Pemberton valley residents concerned about horses roaming on the highway north of Pemberton have received a long-awaited update. The Village of Pemberton and the Ministry of Agriculture will write to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, proposing a reduction in the speed limit on the highway from 80 to 60 kilometres/hour.
At a Jan. 21 committee of the whole meeting, Pemberton’s chief administrative officer Elizabeth Tracy told council she and Cpl. James Gilmour from the Pemberton RCMP met with representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture about the issue of roaming horses on the highway.
“The people that we met with generously volunteered to support us in writing a letter that would seek the endorsement of ourselves, the Lilwat Nation, as well as the [Squamish-Lillooet Regional District] and RCMP effectively advocating to [MOTI] to lower the speed limit on the highway, particularly in the section from the Lillooet River Bridge to the Industrial Park to 60 km/h.”
Council said the proposed decrease in speed limits aims to address the ongoing concern that cars might collide with roaming horses—a regular complaint from community members.
A quick scroll through Pemberton’s Community Facebook group will show videos of frustrated drivers stopped on the highway at night, waiting for the horses to shuffle off the road, and comments demanding a solution. During winter, salt on the road draws the horses out onto the highway, exacerbating the issue.
A crash in 2023 killed two horses, and a separate incident a month later injured both a horse and driver. In 2024, then-West Vancouver-Sea to Sky MLA and former Pemberton Mayor Jordan Sturdy encountered two dead horses outside of his North Arm Farm.
“I pulled out of the driveway at about six o'clock in the morning and there were two dead horses, one with his guts splayed out on the highway," recalled Sturdy. "The police were there [and there] was a car upside down in the ditch."
He relayed the situation in a similarly graphic speech to the legislative assembly in March 2024. Concern over incidents like that one, and for general road safety, drove his years-long push to have MOTI lower the speed on that stretch of highway.
In addition to reducing the likelihood of fatal collisions with horses, the road offers a number of threats to drivers, said Sturdy.
“We've got gigantic ditches where, if you flip your car over in one of those ditches the wrong time of the year, you are under four feet, five feet of water," he said. "We have people walking along the side of the road. We have essentially no shoulders [and] bicyclists going back and forth all the time. And we have horses and we have bulls occasionally as well.
"Oh, and bears," he added.
Part of the appeal of 60 km/hr, said Sturdy, is consistency. The speed limit going into Pemberton is 60 km/h. Once you're past the downtown core, the limit ramps up again to 80 km/h through the stretch of highway in question before dropping back down to 60 km/h at the Industrial Park and 30 km/h in Mount Currie.
"Here we have one of the most inconsistent speed limits in anywhere I'm aware of," said Sturdy. "And I've been disappointed to not been able to affect change so far.
"Reducing the speed limit is not going to be a panacea," he added, in regards to the horses. "It's going to reduce the risk, but it's not going to solve the problem"
The horses are not completely wild. They’re owned by Wayne Andrews, a former cowboy and legendary rodeo rider from Lil’wat Nation. While he was unavailable for comment, he’s previously told Pique his objection concerns the existence of the highway itself.
“It’s always hard,” he told Pique in 2023. “So many horses have been killed. We are being terrorized by the highway. In 1990, people blocked the road because they didn’t want it paved. It got paved anyway. This is the last of our freedom area. Once this is gone, I will leave. I will take these horses and leave.”
The timeline for the letter to MOTI is unclear. The task of drafting the letter is in the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture.
“They are in the process of drafting the letter and when they’re done, CAO will bring it to the mayor for their endorsement, and do the same with the rest of the parties," Tracy told council.
