group led by multinationals such as Loblaw and Unilever would start providing recycling collection services for 1.25 million households in 88 municipalities, First Nations and regional districts. Participating local governments include some, like the Sunshine Coast Regional District and the Regional District of Nanaimo, that have adopted zero waste policies.
• Select homeowners in West Sechelt were set to get some cash back because they had been unfairly paying into a fund for future sewer hook-up since 2001.
Approximately 70 properties in West Sechelt were paying $115 a year into the sewer connection fund, but a review showed they would not likely be hooked up in “the foreseeable future” because they are more than 100 metres from the main collector pipe.
• SD46 trustees were outraged at the B.C. government’s recent decision to pull up to 50 per cent of funding for future capital projects from local school boards.
In a letter sent to the B.C. School Trustees’ Association, Education Minister Peter Fassbender said the change was meant to be part of the “cash management strategy” introduced in the 2014 budget.
• Gambier Island residents and local governments in Howe Sound were trying to put the brakes on plans that would designate an estimated 25 per cent of the island for logging.
As bids closed for two woodlots on the northeast part of the island, the Gambier Island local trust committee was calling on the province to either cancel the planned woodlots or, at the very least, reduce them in size.
• SCRD planning staff were recommending a text change to the Halfmoon Bay official community plan to address concerns raised during a second public hearing.
The staff recommendation would clarify the intent of redesignating the three “community hubs” — Welcome Woods, Halfmoon Bay village and Secret Cove — so that a variety of potential uses could be considered in the future.
• Thanks to an injection of $100,000 and a bid coming in well below budget, work to restore the Davis Bay Wharf was set to begin.
The District of Sechelt held a press conference April 14 to announce it had accepted Heavy Metal Marine Ltd. of Nanaimo’s bid of $312,989 to do the work, which was considerably lower than the estimated $600,000 project cost.
• Metro Vancouver cancelled public information meetings on its controversial incinerator project, including one that was set for May 24 in Gibsons, and Metro officials said they don’t expect to engage the public until next year.
• Despite strong opposition from the neighbourhood, a public hearing was set for an application to create 12 off-site parking spaces on a residential lot near Sakinaw Lake to meet conditions for a water-access subdivision about three kilometres north.
Sunshine Coast Regional District directors heard arguments from both sides at a planning and development committee meeting, voting afterward to forward the bylaw to the board for second reading and to set a public hearing date.
• Teachers across B.C. enacted a stage one strike that would shift some of their work onto administrators until the government tabled a “fair deal” or teachers upped the pressure by moving to a stage two strike.
Under stage one teachers would not: do any mandated supervision of students outside class time; attend any meetings with management; provide management with (or receive) any printed, written or electronic communication; be at the worksite prior to one hour before classes started.
