MARCH
• Elected officials heard two different messages in early March about the residential care deal between Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and Trellis Seniors’ Services. The agreement, announced last June, will see VCH contract beds in the privately owned and managed Silverstone Care Centre in Sechelt and close Shorncliffe and Totem Lodge. About 30 members of the group Protect Public Health Care Sunshine Coast were at the Legislature March 1 to watch MLA Nicholas Simons present their petition calling for the VCH-Trellis deal to be scrapped.
• A memorial to volunteer search and rescue personnel who died on duty, including two women from the Sunshine Coast, was unveiled March 2 on the grounds of the Legislature in Victoria. The black granite monument bears the names of 17 people, including Angie Nemeth and Beatrice Sorensen, who were volunteer crew members with Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue in Halfmoon Bay. They died June 3, 2012, when a search vessel capsized in the Skookumchuck Rapids during a training exercise.
• The District of Sechelt hired a new chief administrative officer – Andrew Yeates – who would take the top spot in Sechelt on April 1. Sechelt had been without a CAO since Jan. 12, when former CAO Tim Palmer left the district after less than a year on the job. Yeates is the fourth CAO employed by the current council, which took office in 2014. The CAO at the time, Ron Buchhorn, resigned shortly after the new council was sworn in. Then Bill Beamish was hired as an interim CAO until Palmer was recruited.
• Gibsons Public Market had a soft opening on March 3 that saw almost 2,000 eager patrons peruse offerings of organic produce, baked goods, fish, meat, cheese, chocolate, flowers and more.
• In March, it was over two years since Ross and Erin Storey and their three children were forced by the District of Sechelt to leave their home, due to a sinkhole that opened near their front door on North Gale Avenue.
Since then, nothing has been done to fix the sinkhole, which has gotten worse, and no financial help has been extended to the Storeys. Other owners in the area were being cautioned by the district that the same (or worse) could happen to them. The sinkhole issues in the Seawatch development stretch back to 2012 when the first one swallowed a portion of Seawatch Lane. After that hole was fixed, there was evidence of ongoing underground soil erosion in the area until 2015 when another sinkhole opened outside the Storeys’ front door.
• On March 10, Freda England turned 106 years old and more than 100 family and friends came to celebrate with the Gibsons woman, believed to be the oldest person on the Sunshine Coast. She’s lived through the Great Depression, two World Wars and over a century of technological advances.
• Sechelt council said they won’t be releasing the results of its online citizen satisfaction survey because it was “hacked by a group of people on social media who encouraged negative responses,” Sechelt Mayor Bruce Milne told council at its March 15 meeting. He said the information was invalid because of the way the survey was set up.
• The biggest component of the new Berth 1 at the Langdale ferry terminal arrived March 20, after a two-day journey up Georgia Strait. The pontoon, which is 15 metres wide, 116 metres long (50 ft. x 380 ft.), and weighs just over 4,100 tonnes (4,500 tons), was built in Victoria by a consortium of more than a dozen companies led by United Engineering at a cost of $6 million. It took more than 100 workers nine months to build the pontoon, which comes complete with electrical wiring, piping, fencing and large bumpers for the ferries to rest against while in dock.
• A four-storey commercial/residential building was pitched for the corner of Cowrie Street and Trail Avenue in Sechelt, beside the fire hall. The proposal from Prime Signal Ltd. came to a planning and community development committee meeting on March 22, where staff noted the proposal was located “at an important corner” in downtown Sechelt.
• Gibsons-based zero waste advocates Buddy Boyd and Barb Hetherington were planning to leave this summer for the Bolt Across Canada, a two-month trip across the country in their newly acquired Chevy Bolt electric vehicle. “We’ve got to get out into communities in Canada to educate them as to what true zero waste is really all about,” Boyd said.
• The federal government pledged $60.5 million for BC Ferries terminal upgrades and vessel replacements, including about $17 million for the completion of the final phases of the Langdale terminal redevelopment. It’s the first time federal infrastructure funding has been granted to BC Ferries. West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Pam Goldsmith-Jones announced the funding March 31 at the Langdale terminal. The MLAs representing both ends of the Langdale-Horseshoe Bay route and BC Ferries president Mark Collins were also at the terminal for the announcement.
