The Ajax question with no answer — what will mine do to quality of life?

Ajax officials at press conference releasing letter. (Kamloops Daily News photo)

For all the questions it left unanswered, the KGHM International letter to mayor and council, released just before the weekend, answered, in a sense, the biggest and most troublesome question of all. And the answer is, strangely but almost predictably, that it cannot be answered.

It confirms that the ultimate impact of Ajax is a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

The 18-page letter, written in response to a query from the City of Kamloops almost two years ago, is full of non-answers on a wide range of issues. Page after page, point by point, it begins with phrases like “We are currently completing…,” “We are conducting…,” “We are currently generating…,” “We are working on…,” and “We are still quantifying….”

It comes as part of a promise by the project’s external affairs manager Yves Lacasse that KGHM will be more open and transparent about progress on its plans to build an open-pit copper mine straddling the south boundary of Kamloops.

In fairness, though the letter is long overdue, it at least attempts to provide a status update.

It begins by explaining that the company didn’t intend to mislead anyone by stating the mine would be 10 km. away. What it meant, the letter says, is that it would be 10 km. “driving distance” from the city.

Why, one must ask, did it take close to two years to clarify something so simple? There are many other questions with respect to environmental impacts, for example, that remain unanswered. But the company is working on them.

One major issue, the fate of Jacko Lake, is answered succinctly and without much reassurance.

“What will be the quality of Jacko Lake as a fishing lake if a 450m deep open-pit is located immediately adjacent?” asked the City’s letter, submitted by environmental services supervisor Jen Fretz in July 2011.

Indeed, Jacko Lake has been the subject of much concern ever since it became evident that KGHM proposes its giant hole in the ground immediately next to it.

The answer provided by KGHM is this: “Reports completed for the historic Afton Mine indicate that no complaints were received from Jacko Lake users during operation. Our socio-economic research will address impacts to fishing and other recreational opportunities and we are considering building a berm to block noise, sight, and dust from impacting lake users.”

There isn’t anything at all new in that. The maps and scale models have long shown that the pit will be virtually on the edge of the lake, and that a berm is supposed to protect it. The larger question is, will the pit, many times deeper than the lake, and the effect of the blasting, fracture the lake bottom and cause Jacko to drain?

But here is the one Really Big question, and the answer without an answer.

The City’s letter: “What will be the impact (positive and negative) on the quality of life for Kamloops residents as a result of mining operations?”

Lacasse’s answer: “This is a subjective question and the impact will certainly vary from resident to resident. We know that the economic impact will be positive and any negative environmental impacts will be mitigated as thoroughly as possible. This is a very difficult question to quantify and may require additional research once the mine is in operation.”

It is, indeed, subjective and hard to quantify. Yet the impact on the quality of life in Kamloops, on the vision of what this community wants itself to be, is the most important question of all.

And yet, it can’t possibly be answered until after the mine is in operation. Then, the answer will be all around us.

 

 

 

Why TRU tourism class is way off base on Tournament Capital

Save Canada’s Tournament Capital. (City of Kamloops website photo)

Interesting story in today’s Daily News about the Canada’s Tournament Capital brand.

TRU lecturer David Carter has assigned his tourism-management class to come up with a new marketing program for Kamloops. Interesting assignment, but the premise behind it is shallow and just plain off base.

The story quotes Kaethan Reichel of Kamloops Innovation Centre as saying, “This is a conversation that we as a city need to be having, but sometimes it feels as though the tournament capital brand is untouchable or a taboo subject.”

Hello? I’m guessing Reichel is new to Kamloops and hasn’t been around for the dozens of brain-storming sessions and public debates over branding the city, nor aware of the many past “brands” such as “Hub City,” “Lake a Day for As Long As Yo Stay,” “Heart of the West,” etc. etc.

The issue, as presented to the students, is that Tournament Capital doesn’t say enough about Kamloops and what it has to offer. Let me explain this again: No slogan can hope to capture the full “essence” of a city. And no city has to be just one thing.

Kamloops is the legitimate (and copyrighted) tournament capital of Canada. It’s also got great arts amenities. And is a great place to do business. And is a golf mecca. And an outdoor recreation wonderland. And boasts some of the best fly-fishing lakes in the world. And has become a technology incubator.

Try sticking all that in a logo. It’s a fatal mistake to try marketing a city to all demographics and interest groups at once. Target the specific markets. A city is different things to different people. You don’t sell a two-door convertible to a family of five.

