THURSDAYMARCH 6, 2014
Black Press C O M M U N I T Y
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Gold 2012 General Excellence
RED HOT IRON AND HORSES
BAND CLAWS INTO HEARTS
Canada’s top farriers meet at Errington’s Tiger Lily Farm
The Lion, The Bear and The Fox get rave review from contributor Brenda Gough
A5
A32
QUALICUM’S COLLEGE INN
Residents feel duped Exterior will be completed, but heritage portion is on hold LISSA ALEXANDER reporter@pqbnews.com
Work on the heritage building in the Qualicum College Heights development will be postponed, but the developer will have to finish the exterior of the building on schedule. Developer Dean Pomeroy told town council Monday night “sales are not there at this time for me to go ahead and build it all.” The project is slated to add three luxury condo buildings to the heritage building currently on site, which would house 40 units. A request was before council Monday night to postpone the rehabilitation of the heritage building until the second phase, among other requests by the developer. At the meeting, Pat Jacobson shared her frustration with the project and her opposition to some of the developers requests. She said she has a number of concerns regarding what has already taken place at the site, including the clearing of trees at Burnham Road. Some trees were slated to be removed to facilitate underground servicing, she said, but the real reason they were removed was so the site could be used for construction access including all sorts of large trucks, which she documented with photos at the meeting. She also showed pictures of downed street signs and large trees and branches strewn along the side of the road. “We were duped by the town and by the developer,” she said. The building, and construction site, continues to be an eyesore, she said, and she voiced her desire to have the developer finish the exterior of the Heritage Building in Phase 1 as scheduled. See SALES ARE NOT THERE, page A8
JOHN HARDING PHOTO
Barney Dudoward, left, and Wally Piatocka have been fishing the waters off B.C. for a combined 100 years. They are pictured above aboard the Ocean Wonder in the French Creek Marina on Tuesday.
Herring harvest begins Gillnetters have a 6,000-tonne quota JOHN HARDING editor@pqbnews.com
Two septuagenarians will be packing tonnes of herring into the hold of their vessel this week, just like they’ve been doing every year for more than three decades. Wally Piatocka, 79, and Barney Dudoward, 70, will once again be part of the herring roe fishery on the waters off Parksville Qualicum Beach, which
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opened Wednesday for gilnetters. When you combine their years of experience, these men have been fishing all kinds of species in the waters around B.C. for more than 100 years. When the herring opening comes, it can look like chaos from the shore with so many boats crammed into the Strait of Georgia. Dudoward said it used to be worse. “Boats would be ramming each other,” he said Tuesday during an interview in the galley of the 50-foot Ocean Wonder, tied up in the French Creek Marina.
“It was a free-for-all, a gong show.” Those were the days before quotas. Now, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) decides how many tonnes of herring are to be caught, and then divide that by the number of licences that have been issued, to come up with a per licence quota. Back before this system, when an ‘A’ licence allowed you to fish virtually any species 12 months a year and Japan had a huge appetite for the these eggs, a tonne of herring was fetching $5,000/ tonne. Now it’s more like $400/tonne. See HARSH WORDS, page A6
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