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Fire family counts its blessings Greg Knill
The Progress
Mayor Sharon Gaetz speaks to a crowd at the Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Best Western on Thursday. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Chilliwack growth not ‘by fluke,’ says mayor Jennifer Feinberg The Progress
Chilliwack Mayor Sharon Gaetz offered a rosy picture of Chilliwack in her ‘State of the City’ talk Thursday at a Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce luncheon in the Best Western Rainbow Country Inn. The small Chamber gathering was reminded when economists were predicting the economy “would be very grim” in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. “What they told us was that it would take until the summer of 2012 to recover,” Gaetz said. “But what we didn’t know was that
Chilliwack was doing very well in this regard.” Chilliwack is one of the top eight cities singled out for growth by the Conference Board of Canada recently. The Mayor said she was happy to share details from the CBOC’s Mid-sized Cities Outlook for 2013, which leaned on Statistics Canada numbers. It revealed Chilliwack as a fast-growing city, with job growth greater or equal to three per cent, and the GDP grew by an average of more than six per cent in the period between 2005 and 2012. “These things don’t happen by fluke, nor do they happen by the wisdom of one person,” she said. She mapped out the ways the
city works to create a climate for local business to flourish, from low property taxes and inexpensive business multiples, to the work done by CEPCO to bring new businesses to town. Downtown was described as being in “an awkward phase right now” with its array of closed storefronts and fresh demolition sites. Gaetz assured the audience that good things are happening downtown nonetheless. “There are parts of it that don’t look very good because we’re starting to take buildings down and get the land ready for development,” she said. She was talking about the deliberate strategy of land assem-
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bly and consolidation being followed as part of the Chilliwack DT Plan, which one chamber member later warmly complimented the city on. Gaetz took on the critics, too. “Some people in our community have referred to it as missing teeth in the downtown, and I have a reply to that. “Have you never seen a young, gangly kid with missing teeth? They grow back! “It’s important to remember there is no way to wave a magic wand over the downtown to fix everything.” When someone from the audience asked her about her own future vision for downtown, she
The family whose Rosedale home was destroyed by fire last week is overwhelmed by the kindness they’ve been shown, and they want to pay it forward. The blaze, which tore through their twostorey home late last Sunday evening, left nothing. But fortunately, said Vicki Sortwell, it didn’t take any lives, nor any of the purebred retrievers that are normally raised on the property. Sortwell wasn’t home when the fire broke out. She had taken her son-in-law, who was enjoying a rare day off from kidney dialysis – to a movie. Paul Connelly is currently awaiting a transplant – surgery Sortwell frankly says the 31-year-old may not survive. When they returned to the car after the movie, Sortwell checked her phone. Seeing seven missed calls from the same private number, she thought the news was good. “I though it was the transplant coming in.” It wasn’t. It was the Chilliwack RCMP telling her their home was on fire. Warned about the extent of the damage, Sortwell was still unprepared for what she saw. The fire was so intense, it melted the gas meter on the property and was still smoldering a day later. Continued: FAMILY/ p4
Fire last Sunday night. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Continued: MAYOR/ pW3
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