The Tournament Capital program is a stupendous success. Millions of dollars in local, provincial and federal funding have created the facilities and programs to back it up, and millions are coming back in revenue. It works. Leave it alone.

Now, class, if you want to come up with a few other ideas on how to emulate that success in other areas of marketing the city, please proceed.

 

What I learned on a week of the Food Bank Diet

I’m trying to decide how to wrap up my day on this Friday, Dec. 7, but I’m pretty sure a good meal and a glass of Chardonnay will figure prominently. Since last Saturday, at the request of CBC radio, I’ve been on what I call the Food Bank Diet.

Today is their Food Bank Day, in which CBC studios all over the province raise funds and food for food banks. I was asked if I would be interested in living off a Food Bank hamper for a week, to which I agreed, but I figure up to but not including dinner tonight is close enough.

I began by getting a list of items from the Food Bank that are normally included in the monthly hamper provided to single clients. Some of it was already in the cupboard, so I made a stop at a grocery store and added the rest.

This is what’s included in the hamper: 1 tomato sauce/ pasta sauce, 1 dry soup, 1 small bag of rice, 1 can of beans, 1 can of meat/tuna/salmon, 3 cans of soup, 1 can of vegetables, 1 can of fruit, 1 small bag of dried pasta, 1 bag of cereal, 1 rice dish/Sidekicks, 1 KD.

That won’t get anyone through a month; I found that, by stretching things (for example, making two meals instead of one from a can of beans or soup), the hamper could likely last about 10 days. But then, it’s not expected to last a whole month; food bank clients provide the rest of their own food needs, helped out by twice-weekly offerings of perishable goods — bread, produce, pastries, etc. — from the Food Bank.

I allowed myself a loaf of bread and some greens in keeping with the perishable allotment and that definitely helped. But I wasn’t able to keep my meals totally in synch with the food available, and had to mix it up a bit, sometimes eating something for lunch or breakfast that would normally be reserved for dinner, and vice versa.

While the hampers are designed with the help of nutritionists, the non-perishables are pretty low in calories. My daily intake has easily been under 500 calories a day compared to the 2,000 a man of my age, weight, height and level of activity needs.

The result has been that I’ve dropped a few pounds. I was actually down five pounds until a couple of days ago, when one of them came back. Four or five pounds might sound pretty good to weight watchers, but I’ve been thin for the past while already so I can imagine the difficulty some hungry people have staying healthy.

What did I learn? A small insight into the challenges of not having enough food in the cupboard, and a re-affirmation of my admiration for those who make our amazing Food Bank possible, and for those who rely on it.

Thanks to CBC for inviting me to do this, and to Bernadette and Cori at the Food Bank for helping me set it up. I will toast you this evening when I uncork a fresh bottle of Chardonnay and enjoy a nice dinner.

City trying to bring escort agencies into the open

I wrote in Thursday’s Armchair Mayor column for The Daily News about the City’s planned change in business-licence fees for escort agencies.

Under amendments to the business-licence bylaw, Kamloops escort agencies, body-rub parlours and exotic dancing services will only have to pay $2,000 a year instead of $3,000. It becomes effective next calendar year.

The $3,000 fee has been in place since 1997, since the council of the day under Cliff Branchflower decided it would be a way of raising money to support a program called SHOP — Social and Health Opportunities for Persons in the sex trade.

It was akin to charging high taxes on tobacco to fund anti-smoking campaigns.

The SHOP program struggled for many years. At one point, six businesses in the above categories actually did pay for business licences, but for a long time there’s been only one. A few years ago, the City gave up on the concept of business fees paying for SHOP, and began funding it directly.

Originally hosted by the Phoenix Centre, SHOP has been under the wing of the ASK Wellness Centre for the past half-dozen years.

Escort agencies and related businesses, meanwhile, now operate largely underground. The Social Planning Council has been discussing the issue since late last year, and made the recommendation on the lowering of the business licences to $2,000 in hopes it would encourage some of them to come out in the open.

As I wrote in yesterday’s column, it won’t work, of course, but credit to the City for trying. While researching for the column, I talked with Randy Lambright at the City to find out more about what’s behind the change.

The value of licensing such businesses, or any business for that matter, is that it provides a means of monitoring them for safety and health issues and so on. For example, the escort-agency category requires proof of age of employees, to make certain under-aged workers aren’t being exploited. It also requires criminal-record checks by police when deemed advisable.

What do other cities do? According to Lambright, they vary but the new Kamloops fees are general in line with other places. Some cities still charge more; others don’t try to regulate sex businesses at all.

