A new Family Fun Centre and a long read about Prince George's forestry decline and future
Also, is Prince George rural or urban
Via Reddit, there is apparently a new indoor playground/arcade coming to Prince George:
Welcome to PGC Funpark in Prince George, BC!
Prince George, get ready for the ultimate fun explosion! PGC Funpark is here, with over 14,000 square feet of pure joy. Dive into over 100 thrilling arcade games and let the kids explore our magical space-themed playground.
Whether you're celebrating or just looking for a fantastic day out, PGC Funpark promises unforgettable moments filled with laughter and excitement.
Come join the adventure and feel the thrill—PGC Funpark is where memories are made!
They’ve had a Facebook page since September. I did a reverse-Google image search on some of the pics they have up and it took me to a page for the Arcadium in Lethbridge whic looks almost exactly the same, but I don’t know if it’s because they are linked or if it’s because the PG site is taking inspiration (and photos) from the Lethbridge one.
Anyways, oldheads will have gotten my reference to the Family Fun Centre which for those of you who are not exactly my age and grew up in Prince George, was an arcade in Spruceland Shopping Centre in the 90s— video games up top, a couple of bowling lanes, and mingolf in the basement. More people seem to remember Bubba Balloos which did have an arcade but gave more floorspace to the indoor playground and laser tag — this place does seem to have the playground but looks more arcade-y to me. Either way, it's been years since anything like this existed largely, I assume, to a combination of there being fewer kids around and there being more home entertainment options BUT one of the top complaints among parents seems to be there aren’t enough places to take kids in this city so hopefully this helps and can find a business model.
Inside the Fight to Save Forestry Jobs
The Tyee has a longread up on the decline of the forest industry and how once-competing unions are working together to save jobs. It is very much centred on Prince George and if you don’t read it today, I recommend giving it a bookmark for your weekend:
When Petersen and Blacker started their careers in Prince George over a decade ago, there was still enough wealth to go around. “It was like the Willy Wonka factory,” said Blacker. “It was the golden ticket.”
Canfor hosted employee and Halloween parties. Every Christmas, mill retirees made wooden toys — things like logging trucks and boats — to give out at the annual Canfor kids’ Christmas party.
Then things started to change. Regular maintenance tasks began going ignored, Petersen says. Canfor stopped hiring new positions to fill vacated ones. Employee barbecues disappeared and the Christmas party, cancelled because of COVID, never came back.
This is by Zoë Yunker who also wrote this piece on whether or not the industry is actually running out of trees.
Discuss: Is Prince George rural or urban?
With the end of the election, we are at the inevitable point where we hear about the “urban rural divide”. David Eby was asked about in his press conference yesterday and CBC did a big piece on it in the context of both the Saskatchewan and B.C. elections. While I acknowledge there are definitely geographical factors at play when it comes to who gets voted in where, I remain skeptical of whether “urban-rural” is really the right way to define this. For me, the question is: is a place like Prince George really “rural”? We have a cancer treatment centre, a university and college, an international airport and a Costco. As I’ve written in this newsletter before, as much as people may think of us as being primarily resource workers, the top employers are actually retail and white collar jobs — healthcare, education, government. Beyond that, there are thousands of people here who vote for left-leaning parties, while there are also thousands in metro areas like Vancouver and Victoria who vote for right-leaning parties. If you wanted to get into it, you could start using terms like “exurban” and “suburban” but it may also be less about “urban” and “rural” versus “close to the centres of economic and political power” and “away from them.” I don’t know. I just find it hard to relate to the notion that I and others who live here are “rural” voters regardless of what colour the political map is. Would love your thoughts — political or otherwise, are we rural?
News roundup
A 61-year-old man is dead and two people arrested in what RCMP say is a targeted attack.
The fire truck at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park is going into storage.
Prince George is now being represented by three rookie MLAs. They’re getting training material and figuring out where to open their constituency offices now. Shirley Bond has thoughts.
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Send feedback by emailing northerncapitalnews@gmail.com. Find me online at akurjata.ca.
Maybe the real question relates to a question of racialization and the role of anti-First Nations politics/sentiments in the so-called 'rural' space of BC. As you note those who vote to the right don't form 100% of Prince George or elsewhere along the highway 16 corridor.
One major divide is that the more urban areas of BC have larger Asian populations and the racialized divided goes white/asian. In the so-called rural areas the racialized divide is First Nations/white. The areas out side of the lowermainland are also different in age profiles, tending to skew older and whiter than in the 'urban south.'
Also the decline of employment in industrial (and unionized) workplaces along the highway 16 corridor has resulted in a transition of the labour force toward smaller sub-contracting styles of small to medium scale businesses in the extractive sectors. These industries are also where 'concerns' over First Nations right and title playout in conservative ways. Hence Rustad's focus on 'problems' with UNDRIP and FN land rights (its also notable Rustad's own and family background in forestry).
I suspect that these factors tend to lend themselves to a politics focuses that leans conservative (be that calledliberal, socred, of actually conservative).
I think that the post-60s boom phase of PG became a different category. There's probably a better term, but for now I'll call it "remote suburban". It functioned as BC's miniature internal version of what Alberta has been for Canada as a whole: a place to go for work when a suitable job isn't available in the place(s) where you actually wanted to live. But once you've been here for a few years, and as long as real estate remained really cheap compared to the rest of BC, you became accustomed to having the compensation of being able to spend a greater proportion of disposable income on lots of toys, winter tropical holidays, and other private amenities.
As I approached retirement recently, I lost track of how many times co-workers asked me if I was moving away. There was almost the expectation that this was just the normal thing to do, as if PG was some kind of remote work-camp where you served your time, scored some bucks, and then resumed real life somewhere else with a milder climate and more amenities.
To circle back to the original question of whether PG is rural or not, the career trajectories and life histories of many of us tend to reinforce a very contingent, shallow attachment to this place which sits in a kind of twilight zone between urban and rural. It's home for as long as the gravy train lasts, so that makes many of us very grabby and protective of whatever private pile of material comforts we've managed to accumulate. So it's totally unsurprising to me that Rustad's crew managed a clean sweep of this area.
After all this, I do need to say that I'm quite content to stay here in retirement. My favourite amusements are mostly outdoors, local, and cheap, and after ~ 30 years, I've got all of the social circle that I want, so what's not to like?