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NOVEMBER 30, 2018 | Volume 31 No. 96
FRIDAY
Page A32 is your guide to myriad events in the city and region
FALCONS FLYING
Meet those behind the Falcon Program, one of five charities being helped in this year’s KTW Christmas Cheer Fund, and find out how you can help A3
CREATING
Miles Wayne wants you to check out his art show on Saturday A31
BILL RISING
Upgrading Canada Games Pool is going to be expensive A7
WEEKEND WEATHER: Chance of flurries High 4 C Low -7 C
This aerial shot from 1967 shows sewage lagoons and a landfill on McArthur Island, a far cry from the sports mecca is it today, as illustrated in the photo to the right. CITY OF KAMLOOPS ARCHIVES
FROM SEWAGE LAGOONS TO SPORTS MECCA JESSICA WALLACE STAFF REPORTER jessica@kamloopsthisweek.com
McArthur Island wasn’t always a recreation oasis in the Tournament Capital of Canada. Before it became a bonafide sports destination, the 126-acre barren sand dune in the Thompson River served as a playground for kids who grew up in Brock’s old apple orchards. “We swam in the slough and we’d build rafts and we’d go over to McArthur Island,” 82-year-old Norman Kopec said. KTW dug into the island’s past before
With the fate of the old golf course in limbo, KTW takes a look at the history of McArthur Island council decides the future of a 14-acre parcel in the west end of the park, formerly home to a nine-hole golf course. The city has identified a multi-use nature park with a disc golf course for that portion of the property, though plans have been contested by the Kamloops Naturalist Club, which maintains the two concepts are incompatible.
Council will have the final say. Standing next to a lush green soccer field across from the derelict golf track, Kopec pointed to a memorial park bench inscribed with family members’ names and recounted the transformation of his childhood playground through the decades. Kopec has spent his whole life in the area.
He was raised on farmland in Brocklehurst and later moved to Kelly Road across the street from McArthur Island, where he has lived for more than 40 years with a view of the slough in which he once swam in the summer and on which he played hockey in the winter. Kopec’s earliest memory of McArthur Island dates back to the 1940s, when he was about eight years old. If you want to know what the island looked like back then, he said, look no further than across the river to Rabbit Island.
See ISLAND, A14
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