Just over two decades ago, a year-long brouhaha related to the future of the Squamish waterfront proved to be a significant turning point in the storied history of this politically polarized town.
In May 2000, GBA Logging Ltd sought a business permit from the District of Squamish to replace their dryland log sort on the Cattermole Slough with a woodchip transfer facility.
Supply from the B.C. interior was scheduled to arrive by rail, and then it would be shipped to a pulp mill in Port Mellon owned by Howe Sound Pulp and Paper.
But a coalition dubbed “Squamish New Directions” disapproved of the venture’s location and was adamant about scuttling it.
In its place, they envisioned a revitalized downtown and waterfront featuring a trifecta of residential, commercial, and recreational spaces.
To obstruct the project, they launched the appropriately monikered lobby group Citizens for a Healthy, Innovative, Progressive Squamish (CHIPS).
After council endorsed the permit proposal for the facility in a close 4-3 vote, CHIPS challenged the decision in the B.C. Supreme Court.
The consortium claimed the operation failed to meet the light industry zoning constraint for the area.
When the high court upheld the challenge, GBA Logging asked the District to rezone the property so the project could proceed.
Before council made its final decision on the matter, a raucous public hearing with over 100 speakers was held at the Brennan Park Leisure Centre, as it was then called. GBA Logging president Greg Richmond said the community’s commercial future was closely tied to the venture getting the green light.
“I do not want this town to become a bedroom community for Vancouver and Whistler,” he warned. But one angry participant who summed up the sentiments of many fellow attendees said, “This is the time and the place to draw a line in the sand. Find a new location for your chip handling facility. Thank you.”
In the meantime, frustrated with all the dithering, Howe Sound Pulp and Paper managers decided to accept an offer at another location.
As a result, then Squamish mayor Corinne Lonsdale, who helped lead the wood chip facility charge, said losing the plant was a major setback for the community. “I’m sickened that we weren’t able to see the process through to the end,” she added.
In the ensuing municipal election, she opted not to run again for the big chair at Municipal Hall and decided instead to throw her hat into the ring for a council seat. She was successful, and Ian Sutherland, a founding member of the CHIPS group, got the mayoral nod from the electorate.
At the time, a BCBusiness magazine report titled “Squamish: Squish to Swish” suggested that “Given the small-town politics, dystopian bureaucracy and rumours of behind-the-scenes cabals, it would have made a good Atom Egoyan miniseries, a sort of municipal-planning version of Twin Peaks.”
As much as the wood chip facility narrative may be of interest to the historically inclined, why summon the ghosts of bygone days? To begin with, the result of that contest hastened this town’s transition from its reliance on a natural resource-dependent economy to a more diversified commercial destiny.
The recent decision by Capilano University to purchase land on the Oceanfront Squamish site for a future satellite campus highlights that shift.
And for politically ambitious locals, the protracted wood chip kerfuffle provided a future blueprint for personal advancement: climb aboard a popular bandwagon, champion it with zeal, and ride it into public office at the polls.
Just as significantly, it sent future public administrators a clear warning to do their due diligence before giving contentious projects their stamp of approval.
In no small measure, that is one of the reasons why the District of Squamish continues to finance a profusion of studies, surveys and consultant reports whose accumulated heft has the potential to buckle storage shelves at Municipal Hall to the point of imminent collapse.
In the final analysis, sometimes events that appear to be water under the bridge can lead to substantial reflux in the here and now.
Helmut Manzl is a political columnist and long-time Squamish resident.
