FEBRUARY 17, 2011
Pennyworth • 37
This Was Then... With Old Ike Political memory from 1988
It was Thursday, November 10, 1988 when then BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm whisked through Port Alberni on a one-day campaign stop in support of Social Credit candidate George Dryden (centre). Somass Mill foreman Neil Dirom (right) met with the Premier for a private meeting after showing him the state of the construction on the new $32 million remanufacturing facility.
Bill Vander Zalm has been back in the political spotlight recently with his anti HST campaign, but can you remember when he was here 23 years ago? Mr. Vander Zalm was BC Premier Vander Zalm back then, and he dropped in for a whirlwind visit campaigning for George Dryden, the Social Credit candidate in a byelection held on Saturday, Nov. 19, 1988. During his one-day stop, Vander Zalm met with the Alberni Valley Transportation Committee and told reporters that the Cowichan-AlberniComox route doesn’t require the work or funding that the Island Highway will and may be able to be done sooner than the Island Highway. “This could be done in a shorter time,” he said. “We don’t have to wait eight years.” The road work for each leg of highway from Port Alberni to Cowichan and from Port
Alberni to Comox is estimated at $17 million, while the Island Highway, announced last week, is expected to cost $600 million before it is completed in 1996, according to a story in the AV Times on Nov. 14, 1988. That same story reported Vander Zalm also visited the Somass Mill, for the second time in about three months. He said “it is a wonderful example of the kind of success that can happen when management and labour get together.” The Premier and Dryden then had a short closed meeting with representatives from MacMillan Bloedel. Vander Zalm addressed a luncheon meeting of supporters at the Cherry Creek Golf Course earlier in the day where he dwelt on the prosperity being felt in the province today and boasted about the new investment. As history has recorded, the Socreds did not win that 1988 by-election here.
About that trestle picture in last week’s column Chris Blackstone emailed last Thursday to say: “At the end of last summer my mother and I were kayaking out Great Central Lake and we went under the bridge by the cabins,” he wrote. “We went towards the intake for the fish hatchery and there is a bridge very similar to
this photo. Looks like it was taken before the lake was damned up and flooded. The bridge is still intact but in very rough shape. Hope that helps.” Then last Friday, Shielean Grover emailed after “perusing the This Was Then pages” of the Pennyworth. “The picture of the old trestle,
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page 31, could be the one we had out at Great Central Lake,” Shielean offered. “Just a guess, I was really little but it does look familiar.” Also last Friday; Al Souther called to say that picture looks like one he remembers seeing up near Horne Lake on his many hunting trips in
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the past. Then, Donna and Jack James emailed last Saturday to say they had emailed the picture to Joe and Jane Stanhope (Jane’s dad was Pop (Bob) Banks) and got this reply from Jane: “I think the bridge was the one at Great Central Lake between my
Dad’s Camp 8 and Charlie Koski’s Camp 5 (?). It was the only railway on Great Central and I don’t think it was very long nor did it last long. I remember well riding both a speeder and maybe a crummy on it. I was only a kid (68) but this picture sure looks like it! Somebody must know about it.”
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