Frankly Speaking

The provincial government has come through for Surrey students and parents. Premier Christy Clark came to Surrey to announce a substantial school building program on Friday, totalling almost $100 million. The program will create space for 2,700 more students, which will take a significant amount of pressure off crowded schools. The program will use $74.2 million from the province and $25.3 million from the school district to build two new schools, add 600 seats at three crowded elementary schools in the South Newton-Panorama area and purchase land for a new elementary school in Port Kells. One of the best things about the announcement is that the fastest-growing areas of the school district are all included. Grandview Heights gets a new 1,500-student secondary school, which will open in 2020. Clayton gets a new elementary school, to open in 2019. The 600-seats will be added at Panorama Park, Sullivan and Woodward Hill Elementaries, all of which are significantly overcrowde...

Roy Clancy, who was the original editor of The Langley Times when it began publication in 1981, passed away on Sunday in Calgary. The cause was "a swift battle with cancer." He was 63. An obituary in today's National Post noted that he was a "consummate journalist with a keen eye for the written word." He had worked for the Calgary Sun for more than 25 years, as editorial page editor and columnist. He came to Langley to help launch a competitor to the long-established Langley Advance , which has been in operation since 1931. Publisher Gerry Maginn and his business partner and brother-in-law Stan Fenton decided to take on The Advance , even though it was a tough time to start a newspaper. Interest rates were at record highs and unemployment numbers were also high. Some people were actually losing their homes in Langley because of an inability to pay their mortgages. The Times was a free-distribution tabloid, with a visual and written style very different f...

It is most fitting that Langley Township is putting its public engagement strategy to its first test, with the establishment of a community planning team (CPT) for Brookswood-Fernridge. It was in Brookswood-Fernridge where the last Township council ran up against the wishes of the community, when it dealt with the deeply unpopular Griffith Neighbourhood Plan. Hearings on the plan were lengthy and the level of interest was very high. While council eventually rejected the plan by a 7-2 vote, its approach to public engagement was judged by many to be severely challenged. Three members of the last council were defeated in November, 2014 - the first councillors to lose their seats since 2002 – and this was at least partially due to the pro-development impression they left with residents. Only one of them, former councillor Grant Ward, had supported the plan at the final vote. The Brookswood-Fernridge debacle also gave rise to the very successful Unelection campaign which played a...

The fire that destroyed the former Surf dance hall in White Rock on March 10, 2015 was a significant one, but it pales in comparison when compared to Sunday's fire in an apartment complex at Pacific and Johnston. Sunday’s fire in White Rock was the worst fire that the city has seen in many decades. In terms of the impact on people, it may go down as the worst ever, although there have been a lot of big fires in White Rock over the years. More than 60 homes in an apartment complex at Pacific and Johnston have been destroyed or damaged. More than 100 people are displaced. It appears likely that the buildings have been so badly damaged that they will be torn down and rebuilt, and those who were displaced will be out of their homes for more than a year. Thankfully, there was only one injury – a resident broke his leg while leaving the building. Everyone else, including all the firefighters, was uninjured. The community rallied around the evacuees quickly. The residents who...

This photo of the original Port Mann Bridge, built in 1964, was taken by Stephen Rees in 2011. The photo is looking towards the Surrey side of the river. This was written for the 125th anniversary edition of The Chilliwack Progress , B.C.'s oldest continually-published community newspaper. It began operations in 1891. Chilliwack and the entire Lower Mainland began a period of transformative change when Highway 401 (now Highway 1, "the freeway") was officially opened in 1964. The changes related to the opening of that highway continue today. The anniversary edition of The Progress was published on April 29, and can be found here . Unfortunately, it did not have enough room for this article. Chilliwack was drawn irrevocably closer to Vancouver when the four-lane freeway, known at the time as the 401 Highway, was officially opened on June 12, 1964. “At $90 million, this was the most expensive piece of highway in Canada,” said Premier W.A.C. Bennett at the ...

The spring and summer repair work on the Pattullo Bridge has quickly exposed the complete inadequacies of transportation networks between the fast-growing south of the Fraser area and the remainder of Metro Vancouver. Pattullo Bridge traffic is clogged for most of the day every day, as it is now down to one lane in each direction so that patchwork repairs can be made. It is important to note that these repairs are only expected to extend the life of the bridge by a few years, as the longterm plan is to replace it with a new toll bridge. The Alex Fraser Bridge, Highway 91 and all the feeder routes are even more clogged than ever since the Pattullo repairs began on April 29. Other than the Pattullo, it is the only free bridge across the Fraser River. The Alex Fraser traffic has been building significantly since the tolled Port Mann Bridge opened. Interestingly the Port Mann Bridge has been noticeably busier since the Pattullo work began. This makes sense – it does have the abi...