OCTOBER
Lawyers for Peninsula Logging Ltd. and Elphinstone Logging Focus were back in court Oct. 5 for a hearing on the company’s application for a new injunction against protesters blocking its operations on Mount Elphinstone. There were more than a dozen arrests between Sept. 9 and Sept. 27 when a judge ruled against extending an interim injunction granted in late August.
• The Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives celebrated the grand opening of their renovated, more accessible museum on Oct. 1. The doors were opened for about 120 people for the traditional welcoming ceremony.
• The shíshálh Nation marked Orange Shirt Day on Sept. 30 with a ceremony at the residential school monument attended by a handful of survivors and their supporters.
• A male grizzly bear weighing “north of 700 pounds” was caught in West Sechelt and relocated by the Conservation Officer Service (COS) on Sept. 29. Sgt. Dean Miller of the COS said he was surprised that morning to find the bear caught in one of the snare traps he’d set up, because there hadn’t been any sightings of the animal for several days.
• The majority of allegations brought forward against shíshálh Nation Chief Calvin Craigan by protesters in May were found to have no merit, according to the report on an independent investigation by lawyer John R. Rich of Ratcliff and Company in North Vancouver.
• During the Oct. 5 regular Sechelt council meeting, Coun. Darnelda Siegers declared her intention to seek the mayor’s chair in the next municipal election. The next local election won’t take place until November 2018 but Siegers said she was making the announcement two years in advance because some in the community were expecting her to run for the Liberal party nomination in November.
• A windstorm that hit the Sunshine Coast on Oct. 6 toppled trees, beached boats and ripped down power lines between Port Mellon and Egmont. At one point during the height of the storm, more than 5,000 Sunshine Coast homes were without power.
• B.C. NDP leader John Horgan gave some hints about how the party plans to fight the 2017 provincial election and made a call for NDP supporters to open their wallets to help pay for the campaign during a weekend stop in Roberts Creek. Horgan joined Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons for a fundraising lunch Oct. 16 at the Roberts Creek Community Hall. More than 150 people, including several local government representatives, attended the event.
• Several dozen donors and volunteers toured the interior of the future Gibsons Public Market on Oct. 15, seeing first-hand how the 5,500-sq.-ft. former yacht club building is being transformed into a 13,500-sq.-ft. community gathering space and marine education centre.
• The Sunshine Coast Regional District board said it cannot support Burnco’s proposed gravel mine at McNab Creek. A motion that said the project poses a risk to the recovery of Howe Sound from earlier industrial activity and the area’s “renewed ecological, recreational and commercial vitality” passed in a 4-3 vote Oct. 13.
• Gibsons Mayor Wayne Rowe was trying to smooth things over with residents unhappy with the Town’s solution to deteriorating roads. Instead of repaving, the Town’s engineering department used chipseal (layers of tar, or bitumen, combined with fine gravel) on several secondary roads. More than a dozen people turned up at the Oct. 18 Gibsons council meeting in support of a petition complaining that the chipseal road surfacing on those roads posed safety and environmental hazards, and could cause vehicle damage.
• A trio of storms hit the Sunshine Coast, the biggest one on Oct. 15, with wind gusts as high as 50 km/h at the Sechelt Airport. On Oct. 17, when the second storm came through, Environment Canada recorded gusts of up to 65 km/h, with a total of 60 mm of rain over the course of the storm cycle. High stream flows led to a washout along the Port Mellon Highway at Dakota Creek.
• The Sechelt Water Resource Centre won two more awards in October, bringing the total number of trophies for the treatment plant to six so far. The treatment plant was named as the grand winner in the Canadian Design-Build Institute awards of excellence, winning top marks for innovation and design quality, and using best practices in building. The plant received also the 2016 Environmental Award from the Association of Professional Engineers and Geo-scientists of B.C.
• Sechelt Legion reached an agreement in principle with a local investor looking to buy the property, said Paul Lith, of the Legion’s sales team.
• Exhausted snow geese were literally dropping out of the sky and landing in yards and on roadways, unable to return to their flocks to complete migration. The Gibsons Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre had three snow geese brought in for care, and Irene Davy of the centre said that while tests were still being done, it appeared the birds were too physically spent to carry on.
• People were lined up out the door and around the Seaside Centre in Sechelt for the open house on the Sunshine Coast fixed link feasibility study. For many on the lower Sunshine Coast it was the first chance to see the details of the four proposed fixed link scenarios and question some of the people behind the study, including West Vancouver-Sea to Sky MLA Jordan Sturdy. Consultant R.F. Binnie was awarded the $250,000 contract for the study earlier this year, and there had already been a series of invitation-only meetings with local government leaders, First Nations, Chambers of Commerce and others, as well as technical workshops.
