A8 Thursday, September 17, 2015
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The Chilliwack Times is published by Black Press Group Ltd., every Thursday at 45951 Trethewey Ave., Chilliwack. The Times is a member of the Canadian Circulation’s Audit Board, Canadian Community Newspaper Association, British Columbia and Yukon Newspaper Association and B.C. Press Council.
OUR VIEW
OUR TEAM
Terry Fox’s lasting legacy
◗ Publisher
T
hree and a half decades ago, a young Canadian man whose name nobody outside his circle of family, friends and medical professionals had ever heard, dipped his prosthetic leg in the Atlantic Ocean and set out on the journey of a lifetime. Thirty five years later, you’d be hard pressed to find a person in Canada who is unfamiliar with Terry Fox—or throughout much of the world, for that matter. In the decades since his Marathon of Hope was cut short by the return of the cancer that claimed his leg— and eventually his life—Terry’s journey has been taken up by countless participants across the globe, with millions of dollars raised for cancer research in the process. This Sunday, Sept. 20, Terry’s legacy will be honoured once again as walkers, runners, bicyclists, bladers and many others will once again hit roads and trails across Canada and in many other nations around the world in his memory. We’d encourage anyone who is on the fence to get out and participate this year, even if it’s just for an easy one-kilometre stroll. In doing so, you’ll be honouring not only Terry, but the tireless efforts of volunteers who are helping to ensure that his legacy lives on in Chilliwack.
Nick Bastaja
nbastaja@chilliwacktimes.com ◗ Editor
Ken Goudswaard
kgoudswaard@chilliwacktimes.com
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Weed, mail, cheating and dogs W
eed on farmland, mail thieves in jail, Ashley Madison and a three dog night. These are a few of the stories that did not make it into the regular news pages of this week’s Times, stories that in their own right could have been newsworthy but didn’t get past our weekly curatorial eyes. So, as I did two months ago, here are four items you should or might want to know about that we otherwise wouldn’t have had space for. 1. Gary Johnson lives on McNaught Road in Chilliwack and when he saw his neighbour’s garage with a medical marijuana grow operation go up in flames in August he was mad. “Due to the pungent odour of this disgusting product my wife had to be taken to the hospital because she could not breathe,” Johnson told Chilliwack city council Tuesday evening. Johnson was the sole speaker at the public hearing held as council considered a text amendment to allow medical marijuana grow operations on land in the Agricultural Land Reserve. Council didn’t want to do this. The provincial government ordered all local governments to bring bylaws into line with the legality
PAUL J. HENDERSON @peejayaitch of medical marijuana. Mayor Sharon Gaetz sympathized with Johnson, said the city doesn’t like the edict since marijuana may be a plant but it has to be grown in bunkers so isn’t suitable for arable land, but she said their hands were tied and the text amendment was carried unanimously. 2. Prolific offender Jeffrey Michael Kizmann has, yet again, been arrested to face charges of mail theft. The 33-year-old Kizmann was arrested Sept. 2 in connection with theft of mail from four community mailboxes on Shrewsbury Drive. This is a man who most recently released on time served after spending 495 days in pre-trial custody for an Oct. 13, 2013 incident when he stole a car and drove to Coquitlam to steal mail. Kizmann is one of Chilliwack’s most prolific property crime offenders and he’s due back in court on Sept. 22.
3. The high-profile data breach of Ashley Madison, the website dedicated to marriage infidelity, is hardly a local, Chilliwack story with the leak of 30 million users’ personal information. That information, however, included home addresses, and a source—one with computer expertise and a keen curiosity—forwarded me the credit card transactions of Chilliwack customers from 2008 through to 2015. Anyone nervous about what’s next? Don’t worry, we aren’t printing names although I admit to recognizing a handful. He could have sent more information, but the source said he didn’t have the inclination to go through another 10 gigabytes of data to see local customer profiles and chat transcripts. What is of some interest, in a metadata kind of way, is that Chilliwack residents spent $31,968.94 at Ashley Madison since 2008. Did anyone hook up? 4. And finally, something that would never make the news, but falls in the I-didn’t-know-this-was-illegal category. At Tuesday’s meeting of Chilliwack city council, a temporary use permit (TUP) came up, one I
don’t ever recall seeeing before. Did you know it is a violation of Chilliwack’s bylaws to house more than three dogs on your residential property? I didn’t. For residential properties, three’s the limit. A Miller Road resident came to plead for a TUP to allow for her daughter’s 15-pound dog to be allowed on her property where she already has three. Her neighbours? Well, if the staff report presented to council was the only measure of support, the pooches aren’t too popular. “The dogs in the neigbhourhood already bark through the night,” wrote one neighbour opposed to the TUP. “The animals they have already are not socialized and are allowed to bark incessantly,” said another. There were four opponents to the dogs all from units at one address that turns out to be a fair distance from where the dogs live, a huge property adjacent to the BC Hydro right of way. The proponent showed council signatures from closer neighbours in support of her fourth dog, and council approved the TUP. So for the complainers, the threedog night just got a little louder.
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