The Chilliwack
Progress Wednesday
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Sardis Falcons earning respect.
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Y O U R C O M M U N I T Y N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D I N 1 8 9 1 • W W W. T H E P R O G R E S S . C O M • W E D N E S D AY, J A N U A R Y 2 2 , 2 0 1 4
Chilliwack touched by loss of SAR hero Jennifer Feinberg The Progress
Continued: SAR/ p8
Rick Jones, the voice and face of North Shore Search and Rescue, passed away suddenly Sunday evening, while on a trail on Mount Seymour.
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Peter Butcher, president of the Upper Valley local of Canadian Union of Postal Workers, says there are better ways to help Canada Post than cutting home delivery. JENNIFER FEINBERG/ PROGRESS
Keep mail delivery until security issues are fixed, say posties Jennifer Feinberg The Progress Local postal workers met with Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon MP Mark Strahl last week to talk about the end of door-to-door home delivery. The announcement by Canada Post last month to phase-out of home delivery service in urban areas has rankled both the public and affected workers, said Peter Butcher, president of the Upper Valley local of Canadian Union of Postal Workers. The end of door-to-door is part of a new five-point plan by Canada Post to cut the bottom line, by relying on community mailboxes over home delivery for convenience and lower cost reasons.
Butcher and some colleagues attended a meeting with the local MP to express how the “streamlining” will affect carriers, their families, and the public. “We wanted to tell him how we feel about this, so when he gets to Parliament, he has a good idea of what is going on,” he said. Butcher represents 63 CUPW workers in Chilliwack, including letter carriers and rural route carriers. Some of the postal workers will also be at the Home Show this weekend at Heritage Park bending ears about the topic. “Even though we know we are losing letter mail, there’s got to be an alternative,” Butcher said. Chilliwack has about 21 letter carri-
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ers doing home delivery, he said, and up to half could be eliminated in the phase-out. Strahl shared in an email with The Progress that his meeting with CUPW representatives in Chilliwack recently “went well, with a good exchange of views.” “I reiterated that Canada Post is an arms’ length Crown corporation with a mandate to operate without taxpayer subsidies, and that there is a need to respond to a massive decline in letter mail due to the increasing use of email, social media, texting, and other methods of communication.” Asked if he’d heard from the public on the topic, Strahl replied: “I’ve heard from constituents who are concerned Continued: POST/ p4
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A Chilliwack SAR manager is remembering the time he was rescued by none other than the North Shore Rescue leader Tim Jones. Condolences were pouring in this week from across B.C. for Jones, who collapsed suddenly and died Sunday night. Chilliwack SAR search manager Doug Fraser said he clearly recalls the day he first met Jones, the man who was the face of B.C. Search and Rescue. It was about a year after he’d joined Chilliwack Search and Rescue. Fraser and a fellow SAR member found themselves in serious trouble, while on a search of Mt. Slesse in the treacherous back country. “My first meeting with Tim Jones was Tim rescuing me,” Fraser told The Progress this week. It was Day 3 of a brutal search to find a missing hiker who had been searching for wreckage from the TransCanada airline crash of 1956. It was the summer of 1998, and Fraser and the other searcher had just vertically rappelled down a ravine in challenging terrain. Water was pouring down the gully. Soon that led to the grisly discovery of the deceased hiker they’d been looking for. But they were stuck at this point. They were short of rope, after sections got tangled. They could not make it down the ravine the rest of the way or back up to the top. The SAR members themselves were mentally and physically exhausted. They had no choice but to hunker down near the body for a few hours and await rescue.