• The shíshálh community gathered to celebrate the shíshálh Nation’s 30 years of self-government at the Sechelt Indian Band community hall on Oct. 15. Chief Calvin Craigan looked forward to the next agreement he plans to pen for the Nation. “The 30 years of self-governance is a great opportunity to look at where we’re going in our future, where did we come from in the past and how do we combine those things as we go forward, as we gain self-reliance, as we gain jurisdiction,” Craigan said.
• Sunshine Coast community volunteers were honoured at a Celebration of Excellence on Oct. 28 presented by the Volunteer Centre, a project of Sunshine Coast Community Services Society. Many of them gathered at Roberts Creek Hall along with their supporters, nominators and an enthusiastic audience who learned a bit more about the 18 recipients in seven categories of service, including three group projects, pushing the total to 55 people.
• Candidates for Powell River-Sunshine Coast were starting to line up for the May 2017 provincial election. Incumbent NDP candidate Nicholas Simons was acclaimed on Oct. 22. Sechelt Chamber of Commerce president Kim Darwin was announced as the area’s Green candidate on Oct. 31. Darwin said she would either step down or take a leave of absence as Chamber president.
NOVEMBER
• The Sunshine Coast Homeless Shelter was full every night since it opened Oct. 15, which was worrisome for shelter coordinator Alicia Ladouceur. “If it’s full now and it’s not even cold yet, it’s pretty concerning,” Ladouceur said.
• Dedicated and tireless are words that came up a lot as people remembered Celia Fisher, who died Oct. 26 at the age of 81. She lived most of her life on the Sunshine Coast and had a profound impact through her work as a teacher’s aide, school trustee in the 1960s and ’70s, union local president, Sunshine Coast Regional District director from 1999 to 2005, volunteer, and board member for various community groups.
• Warren Paull was elected to fill the vacant spot on shíshálh Nation council left by former councillor Garry Feschuk, who suffered a stroke in May. Paull won the shíshálh Nation’s Oct. 29 byelection with 78 votes.
• Sechelt council had an opportunity to hear directly from officials with Trellis Seniors Services, the company Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) has tapped to build and operate a new long-term care facility to replace Totem Lodge and Shorncliffe, which are slated for closure in 2018. If the project goes ahead, Silverstone would be built on property between the end of Cowrie Street and Derby Road near the existing Silverstone Heights subdivision. Sechelt council will be a key voice in whether it goes ahead because it requires official community plan and zoning amendments.
• A $1.6-billion LNG project will go ahead at the Woodfibre site in Howe Sound, company officials and B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced Nov. 4. “This project is a go,” said Byng Giraud, vice-president of corporate affairs for Woodfibre LNG Ltd., explaining that the parent company of Woodfibre, Pacific Oil and Gas Ltd., had given approval to build the LNG plant. The project is expected to create 650 construction jobs during a two-year building phase and about 100 jobs over 25 years once the plant is operational.
• A letter signed by more than 50 Sunshine Coast doctors painted a bleak picture of the state of long-term care in the community and took Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) to task for not coming up with a workable solution. The letter, addressed to Health Minister Terry Lake, called on the provincial government to “ensure that the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority fulfills its obligations to our community.” Dr. Jim Petzold, the physician lead for the residential care beds advocacy group of Sunshine Coast Division of Family Practice, said it had been obvious to local doctors for some time that the plan VCH has on the table falls far short of what the community needs.
• Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) directors took a cautious approach to working with a new group that wants to convince Vancouver Coastal Health to revisit its plans for long-term care. The group Friends of Residential Care Sunshine Coast appeared before the SCRD’s Nov. 10 board meeting to ask for support for their effort to go out to Sunshine Coast residents and try to develop a long-term care strategy that would be “a better alternative to the proposal currently before us.”
• Mathew Wilson was acclaimed as the provincial Liberal candidate on Nov. 12. Wilson is the son of former Liberal leader Gordon Wilson, who served the Powell River-Sunshine Coast riding from 1991 to 2001, and stepson of Judi Tyabji, former Liberal MLA for Okanagan-East riding.
• After less than six months on the job as director of planning and development for the District of Sechelt, Andre Isakov tendered his resignation, effective Nov. 18. Isakov’s departure was the latest in a long list of senior managers who have left the district since the current council was elected two years ago.