The column is on The Daily News website under the Columnists section.

Stories of pit-bull attacks just keep on coming

We’ll likely never reach consensus on the pit-bull issue, though a growing number of people are coming down on the side of banning them rather than trying to manage them through penalties.

The trouble with the latter is that by the time a fine is handed out the damage has been done.

One of my correspondents tells me of yet another pit-bull incident last week in which a Setter was attacked by two pit bulls that ran out from a house in Westsyde.

The Setter’s owner screamed for help and someone ran up and kicked one of the dogs until it broke off the attack.

“She (the attacked dog’s owner) took the bleeding dog to the vet right away while the witnesses stayed there to be interviewed by the RCMP and City Bylaw members. I don’t believe the story reached the media,” he writes.

“The attack was vicious and left the dog with horrible injuries to its hind quarters and neck…. Most people agree that the point has been reached where a decision has to be made for the good of public safety…

“What people don’t realize is the emotional damage such a serious dog attack inflicts on the innocent people involved.”

He then points out his own dog was attacked by a Golden Retriever a few months ago.  “Again, my wife was walking our dog, on a leash, in our own neighbourhood when the other dog rushed out of its house and attacked our dog on Westmount Drive. The dog required stitches and the owners of the other dog paid the vet bill of just over $500.”

One reaction might be that if a Golden Retriever — one of the gentlest of all dogs — can attack unprovoked, it proves that dealing with dangerous dogs by banning breeds isn’t going to work.

But the owner goes on to make the point, “In comparison, the attack was very minor compared to the level of viciousness displayed by the two pit bulls.”

The point being that there are two reasons banning pit bulls makes some sense: the high incidence of attacks by this particular breed, and their frightening power, which often results in serious injuries (and sometimes death) to dogs and humans.

Fabric buildings — when City Hall takes the fun out of life

Not things of beauty, but they get the job done.

It goes without saying that the fabric-covered garages and storage tents that have proliferated throughout the city and region are not the most attractive of structures.

They’re economical, practical, and a bit of an eyesore. I’ve got two of them.

In the city, they sit, staked to the ground, keeping cars and lawn mowers and firewood out of the weather. Out in the boonies, they cover everything from farm equipment to hay.

They aren’t the sturdiest of shelters, but they’re a step up from tarps. In the wind, they flap and rattle around on their aluminum frames, and in a few years they have to be taken down or replaced.

I see by today’s Daily News that the City of Kamloops is cracking down on them. Neighbours in Brocklehurst have complained about them, and several homeowners have received notice that they’re breaking City bylaws, which prohibit fabric structures in residential areas.

While the City says it’s partly a safety issue, the real problem is one of looks. Nobody cares if one of these things is set up behind a fence in a back yard, but when they show up in a driveway or visible side yard, neighbours aren’t always impressed.

One can see the point. But is it really so wrong to use a cheap alternative to building an expensive wood-frame or steel building to protect your treasured “baby” or keep odds and ends out of the rain and out of sight? Must everyone take out an extra mortgage to give cover to the toys of life?

Cripes, City Hall already legislates everything from the colour and trim of buildings to whether people can burn wood in a fireplace and have a couple of chickens in their backyards.

Maybe our lawmakers should ease up a little and stop taking the fun out of everything.

PS: Though your typical storage tent costs only a few hundred dollars, there are upper-end varieties that will rival stick-built structures. In fact, early in the planning for the Tournament Capital Centre, a proposal was made that a steel and fabric design be considered.

Argument for banning Rotties, pit bulls gains ground

The debate over banning specific canine breeds is back.

There is just no way of avoiding the question, so let’s get on with it: should Rottweilers and pit bulls be banned from Kamloops?

The reason for the question, of course, is the attack by a “Rottie” on an 84-year-old woman outside the Fortune Drive McDonald’s. The attack was unprovoked, and the woman received a serious wound to her arm before bystanders rescued her. It could have been much worse.

As we know from an RCMP statement today, this is the second recorded attack by the dog.

The debate over banning breeds usually tails off, so to speak, after everyone vents. Those in favour of breed-specific bans (I confess I’m one) argue that the record of pit bulls in particular is horrendous. Those who oppose banning specific breeds counter that it should be the dog, not the breed, that is punished.

The latter argument usually prevails. I draw your attention, though, to a Vancouver Province editorial, re-published in The Daily News as a “They Say” recently, that “Enough is enough. As many are saying, it’s time for B.C. to follow Ontario’s lead and ban the breed.”

