Creston

I had some interesting projects around Creston. I was hired by the Ministry of Transportation to

survey a five-mile piece of road that bypasses Creston. It goes around the orchard area and the

built-up area on the mountainside. I bid on the job, coming in barely lower than the local resident

surveyor.

Then a funny thing happened. There was one chap in Nelson who was politically powerful. He

owned property along the old highway, going through the middle of town, which was very

congested even thirty years ago. (It is even more congested today, even though there is another

alternate bypass.) Anyway, this fellow stopped the bypass from being built after it had been

engineered and legally surveyed. The government had acquired all the property to build the road,

but it was never built. I do not know if it ever will be built. This was a political decision made to

favour one, albeit powerful, party.