Valleyview bike overpass ready to open — well, not quite

Tuesday, May 29, would have been a fine day to officially open the new Valleyview bike-pedestrian overpass. Next week, after all, is Bike to Work Week.

But, the opening won’t be held that day as City officials had hoped. Instead, the opening of what is officially called the Valleyview Interchange Multi-use Pathway (somebody really must come up with a better name) will be a week later, on June 5.

The reason has to do with the way politics work. When governments write cheques using our money (in this case, the province put up $2.7 million, the feds $2.1 million and the City the rest), they want to be there for the photo-op.

It takes a bit of co-ordination. Schedules must be matched; microphone times agreed upon, press releases approved.

In this case, after the date was picked, a memo was sent off from City Hall to Victoria. Unfortunately, the message got mired in the bureaucracy for awhile before making its way to Kevin Krueger and Terry Lake.

By that time, the MLAs were under whip orders not to stray from the legislature as the clock winds down on the current session and bills back up.

Colleen Lepik, the City’s transportation coordinator, diplomatically describes the change in dates as being due to “some scheduling issues.”

For his part, Lake says the whole thing was due to “a miscommunication” and he badly wanted to attend since he’s been involved with the project going back to when he was mayor.

“We can’t leave (Victoria) because the numbers are tight,” he explained. “It was just unfortunate.”

While the path is already in use, marking the milestone with an official opening is a big deal — the project has been a decade in the making, spanning the terms of four City councils. After years of complaining from Valleyview residents back at the turn of the century, the council of the day agreed to build the overpass, and began saving money.

As the years passed, the estimated cost went from less than $2 million to double that, then, by 2008, more than $4.2 million and then close to $6 million. Last fall, council had to add another $171,000 for the final phase when only one suitable bid came in.

To boot, working around train schedules proved a challenge.

The need for the project has its origins in construction of what we call “the bypass” in the 1970s, the whole focus of which was on moving traffic past Kamloops as quickly and efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, the bypass doesn’t bypass Valleyview at all, going right through it and severing that community from the core of the city.

Valleyview residents, already chafing from being forcibly amalgamated with the City, have always regarded the bypass barrier as an irritant.

The new crossing isn’t without its detractors. Some people think the money could have been better used for other things. But while few understood it at the time, it became a necessity as soon as the route for the so-called bypass was drawn on paper those decades ago.

Bike to Work Week provided the perfect time for the official opening. Instead, next week there will be a “celebration station” at the site, with the main event a week later.

As of yesterday, MP Cathy McLeod hadn’t confirmed whether or not she can attend on the new date. Let us hope she has an opening in her calendar.

And now, for last year’s news on KGHM

Tuesday evening, a story began circulating around Kamloops that KGHM mine workers were rioting in Poland.

Yesterday, the email was stirring up some online conversations about the implications of a riot involving employees of the Polish mining giant that wants to build the Ajax project in Kamloops.

Here, in part, is the email sent out from the Stop Ajax Mine address to members of City council, MLAs Terry Lake and Kevin Krueger, MP Cathy McLeod and local media:

“Several hundred Polish miners have attacked the company headquarters of KGHM mining in Lubin. Europe’s number two copper miner is in talks with unions over pay, and company boss Herbert Wirth was in the building when it was attacked. Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the violence….’”

The post carries a hyperlink to a video of the riot, then offers some commentary:

“This is appalling. We do not advocate any kind of violence, but is this any indication of how KGHM treats their workers? Do we really want someone like this to run a mine in our town? And can we ‘trust’ that they’ll be a good corporate neighbour? Remember that the worst facts are never made public… what is worse than this?”

In response, a commenter on the Stop Ajax website said, “This is absolutely ridiculous! Why would anyone want to work for a company who’s own employees literally riot to get what they deserve? Why would we want them in our country, let alone our city?!”

“I hope someone from the Union that is supporting the Ajax bid has a response,” wrote another. “It sounds like they are threatening the Union workers, not a great way to collective bargain and a sign of what the future holds for the Ajax mine? Doesn’t sound like happy, well paid workers to me????”

Coun. Arjun Singh asked via email, “Just for clarification, did the company turn violent? I see that some workers, in this instance, did. I am not sure the company, any company rep, did.”

Good point but the event, as it turns out, happened a year ago. The KGHM miners clashed with a police line for awhile, appear to have briefly entered the building, broke some windows, and left.

Trouble in the Polish mining business isn’t confined, it seems, to worker-employer relations. A month before the KGHM confrontation, six coal mines owned by a different company suspended work for a day to protest the government’s plan to partially privatize the operation.

During the communist era, an article points out, miners were well paid and could retire early. “Now they fear their benefits are at risk as the country shuts down unproductive mines…”

The question is, though, why circulate a year-old news story about KGHM to local media and politicians? Ammunition for the anti-mine side, of course, but pretty low-calibre. Or, there’s this:

“I didn’t notice the date on it,” said Jarrod Goddard, who operates the Stop Ajax Mine website for the Kamloops Area Preservation Association, and who posted the story site after someone sent it to him. “That (circulation of a year-old story) would have just been a mistake,” he told me.

It might have been of more interest to point out last week’s story about KGHM’s big drop in first-quarter net profits. Not that that has anything much to do with Ajax, either, but at least it happened in 2012.

Is there a God? Well, yes and no…

The amazing thing about this past weekend’s Imagine No Religion 2 conference at the Kamloops Convention Centre is that it happened at all.

A few short years ago, it would have been, well, unimaginable in this community. Time was if you were asked, “Are you a Christian (or ‘religious,’ or ‘spiritual’) person?” and you could not answer yes, you were regarded as unworthy.

Now, the theist-atheist debate is on, and neither side has a monopoly on righteousness or wisdom.

Friday night’s debate — “Does a God, or Gods, exist?” — started things off for the conference and I was fortunate to have been invited to moderate it. The evening lived up to expectations, as philosophy instructor Michael Horner and ethics prof Paul Chamberlain debated for the “Yes” side, and humanism activist Christopher DiCaro and atheist Matt Dillahunty for the “No” side.

They were worthy adversaries, if that’s the word, though the debate was waged without the hostility and verbosity that sometimes characterizes the issue. In my view, the most effective debater was Chamberlain — not because of the views he expressed but because of his ability to speak and question forcefully. During the cross-examination, he relentlessly pursued Dillahunty, who seemed frustrated at times in not being able to shut him down with a zinger.

That’s as far as a neutral moderator (and a neutral observer of the issue itself) will go with analysis of the debating techniques, and overall neither side won on either the question or their sum-total success in the argument.

Inevitably, though not by direct reference, the debate wasn’t just about theism and atheism, but about the very meaning of life. A few quotes:

Chamberlain: “You cannot judge a viewpoint by its neglect.”

Dillahunty: “You cannot solve a mystery by appealing to a bigger myster.”

Horner: “The universe is not eternal.”

Chamberlain: “There is no good reason to believe God does not exist.”

DiCarlo: “”Just because the universe had to have a beginning…. This just happens to be the universe that succeeded. That doesn’t mean it got a push from a big god.”