The Daily News also published an editorial from the Calgary Herald that proposed owners of vicious dogs be subject to charges of having dangerous weapons. That, after an Alberta woman was attacked by two pit bulls.

Rottweillers have a better record on the issue than do pit bulls, but they’re a frighteningly powerful, and sometimes aggressive, dog. If more Canadian cities start banning breeds, should the bans be expanded past pit bulls to others, such as Rottweillers?

The issue won’t be settled any time soon, but the fact the dogs in Sundre had already been declared vicious via the town’s animal-control bylaw, and that the dog in Kamloops had created problems previously, certainly detracts from the argument that problem dogs can best be controlled by regulation aimed at individual animals.

Ideas for our city that have come and gone, or have they?

Will we ever get a new City Hall? (Daily News photo)

Ideas come and go. Some turn into something; others gather dust, waiting for another day.

For your contemplation on a long weekend, here are some of the things (in no particular order) that seemed like a good idea at the time, but never became reality.

1.            The Valleyview Bypass — I’m referring to the one that would have carved a swath through the side hills below Juniper. In 2001 the provincial government saw it not only as the “inevitable” answer to a local traffic problem, but as an economic keystone in the faster movement of trucked goods between Alberta and the Lower Mainland. Expected price tag $60 million. Opponents cited everything from the destruction of rare lichens to noise, convincing provincial politicians to shelve it. Next time you get stuck at one of those highway frontage road snarl-ups in Valleyview, curse the lichens.

2.            Sun Peaks Road – The idea of building a new road from Chase to the Sun Peaks resort gained traction after the 2003 wildfires as part of a plan to get the regional economy back on track. The regional district, Kamloops City council and MLAs were onside, but Barriere residents couldn’t see the benefit to their community and neither could First Nations across whose land the road would be built. Hoped-for federal funding didn’t materialize and the $18-million project stalled out (although it might revive with a lightening of environmental-review rules).

3.            Inland Port — construct a container-shipping facility to make the transfer of goods more efficient, rather than expanding the Delta port terminal. Getting the corporate and government players together proved a major challenge. A proposal for such a facility in Ashcroft seems to be gaining steam or, at least, hanging in. But the idea of an inland port — also called an intermodal facility — in Kamloops isn’t totally off the books.

4.            A new City Hall — Let’s face it, Kamloops needs one and, sooner or later, council will have to bite the bullet. City services are spread out all over the place; the current cubby hole on the corner of Victoria Street and First Avenue isn’t much to be proud of. A committee worked on a plan in 2005 to locate potential properties and develop a multi-year strategy to build up a fund for future construction. It was dropped when a new council came in the following year.

5.            Bridges old and new — Whatever happened to the Singh Street crossing, you ask? Still there on the engineers’ to-do list but not until the city hits the magic population level of 120,000. Also on the list is the Sixth Avenue extension, which would cross the South Thompson near the historic Red Bridge and connect traffic across the tracks and onto Sixth Avenue downtown. Then there’s the question of what to do with those old bridge pillars beside the Overlanders Bridge. They’ve been an eyesore since the new bridge was opened four decades ago. One idea was to tear them down but they’re sturdy. In 2001, one of the Rotary clubs briefly looked at raising funds to commission statues for the top of the piers. Constructing a pedestrian crossing on them has also been broached from time to time.

Roundabouts really a straight-foward matter

Cirque du Soleil truck snuggles up to Interior Savings Centre. (Daily News photo)

Took my first drive through the new Lorne Street roundabout Monday.

A big Cirque du Soleil semi was in front of me on Third Avenue, pruning a few tree branches with the top of his rig as he approached Lorne, where he paused for a few seconds before heading in.

Either the driver was not familiar with the concept of roundabouts, or he didn’t like the angles. Whichever it was, he decided the best way of dealing with it was to take the shortest route possible.

So he bounced over the curb, across the brick centre circle and carried on across the asphalt and over the small median at the entrance to the Interior Savings Centre parking lot on the other side.

I consider this to be the true grand initiation of our new roundabout, as I’m certain a large number of Kamloops drivers would like to do the same thing. As for me, I decided to use it to pull a U-turn and come in for another approach just to see how others were handling it.

This time, the driver ahead of me was in an SUV, and came to a full stop, looking left for oncoming traffic. Reassured nobody was heading her way, she tentatively pulled into the roundabout and exited again, hopefully in the direction she’d intended.