• Buddy Boyd and Barb Hetherington – co-owners of the Gibsons Recycling Depot – sold the land the business sits on and were looking for interested parties to purchase their business. The recycling depot will continue to operate for the next year through an agreement with the new landowner.
• The Mayne-Surtees Memorial Society gifted Sunshine Coast Lions Housing Society $93,337.06 for a future seniors’ affordable housing project at Greenecourt that could get underway next year.
• Bob and Sue Hoy of Marketplace IGA were awarded the top prize of business of the year at the Sechelt and District Chamber of Commerce’s inaugural Business Excellence Awards, presented by the Sunshine Coast Credit Union at the Sunshine Coast Golf and Country Club on Nov. 18.
• A project spearheaded by the Pender Harbour Seniors Housing Society was one of 68 that will share in $516 million in provincial funding, Premier Christy Clark and Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced. Society vice chair Mike Carson said the announcement puts them in a position to break ground at Lily Lake Place in early 2017 after more than two decades of planning and raising money.
• A high-angle rescue team was called out Nov. 23 to help free the driver of a vehicle that went into a creek near Madeira Park. Const. Harrison Mohr of Sunshine Coast RCMP said the accident happened in the 12,000 block of Highway 101, north of Middlepoint Road, around 1:30 p.m. when an SUV went off the road and down a 12-metre cliff, coming to rest in a creek bed on the edge of another drop-off. The Pender Harbour Volunteer Fire Department and BC Ambulance crews were first to the scene. RCMP, Sunshine Coast Search and Rescue, and the Sechelt Fire Department also took part in the rescue effort. The driver spent nearly a week in hospital, where she was treated for hypothermia, a broken nose, a concussion and other injuries.
DECEMBER
• Pacific Ferries suspended its foot-passenger service between Gibsons and Vancouver on Nov. 25, with the aim of starting back up in the spring. The reasons given for the sudden stoppage were reliability, as both of the company’s vessels need work, and bad weather that made sailing dangerous at times.
• Cadet Warrant Officer Makenna Gregorchuk from the 2963 Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps out of Sechelt was honoured with the Major-General W.A. Howard Medal – which is awarded annually to only 13 out of the approximately 18,000 cadets in Canada – at a ceremony on Dec. 3.
• Michelle and Doug Sikora came a big step closer to having a storefront location for their S&M Medicinal Sweet Shoppe. The couple were issued a business licence by the Town of Gibsons and plan to set up shop in the 700 block of Gibsons Way in early 2017. S&M was the second marijuana dispensary to be recently granted a licence by the Town. The Healing Hut, run by Brenda Haeber and Mike Harris, opened on Marine Drive in November.
• The Ruby Lake Lagoon Society kicked off a campaign to raise $10 million for a state-of-the-art aquatic research and monitoring station in Pender Harbour that will double as an education centre and community gathering place, complete with a 200-seat conference centre. It will offer an interactive subterranean freshwater and marine aquarium, a wet laboratory classroom, three fully equipped marine and freshwater research and monitoring laboratories, two outdoor amphitheatre classrooms and performance spaces. The vision is to have the Pender Harbour Ocean Discovery Station (PODS) open to the public in 2020.
• Gibsons Public Market was promised $360,725 from the Canada 150 Community Infra-structure Program. MP Pam Goldsmith-Jones made the announcement Dec. 10. The Canada 150 grant will help pay for the market’s Nicholas Sonntag Marine Education Centre, expected to open next summer.
• The post-project completion review of Sechelt’s Water Resource Centre was released to the public and it answered some long-standing questions about the building of the treatment plant on Ebbtide Street. The report by Deloitte LLP was commissioned by the district at the suggestion of the Auditor General for Local Government and involved the investigation of more than 9,000 files.
• The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was trying to determine what killed an orca found dead in the waters of Trail Bay on Dec. 20. The orca carcass was towed onto the beach at Selma Park for a necropsy with assistance from Vancouver Aquarium’s marine mammal research program.
• Gibsons council wanted staff to hold off on business licences for marijuana dispensaries until there was more detail from the federal and provincial governments. The Town issued licences for a pair of storefront marijuana dispensaries in November and December, and one for a compassion club in 2015. The approach had been to treat them as retail stores, and leave the question of whether they’re selling an illegal product to RCMP to handle.
• An early morning fire on Dec. 19 that completely destroyed a trailer at Creekside Campground and RV Park in Wilson Creek was likely caused by a portable space heater being placed too close to combustibles, according to Sechelt Fire Chief Trevor Pike. The Sechelt Fire Department was alerted to the blaze on Dec. 19 and within 14 minutes they had 22 firefighters on scene.
