The first half of 2016 gave us federal approval (and local disapproval) of the Woodfibre LNG plant.
We saw vacancy rates that were very low and pot shops that were very … controversial. But between a Drake Passage voyager and a bike trail saboteur, what was most striking about this year was community generosity, as evidenced in the story below.
JANUARY
Approximately 141 helpful souls turned up at North Vancouver’s RCMP detachment to offer stem cells to community policing volunteer Nancy Taylor, who had been diagnosed with leukemia.
Prior to the event, Taylor said: “Hopefully lots of people show. I really want to live. I want to do so much.”
Her cancer is currently in remission and she’s on the road to a full recovery, according to Cpl. Richard De Jong.
Tributes poured in after Matthew Hutchinson, 24, died in a double murder-suicide in upstate New York. The college student and hockey player was remembered as a “great young man” by his former coach Jon Calvano.
“He was a kid who, if you had a daughter, you wouldn’t mind your daughter marrying.”
Presentation House Gallery’s new waterfront location is “the dawn of a new era,” according to gallery director Reid Shier.
Covered with crumpled and unfolded reflective metal, the shining photography gallery is due to open its doors in the fall of 2017.
A North Vancouver woman who spent years dragging branches and boulders into the path of mountain bikers was sentenced to 150 hours of community service.
Tineke Kraal’s pre-dawn exploits were revealed after two mountain bikers set up surveillance cameras along the trails.
Kraal’s attorney argued house arrest was unnecessary given Kraal had been “publicly denounced” and was the target of vicious comments on social media sites. Kraal, 65, was also banned from mountain biking trails for three years.
Housing crisis hits North Shore
The value of both North Vancouver cottages and West Vancouver mansions leaped 20 per cent, with one West Bay abode assessed at $29.7 million.
“You wonder where your kids are going to live,” said West Vancouver Coun. Craig Cameron.
Saving for a down payment – which took six years in the 1970s – now takes about 23, noted Generation Squeeze founder Paul Kershaw, who suggested there seems to be a “lottery about when you were born.”
That lottery resulted in a generation missing from the District of North Vancouver. However, regulators still seemed reluctant to push millionaire speculators from the market, according to UBC geography professor David Ley.
“Some members of the development lobby don’t want to harm the goose that lays the golden egg,” he said.
The scarcity of affordability was most acute for pet owners, as Jess Nelson lobbied local MLAs to prevent pet-based discrimination after her attempts to move to the North Shore with her dog Red were spurned.
“I think pets contribute quite a bit to people’s mental health and even community,” she said.
In North Vancouver, a “non-violent revolution” took a tiny step forward as Samantha Gambling searched for a parking spot for her 10 by 22-foot home.
Gambling is still searching for a place to plunk her tiny house.
In West Vancouver council debated a vacancy tax before deciding the associated pitfalls were too numerous.
“Are we going to ask neighbours to rat on their neighbours?” asked Mayor Michael Smith.
In a bid to preserve a dying language, Carson Graham grad Khelsilem partnered with Simon Fraser University to launch a Squamish language adult immersion program. Many Squamish speakers, including Khelsilem’s grandmother, had been fluent in their mother tongue before being forced into residential schools.
“I was really worried about what would happen to our language if we didn’t do more,” he said.
A Syrian family made the excruciating journey from a Beirut refugee camp to North Vancouver as war ravaged their home country.
Mother Honada Abdulhafiz described the refugee camp as “like a jail,” when speaking through a translator. The family fled Damascus on foot as Honada cradled her youngest son in her arms, amid “killings, bombings and shootings.”
Honada expressed simple hopes: “To be able to sleep safely, for the kids to be able to go to school and get an education, to be able to eat and live a simple life.”
FEBRUARY
Fran Flann, an 82-year-old woman who’d been discharged from hospital following a mastectomy, wound up in a homeless shelter while her Lower Lonsdale apartment was remediated for bedbugs.
Vancouver Coastal Health funded a one-week stay in a motel but Flann couldn’t find anywhere to go after checkout. Newly homeless seniors falling through the cracks is a “growing problem and it’s getting worse,” according to Leya Iguchi, director of services with Hollyburn Family Services Society.
With a 2020 deadline looming for the new Lions Gate sewage treatment project, municipal governments are still hoping the province will take on a third of the $700 million bill.
While the federal government chipped in $212 million – approximately $21 million shy of municipal expectations – the provincial government has yet to offer funding.
City of North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto said he was hopeful the announcement would come close to the upcoming provincial election.
“Any party would do that,” he said.