There have been a few stories about people driving around in the wrong direction, but this is possibly the easiest roundabout on the planet to negotiate — one lane, simple to figure out. Nothing to see here.

In some parts of the world, roundabouts are many lanes wide and faster than a speeding bullet. The largest of all is said to be the one at the Arc De Triomphe in Paris, where a dozen streets intersect. There are eight lanes, and no lane markings.

Some people have been stuck in that roundabout for years, going around and around like Charlie on the MTA.

Almost as grand is the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, seen on TV countless times during the just-concluded London Olympic Games.

Moscow has a serious roundabout, too — six lanes and a quarter of a mile in diameter.

The most dangerous roundabout is said to be in Germany where metal pikes and poles are amassed in the centre daring any errant motorist to try cutting corners.

If roundabouts are tricky for drivers, try being a pedestrian crossing a road anywhere near one. Drivers blasting through no-stop-sign roundabouts aren’t at all interested in stopping for pedestrians — much the same as Kamloops drivers are philosophically opposed to stopping at red lights.

Let’s face it, the roundabout is here to stay (France has more than 30,000 of them; people write entire books about them; at home we have a roundabout calendar, a treasured gift from rellies in England). More and more, it will become a part of driving in Kamloops as engineers struggle to keep traffic moving on ever-more congested roadways.

The roundabout is nothing less than an admission that we can find no better way of travelling from one place to another than getting into a gasoline-sucking vehicle and belching carbon into our atmosphere.

If you haven’t tried the Lorne Street roundabout yet, take a drive from the suburbs and give it a go — it’s worth the $1.23 a litre. I’ll bet you can still see the tire tracks from the Cirque truck.

PS: After writing this, I got a call from a fellow who got caught in a traffic jam caused by a couple of Cirque trucks using the Red Bridge. There’s a law against that, and we followed up with a story in The Daily News. No further word from Cirque so far.

Minding the gap on passenger-train service

The most common words uttered by tourists are, “they do things differently here.”

Of course they do — experiencing those differences is the reason we travel. Just back from a trip to Scotland and the Midlands of England, as well as London, Syd and I are still readjusting to Canadian life.

As any fool knows, our friends in the U.K. drive on the wrong side of the road. They call it, “living on the left.”

I have this advice for anyone visiting there — do not, under any circumstances, get behind the wheel of a car. For one thing, the automatic transmission hasn’t yet made it to that part of the world.

The terror of driving on the left side of the road and shifting gears with a left hand that has no clue what it should be doing is surpassed only by those stretches of countryside where there is only one “track,” while your wife offers advice such as, “You’re pretty close to the edge over here!” and “Bear left, bear left!”

Better to take the train, which brings me closer to my point.

While British cities are scant on street signs (probably because nobody in his right mind would drive), there’s plenty of signage in train and subway (er, “tube”) stations.

For example, prolific warnings painted on the station platforms say, “Mind the gap,” meaning don’t trip or get your foot stuck.” In Canada, we’d say, “Watch your step” or “Please don’t break something and become a drain on the healthcare system.”

That is, if we had a train or subway (er, “underground”) network that had a gap to mind.

By virtue of a lot of space and few people, Canadian cities haven’t grown up with trains and subways. In Europe and southeast Asia, you can rocket by rail from one side of town to the other in minutes, or from one side of the country to the other in mere hours (we decided to hop a train for the 52-minute trip to Edinburgh from Glasgow one evening for a wee dinner, just because we could).

How strange it must be for people from those countries to visit here and find that petrol-sucking buses are the only option in and between our cities.

Which brings us to the issue of trains and downtown Kamloops. Maybe we should stop whining about having tracks going through our downtown area as if it’s a negative.

In countries where trains are the preferred mode of travel, anyone who suggested the tracks should be moved out of town would be submitted for a psychological assessment.

I will confess there are downsides to having tracks in our city — noise, mainly, and the impatient wait at level crossings.

I acknowledge, as well, that while we have tracks we have no passenger service — other than the Rocky Mountainer and 2141 tourism trains and an occasional Via Rail making a middle-of-the-night whistle stop. Freight trains are a big part of life here (last year our U.K. rellies expressed amazement at the miles-long CN container trains snaking down the North Thompson), but moving people by rail is no longer something we do.

Some day, I suggest, when we reach something approaching the density of the Old World countries, we’ll return to trains as a mode of public transportation. And we’ll be glad we have a rail yard conveniently located downtown.