MAY
• Firefighters on the Sunshine Coast responded to five fires in one week during late April and early May: a 2.5-hectare wildfire April 30 in Halfmoon Bay, a structure fire in Roberts Creek the same day, fires May 2 in Pender Harbour and Gibsons and a brush fire May 3.
• Sea Cavalcade Society executives, including president Conchita Harding, met May 1 with Mayor Bill Beamish and Coun. David Croal to discuss the future of the Sea Cavalcade and said it would host a one-day event in August.
• More than 200 children, youth and adult supporters showed up at Davis Bay Pier May 3 to call for action on climate change. “All of these youth out here, from kindergarten all the way to Grade 12, we’re all showing that this is our future and you are affecting it,” said Grade 11 student Siera Marits.
• West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Pam Gold-smith-Jones announced she would not be running for re-election.
• The developer behind the proposed George Hotel and Residences on the Gibsons waterfront demolished the last of the old buildings on the property along Gower Point Road and started drilling work for soil-testing and foundation design.
• New rules for outdoor water use came into in effect, following adoption of the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s drought management plan at the May 9 board meeting. The most significant changes were tighter restrictions on lawn watering and more flexibility for farmers.
• A 20-year-old Garden Bay resident, wanted on an arrest warrant relating to an assault and mischief charge, fled from RCMP into the woods on May 9. He was later arrested after police service dog Duke led police to his whereabouts.
• Cleanup continued at the Pier 17 building in Davis Bay after a fire May 9. The fire spread into the attic of the building when the sprinkler system kicked in. “That sprinkler system saved the building,” Sechelt Fire Chief Trevor Pike said. The businesses that suffered water damage included Gourmet Girl Café and the constituency office of Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons.
• The Sechelt Fire Department got called out to shíshálh Nation lease lands on May 10 around 3 a.m. after neighbours phoned 911. The first crews were on the scene within eight minutes, by which time the home was fully engulfed in flame. Neighbours had tried to alert anyone in the home, but it wasn’t until firefighters could get inside that the victim, a man in his early 60s, was found.
• A rainbow was painted in stripes on the cul-de-sac outside Gibsons Elementary School entrance on May 13, at a cost of $200. Last year Chatelech Secondary School got its own rainbow crosswalk, but this was a first for the district’s elementary schools.
• More than 25 people spoke at a May 14 public hearing in Madeira Park about the Pender Harbour Ocean Discovery Station (PODS), and most were in support of the project. PODS was expected to cost at least $20 million and would include an auditorium for arts and culture events and conferences, a research facility and aquarium, restaurant and pub, gift shop and boat ramp.
• BC Timber Sales awarded cutting rights in the Clack Creek area cutblock A93884 to Squamish-based Black Mount Logging. In a May 14 press release, Elphinstone Logging Focus said that with its court challenge still in progress, the auction should not have gone ahead.
• Sechelt council voted May 15 to issue the development permit for a restaurant at the Trail Bay Centre to be called El Segundo, after the plans were changed to address concerns raised by the advisory planning commission.
• The Porpoise Bay land that was the proposed site of the Sechelt Sustainable Communities mixed-use development project was once again up for sale, this time under court order. The land was the subject of a Supreme Court of BC foreclosure proceeding brought against the company in June 2018 by Eagles Edge Capital Corporation. Eagles Edge claimed that SSC defaulted on a loan of $10.75 million.
• Shíshálh Nation member Tony Paul began carving a 30-foot red cedar tree that will be transformed over the next six months as part of the Carving Tears into Dreams of Reconciliation project.
• Garden Bay Pub was heavily damaged by an off-duty employee after he was barred from consuming more alcohol on May 18. Const. Karen Whitby said the man hit an on-duty employee with a beer glass and proceeded to wreak havoc inside the waterfront pub. The “severely intoxicated” man was arrested for assault with a weapon and for mischief over $5,000, with estimated damages to the pub of more than $50,000.
• Mayor Darnelda Siegers voted in favour of moving ahead with a recommendation by Sunshine Coast Regional District staff to fold two projects into an alternative approval process – water meter installations and Church Road wells. Sechelt and the Sechelt Indian Government District were the last phase in a years-long project to have water meters universally installed on the Sunshine Coast.
• Several members of the public suggested costs for upgrades to Gibsons wastewater treatment system should be taken on by the George Hotel and Residences development. Crucial upgrades to the Prowse Road lift station, through which 40 per cent of Gibsons’ wastewater flows on its way to the town’s wastewater treatment plant, were expected to cost about $1.76 million. The site of the George is situated in the lift station’s catchment area, which covers nearly half of Gibsons.
• Directors unanimously voted in favour of ice being installed at the Gibsons arena starting in August at a May 23 meeting.
• A beach fire that was left smouldering caused a bigger blaze May 25 that destroyed a small homeless camp on the beach the foot of Shorncliffe Avenue.
• Councillors on Sechelt’s committee of the whole voted to support a five-storey version of the proposed Wade project, a mixed-use building at the intersection of Wharf Avenue and East Porpoise Bay Road.
• After nearly a decade at St. Hilda’s Anglican Church in Sechelt, Rev. Clarence Li resigned to assume the role of executive director of the Sunshine Coast Association for Community Living. Glen McClughan, the current executive director, was expected to retire, and Li officially took over the role July 1.
JUNE
• B.C. Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin made her first official visit to the Sunshine Coast June 1 and 2. She and her husband Ashley Chester toured the Gibsons Public Market and the Nicholas Sonntag Marine Education Centre. Other stops included a reception at Gibsons Town Hall, an Indigenous walking tour, a viewing of the Sunshine Coast Arts Council’s exhibit All That We Are LGBTQ2+, a tour of the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden, a visit to the Tems Swiya Museum and a stop at Sunshine Coast Community Services.