The Lynn Valley Legion was ordered closed in February due to mould and a mouse infestation.
However, what seemed like a temporary problem quickly turned chronic as B.C./Yukon Command’s handling of the situation: “virtually ensured extended closure and a public blemish on the branch’s reputation,” according to a report written by arbitrator James E. Dorsey.
Dorsey awarded $32,000 to fired longtime legion bartender Jamie McLaughlin, who said his name was tarnished after the shutdown was partially attributed to “financial irregularity.”
“For my wife and my daughter, people need to know I’m not a thief,” he said.
The branch was briefly opened for an alcohol-free reception on Remembrance Day but otherwise remained closed.
After sitting vacant for two years, the City of North Vancouver issued the demolition permit for North Vancouver General Hospital, an East 13th Street fixture since 1929.
“Because this hospital has been around for 85 years, it’s touched a lot of hearts,” said Lions Gate Hospital Foundation president Judy Savage.
MARCH
Border disputes flared when a Coors’ TV ad featured a narrator asking: “Will you brave going out of bounds?” as skiers and snowboarders charged past an out-of-bounds sign.
The commercial aired weeks after a 40-year-old snowboarder was found dead on Cypress Mountain hours after his photo was snapped in front of a sign warning: Do Not Go Beyond This Point.
The Coors commercial “works against everything our education is trying to accomplish,” said North Shore Rescue team leader Mike Danks.
Molson Coors Canada quickly pulled the ad.
Upper Delbrook residents were distraught after BC Hydro crews “ringed” more than 100 Mosquito Creek trees. Dozens of trees were cut with a chainsaw in order to kill the trees by severing the nutrient line between the roots and tree.
Despite the site’s risk for wildfire and slope hazards, there was no prior consultation with the District of North Vancouver, according to environmental officer Richard Boase.
West Vancouver council shattered expectations by charging homeowners an average of $186 to help maintain community assets.
“We have not done this properly for 100 years,” noted Coun. Nora Gambioli.
Council approved what Coun. Bill Soprovich called a “shocking” 6.87 per cent property tax increase later in the spring. Deferring the hike in the hopes of a “golden era when LNG flows” isn’t an option, said Coun. Craig Cameron.
“We have always robbed Peter (that is the capital account) to pay Paul (that is the operating),” agreed Coun. Mary-Ann Booth.
The WeeMedical dispensary is bringing lowdown activity and unstable people to Lower Lonsdale, according to parent Tomasa Cruz.
“The lights are on and flashing. Anybody who can read can see it,” she said of the shop.
Those concerns were rebuffed by many, including letter writer Dean Hill who described the “protect the children” argument as being “pretty lame when you consider the cold beer and wine store … are both in the same neighbourhood.”
North Vancouver resident Abby Antal boarded the Ocean Endeavour in Argentina with plans to cross the Drake Passage before heading to the Antarctic Peninsula.
“It’s the trip of a lifetime,” Antal said from her Lynn Valley living room. “I’m like a little kid at Christmas time … I can’t wait.”
The plan to process and export 2.1 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas from the former pulp mill site southwest of Squamish won federal approval despite fervent opposition. Woodfibre’s strategy to send 40 double-hulled LNG-bearing tankers to Asia each year is unlikely to hurt the environment, according to Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna.
Woodfibre is expected to buy electricity for a 28 per cent discount, paying $60 per megawatt hour instead of $84.
The switch to electricity will reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 350,000 tonnes, according to Premier Christy Clark.
The discount “has all the air of a political decision rather than an economic one,” argued environmentalist and project opponent Eoin Finn. “The taxpayers of B.C. and the ratepayers of BC Hydro are going to pay through the nose for this.”
Woodfibre decided to swap their seawater-cooling system for an air-cooling system following pressure from Squamish Nation chiefs and council concerned about the area’s marine life.
Good Samaritans turn in cash – again and again
Five-finger rebates abounded after a slew of absent-minded citizens sprinkled the North Shore with wads of cash.
What the police would only call “substantial amounts” of cash were found in West Vancouver, Central Lonsdale, and even on a hiking trail. In each case, the folks who found the money promptly turned it over to police.
APRIL
A 10-bed hospital unit for youth with mental health and substance abuse problems was announced as an addition to the HOpe Centre at Lions Gate Hospital.
The centre is earmarked for psychiatric assessments of youth between 13 and 18 years of age.
After 50 years of using Park Royal as their pawn shop, approximately 30 chess players were effectively ejected by mall management.
Barring the knight traders “destroys Park Royal as a community hub,” said chess player George Ingham.
