Remembering the fallen Hundreds in the Tri-Cities will pause on Sunday — at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month — to remember those lost to war. Some stories: ■ A national memory project is cataloguing veterans’ war stories: see page 13 ■ Details of events in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody: see page 14 ■ The people behind the names to be read in PoCo: see Your History, page 22
THE FRIDAY
CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
TRI-CITY NEWS CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
A national stat R-Day?
Hockey, movies & more
SEE FACE TO FACE, PAGE 11
SEE THINGS-TO-DO GUIDE, PAGE 20
NOV. 9, 2012 www.tricitynews.com
INSIDE
Letters/12 Tri-City Spotlight/31 Seniors/32 Sports/42
Land sale is OK’d Province behind District 43’s plans By Diane Strandberg THE TRI-CITY NEWS
School District 43 is taking its first tentative steps towards a plan to sell some surplus school assets to raise funds for future capital projects and is doing so with the full support of the provincial government. On Tuesday, trustees gave unanimous approval to a plan to rezone eight lots at the outer edge of the Parkland elementary school grounds (at the corner of Poirier Street and Como Lake Avenue) in Coquitlam for housing. COLLEEN FLANAGAN/BLACK PRESS
Lucas Bullmore, five years old, and his sister Megan, seven, of Port Coquitlam, take a break during a day at the (saturated) Laity Pumpkin Patch in Maple Ridge.
see $3M-$5M, page 4
TransLink vs. the audit TransLink board leery of audit’s proposed savings By Jeff Nagel BLACK PRESS
What effect will Tuesday’s vote in Washington State to legalize and tax marijuana have in British Columbia? See article, page 17
It’s starting to look like TransLink will say thanks but no thanks to most of the suggested savings identified this fall by provincial auditors.
TransLink’s board debated the finance ministry audit findings on Oct. 24 and board chair Nancy Olewiler said this week she and other directors are reluctant to act on many of the suggestions for cutting a further $41 million from the budget. “These are recommendations, not requirements,” she said, adding the auditors are not transit experts and did
OLEWILER
not fully u n d e rstand the potential damage t o s e rvice from some of their pro-
posals. Olewiler sought to ease concerns TransLink will slash or greatly reduce bus frequency on runs where few riders are on board, adding that
some of those routes are critical to ensuring the system is usable across the region. “We run an integrated transportation service,” she said. “Just because a particular service isn’t working at full capacity doesn’t mean we eliminate it or reduce it.” The audit suggested TransLink scrap or downgrade 22 underused routes. That has heightened fears in some of
Metro Vancouver’s fastgrowing suburbs that TransLink won’t keep promises to improve transit service in underserved neighbourhoods and offer a more viable alternative to car use. “We’re building not just for current use but also future use,” Olewiler said, adding good transit can shape future development. see PROPOSED, page 8