Cariboo Stops the North

And we are no better than Vancouver

Jan 19, 2024

Wearing shorts and sunglasses, CN Centre manager Glen Mikkelsen and ~~city councillor~~ Pacific Western Brewing brand manager Kyle Sampson took to Facebook to announce that the annual boomer rock festival, Cariboo Rocks the North, will not be returning this year and is on an “indefinite hiatus.” The decision was attributed to “festival organizers” though I’m not quite sure who that is as Sampson was very much the public face of the festival — to some controversy, given his parallel role as a city councillor and the city’s support of the festival, though I suspect far more people supported Sampson’s work then took issue with how it all fit together (for the record, there was never any indication city conflict rules were violated).

Sampson said in the video that if the festival ever does return it will be in a different form which probably does make sense as there’s only so many times you can get April Wine and Trooper to perform in a parking lot (disclaimer: I like April Wine and Trooper).

A good old-fashioned Twitter fight

I am on Twitter/X less and less — even after I stopped posting there, I would usually scroll through it for tweets to help supply this newsletter. But I’m doing that less, too, as virtually every normal person seems to have left the platform leaving nothing but marketers, news agenices and politicians. Still, though, that’s enough to put together a little fight as all of the province’s politicians are in town for the Natural Resources Forum. It started when Citizen editor Neil Godbout wrote an editoral arguing David Eby is “eating Kevin Falcon’s lunch” when it comes to making resource development plans this week. That was tweeted out by extremely online legislative reporter Richard Zussman, which attracted the ire of the very online members of Falcon’s B.C. United. That includes his communications director Andrew Reeve and local MLA Shirley Bond who both questioned whether the Citizen had even been attending any of Falcon’s announcements (to be fair, the Citizen is down to like two reporters now). Then former CKPG reporter — now deputy chief of staff to David Eby — Aileen Machell got involved. Whee!

Also on Twitter, Kevin Falcon went back to the “if elected, I’ll move a ministry to Prince George” playbook, promsing the downtown Victoria office for the Ministry of Forests would head up to our city. That position was previously held by Mike de Jong when he was attempting to become leader of Falcon’s party while his competitor Andrew Wilkinson said it would be a full premier’s office — an idea initally floated by Kevin Falcon way back when he was running to replace Gordon Campbell, losing to Christy Clark who just said if you want a northern premier’s office, you have it in the form of Shirley Bond’s constiuency office.

We are no better than Vancouver

And finally:

And you know what? I’m going to share the theory that if we had the same number of people as Vancouver, we would only be slightly better at handling the snowfall than they are, especially the first big ones of the year. We’d be helped by a higher uptick in winter tires but the fact that there’s less of us to crash into things is hiding a problem that would become evident if you upped our population severalfold. I said it!

Wood basement property values

I’ve seen a few posts that people with wooden basements saw their property values spike this year — but I’ve yet to find anyone who has actually had it impact them. So if you are among those people and want to talk, get in touch.

Quick news:

Drift away.

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4streegrrl

Jan 19, 2024Edited

When I heard Falcon say that if elected, he would move the "Ministry of Forests office" to PG, I immediately texted a few coworkers in "that office" and said, "I think BCU might have my vote just to see if he can make this happen!" 😂

In any case, I don't think Mr Falcon realizes just how many staff work in Victoria, and how many offices there actually are for Forests. Remote work is more and more accepted now, driven by both the pandemic and the new-ish head of the PSA and Deputy Premier, Shannon Salter, as part of recruitment and retention strategies for the BC Gov (you know, housing costs, we do have forests off-island, and it IS 2024 and technology makes it possible). Many of us work remote for Victoria in PG and other communities, large and small, already in local offices and at home. That includes the Chief Forester and Deputy Minister of Forests. So Mr Falcon can move "the office" but there will be a lot of people in Victoria who will just become remote workers to Prince George. 😊

(P.S. Didn't Andrew Wilkinson promise that he would move the Premier's Office to PG if elected, or at least open a second office?)

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ANDREW STEWART WEIR

City of Prince George BC is in deep trouble with Road Maintenance; they put Off Ice-Blading with a Heavy Grader, gone away from Salt Brine a Grit and slid towards Calcium Chloride solution and fine sand, but not lately. It's warming up, and assuredly not ready for the packed White Ice, slick as it was last Nightshift, it's going to become way worse

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