This is the second part of a two-part series about ratepayer associations.
A question that has been asked throughout as the Peak has endeavoured to find out more about local ratepayer groups has been why Westview does not and has not had one.
According to long-time Townsite resident Ann Nelson, a large part of the reason has to do with the fact that few people actually lived there until after the four communities were amalgamated as the Corporation of the District of Powell River in October 1955.
Nelson said that during the 1930s and ’40s a business district sprung up along Marine Avenue and people started to move out of Townsite to avoid having the mill as a landlord.
“It was a tiny community,” said Nelson, but they did have their own water district, wharf, liquid waste treatment plant and fire department. Then MacMillan Bloedel bought the mill in 1955, and the new owner did not want to share its wharf in Townsite, so Westview found itself the centre of commerce and local governance, Nelson said. As the mill grew over the next 40 years the number of people moving to Powell River increased dramatically and many new houses sprang up in Westview.
“But they didn’t have a history of being a village or a community that had to look at self-governance the way Cranberry or Wildwood had,” she said. Instead, the two competing business associations along Marine Avenue, the precursor to MABA (Marine Area Business Association), were the only groups that spoke for community interests, a scenario which continues to play out today, Nelson said.
As for the fourth community making up Powell River, it was the combination of two forces that roused a neighbourhood association in the city’s oldest neighbourhood from its lengthy slumber.
Townsite Ratepayers’ Association awoke, according to Nelson, a little more than 10 years ago. Work had begun on creating an official community plan for Townsite and City of Powell River officials started to look at using part of the old golf course in the neighbourhood for its new liquid waste treatment plant.
Before that there may have been a loosely organized neighbourhood association, but there is not any record of it existing in the Powell River Historical Museum and Archives. Nelson explained that there had been a group many years ago, “but it then languished for a long time.” She said that it was not until about the year 2000 that the neighbourhood, which was going through a process of revitalization, started to become more politically engaged.
An advisory group of local residents was created to come up with recommendations for an official community plan, Nelson said. And it was around this time that the owner of the mill, Norske Canada, was contemplating selling approximately 800 acres of non-strategic land, much of it in Townsite, to reduce its tax exposure.
“There were fears at the time that a foreign-owned corporation might purchase the land and build a factory there that would ruin air quality,” she added.
She explained that there was a renewed political appetite in the neighbourhood to protect and foster the community’s quality of life.
The ratepayers came together about the same time that the city, Tla’amin (Sliammon) Nation and Catalyst Paper Corporation formed their joint partnership, PRSC, in 2005, said Nelson. Dr. Andy Davis and Susan Hainstock drew together a group of residents to discuss the official community plan—and that quickly came to include concerns about how the city’s liquid waste would be treated, she added.
Councillor Karen Skadsheim, who helped lead the Townsite group before she was elected to city council last fall, said that residents were not happy about the initial stages of the liquid waste plan, but the group has, over the years, worked on other issues including water runoff on the slope behind Willow and Lombardy avenues and on odour reporting with the mill.
Skadsheim said the group has become dormant since she has taken her seat on city council. Being a member of council, Skadsheim is not able to lead the Townsite Ratepayers. So the neighbourhood association is looking for new people to step up, she said.
“I’d love for it to be more active again,” Skadsheim said. She has the group’s files and can help bring someone up to speed on what the group had been working on, she added. She can be emailed at [email protected].