• Lt.-Gov. Austin threw her support behind the Pender Ocean Discovery Station (PODS) as an official patron of the Ruby Lake Lagoon Society, the organization behind the project.
• Some 250 Creekers came out June 2 to celebrate the 85th anniversary of the Roberts Creek Community Hall, pose for a community photo and hear the stories of long-time Crowe Road resident Jeff Newman.
• Human-bear conflicts were more numerous on the Sunshine Coast than in previous years, with warmer temperatures and limited food supply the likely culprits. Two bears were destroyed after break and enters into homes and vehicles and one was destroyed for humane reasons due to injuries by a vehicle.
• Stage 2 water regulations were imposed June 7 for all Sunshine Coast Regional District water users south of the Pender Harbour water system, which remains at Stage 1. The Town of Gibsons also went to Stage 2 on June 7, but under a slightly different set of rules.
• Gibsons chief administrative officer Emanuel Machado accused Gibsons Alliance of Business and Community of “ongoing bullying and harassment” of staff. He read a seven-minute statement he called an expression of Town staff’s “collective frustration” with GABC.
• The third phase of the Tsain-Ko Village Shopping Centre in Sechelt was officially marked with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of Tim Hortons on June 7.
• The District of Sechelt received $1 million to resurface and extend the runway at the municipally owned airport. Sechelt was one of 16 regional airports to get funding from B.C. Air Access Program grants.
• A home in the 5200 block of Taylor Crescent in Halfmoon Bay was destroyed by fire June 9. There was no one in the home at the time and no one was injured.
• Persephone Brewing Company founder and CEO Brian Smith handed over the reins to Jenn Vervier, a former executive at one of the largest craft brewing companies in the United States. The transition occurred June 10. Smith will remain with the company as chair of Persephone’s board of directors, assisting with business development and its long-term strategy.
• A celebration was held June 14 at Davis Bay Elementary in recognition of a 1,500 sq. foot (139 sq. metre) greenhouse, built mostly by community volunteers, and elementary school students.
• More than 30 current and past staff, students and volunteers of the Sunshine Coast’s community cable station gathered at the Maryanne West Studio at Elphinstone Secondary June 15 to mark the channel’s 40th anniversary. Coast Community TV, now part of the Eastlink Community Television system, was founded by a group of Elphinstone students in the late 1970s, including Velcrow Ripper, who went on to become an award-winning independent filmmaker.
• Gibsons council adopted a loan authorization bylaw to pay for upgrades of the Prowse Road sewer lift station after an Alternative Approval Process vote came down in the Town’s favour. Opponents of the proposed $1.76-million loan argued the Town wasn’t requiring the developer of the George Hotel and Residences to pay a fair share of the cost, saying the waterfront project would be a major beneficiary of the new infrastructure and the extra burden it would place on the lift station was one of the main reasons it needs upgrading.
• A referendum conducted by shíshálh Nation resulted in majority support for a proposed 50-year extension of operations by Lehigh Hanson Materials in Sechelt. “For us it means two generations’ worth of economic surety,” shíshálh Nation Chief Warren Paull said.
• A tree falling on power lines was the suspected cause of a wildfire that broke out near Port Mellon on June 19. Two air tankers, four water-bucketing helicopters and a ground crew that included a Wildfire Service officer and six firefighters were brought in to get the fire under control.
• Drier and hotter than normal weather forced the Sunshine Coast Regional District to find new sources of water with potential to meet demand. “This magnitude of drought never occurred before,” infrastructure general manager Remko Rosenboom told SCRD directors June 20.
• National Indigenous Peoples Day in Sechelt was celebrated with a three-day smorgasbord of Indigenous arts and culture in Sechelt and Gibsons from June 21 to 23, beginning with a potluck at the longhouse to celebrate the progress of the syiyaya Reconciliation Movement.
• More than 350 people turned out for the fourth annual Pride Parade June 23 along the Davis Bay seawall and at Mission Point Park with Sunday in the Park with Pride, an all-ages, all-communities picnic, with music, a pet parade, henna art, theatre, and display booths.
• The Cecil Hill fire was discovered June 24 in a heavily wooded and steeply sloped area on the east side of Highway 101, near Lily Lake in Pender Harbour. Seven homes on Cecil Hill Road were on evacuation alert while 49 firefighters, seven helicopters and skimmers battled the blaze.
• A June 25 fire near Gibsons left a boat, a truck and a home destroyed. The fire was initially reported as flames seen coming from a garage on a property in the 1100 block of Rosamund Road in Elphinstone. When firefighters arrived, the truck, a 26-foot boat and the garage were all in flames.
• Gibsons council voted June 25 to provide funding for the Gibsons Shorelight Lantern Festival out of the money it set aside to support the now-cancelled Sea Cavalcade fireworks. The lantern festival was planned for July 27 and would involve a community picnic and concert in Winegarden Park and a lantern procession along the foreshore.
• Sunshine Coast Regional District voted unanimously to give third reading to zoning and Official Community Plan bylaw amendments, with some conditions, that would give Pender Harbour Ocean Discovery Station (PODS) the go ahead to start construction.
• Glen McClughan retired from his position as executive director at the Sunshine Coast Association for Community Living after spending more than two decades at the helm. McClughan’s last day was June 30. Clarence Li, former rector at St. Hilda’s Anglican Church in Sechelt, replaced him.