After the mall’s ill-fated attempt at exile, Park Royal eventually welcomed back the rook club, which expanded by about 15 members during the turf war.
Chess now has an exclusive spot on the second floor of Park Royal south.
The City of North Vancouver is set to bring a winter ice rink, summer splash pool and movable concert stage to the waterfront through a partnership with Quay Property Management, the parent company of Lonsdale Quay Market.
Quay Properties will be paying about $35 million in construction costs as well as lease payments to the city. The revenue from the lease should cover the city’s operating costs, according to Mayor Darrell Mussatto.
“We’ll be making money out of this project every year,” said community development director Gary Penway.
Council battled monster houses by forbidding homes on consolidated lots from being more than one-and-a-half times bigger than the house on the neighbourhood’s smallest lot.
“There may have only been nine (lot consolidations in the past six years) but they’ve been stupendously awful,” noted former Coun. Rod Day.
The regulations were welcomed by Dundarave architect Katie Hlynsky, who said West Vancouver’s charm was imperilled by an increasing “suburbia on steroids.”
MAY
Moodyville’s post-war bungalows are set to be replaced with 1,890 wood-frame apartments and townhouses on 256 lots, following a split council vote.
The move to quadruple the population east of St. Davids Avenue and south of East Second Street is a “vision for the way the world has to go,” according to Mayor Darrell Mussatto, who noted the era of single-family homes had passed.
“We can’t cut down trees anymore and put in houses. We can’t use the farmland, we can’t fill in the inlet, so our only choice is to do better with what we have.”
A woman’s life was saved after her minivan veered out of control, hit a retaining wall, and ended up on its side. With the injured driver trapped inside, Yuen Wang was joined by father and son contractors Charles and
Michael Frass who tried to lift the vehicle.
“Remember seeing in the movies that in extreme circumstances you get super-human strength? It doesn’t work,” Charles said.
After seeing the driver’s blood “running over the stones,” Wang jumped in a forklift he’d been keeping in his garage and lifted the minivan while the Frasses pulled the injured driver to safety.
JUNE
Both the City of North Vancouver and the Tsleil-Waututh Nation expressed interest in hosting a casino after the B.C. Lottery Commission suggested there was untapped revenue on the North Shore.
With between $1.5 and $2.2 million up for grabs annually, City of North Vancouver Coun. Holly Back said she’d “rather see the money in our purse than theirs.”
Speaking to the West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce in March, Mayor Michael Smith suggested: “It would take a very brave man,” to pitch a casino in West Van.
A conflict that pitted density against heritage landed in District of North Vancouver council after the owners of the century-old Thomson House on East Windsor put in a bid to subdivide their 100-foot lot and build a new house alongside the old one.
“This is preservation of a neighbourhood as-is, where-is,” said Scott Sweatman, one of several neighbours who successfully opposed the subdivision. “That sounds like NIMBYism and I don’t apologize for it.”
Neighbour Glen Robitaille balked at the notion a subdivision would yield affordability, defining the conflict as: “multimillionaires versus millionaires.”
District council eventually scrapped the proposal and is considering granting a demolition permit.
The province pledged $37.6 million to rebuild Argyle’s seismically unsound school, leaving the school district with an $11.4 million tab to pay.
The new school will have a capacity of 1,300 students and is slated to open in the fall or winter of 2019.
School trustees initially hoped the school would have a full performance space and washrooms accessible from outside the school.
But that $52 million-vision was nixed when the District of North Vancouver rejected the school district’s bid to rezone an unused portion of land at Braemar elementary.
The rezoning plan would have put seven single-family homes on the wooded piece of property and put $2.4 million in the school district’s coffers.
After being unjustly sentenced to 27 years in prison related to a series of sexual assaults, Ivan Henry, now 69, was acquitted of all charges and awarded more than $8 million.
Showing what a B.C. Supreme Court justice called “shocking disregard” for Henry’s charter rights, the Crown withheld crucial information that would have undermined their case.
Another man was eventually convicted of some crimes Henry had been accused of.
West Vancouver council endorsed a five-year plan to swap nine buildings for a new arts centre and bistro while trading parking spots for a Spirit Trail expansion.
The plan was criticized over the demolition of Music Box, Silk Purse and Lawson Creek Studios.
Boaters also criticized the plan for cutting off car access to the boat ramp.
“The Spirit Trail … trumps the boat launch for now,” said Coun. Nora Gambioli.
“I would ask for a little bit of trust that we’re not going to do anything stupid there,” said Mayor Michael Smith.
