Museum budget must be returned

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• EDITORIAL: Facing the fiscal music with B.C.'s stand-pat budget

Museum budget must be returned

To the Editor,

I encourage everyone to check out the current temporary exhibit in the local museum, How We Are; How We Want to Be. Guest curators Kelly Poirier and Dawn Foxcroft have done a great job of organizing and presenting some of the thousands of photos taken by Bob Soderlund during his 25-year stint as editor of Ha-shilth-sa newspaper. Congratulations!

The exhibit gives visitors the opportunity to meet some of our neighbours, to review and better understand some of the events that have taken place around us here in the past quarter-century.

In the past two years, there have been three excellent locally-produced exhibits in the Alberni Valley Museum: The Lady From Paisley, Ron Hamilton’s photo exhibition and the current show. I am concerned that this sort of exhibit will become rare, or disappear, if city council continues with its current excessive cuts on the Alberni Valley Museum.

All city departments, including the museum, had to present reduced budgets to the council this year. We may not like that but at least it’s fair. But the museum was told to cut a further $50,000 from their projected budget.

This is not fair, and, if pursued, will ultimately make it impossible for the museum to present temporary exhibits like How We Are; How We Want to Be. Without these local events, what is the point of the museum?

I urge the mayor and council to re-consider that extra $50,000 cut imposed on our museum.

David Hooper,

Port Alberni

Trash talking city’s garbage debate

To the Editor,

The trick in having the guts to go out on limbs repeatedly is not to go too far. With that in mind, here’s your garbage report, folks.

Firstly, no Cowichan garbage will be brought in.

Secondly, at present the city isn’t recycling plastic, glass, or metal, only cardboard and paper.

Lastly, the Steves (Sunbird Disposal) were offered a one-year recycling contract with the city, but turned it down.

In the future, the city wants to do recycling (curbside pickups) and to use one-arm bandits (new garbage trucks) to pick up one can only weekly. Pickups would be from streets, not alleys.

If city crews do the recycling pickups, it would be at high city wages ($25 per hour), so let’s hope it’s done through private contractors such as the Steves.

On another topic, the legislature witnessed the sad sandbagging of our MLA who didn’t present the log-export figures for TimberWest, thus allowing Minister of Forests and Range Rich Coleman to get away with quoting figures from Island Timberlands only.

Merry Christmas to all and best wishes for the New Year.

Richard Berg,

Port Alberni

Somass system good, bad news

To the Editor,

Re: Special report: watersheds, Nov. 30.

The sockeye “bonanza” that we have all come to appreciate locally over the past 30 or 40 years is the result of several factors including the fishways at Sproat and Stamp Falls, the original purpose for Robertson Creek hatchery and substantial fertilization of both Sproat and Great Central Lakes.

Historically, these runs were closer to or less than this year’s escapement, but they are very important to our local economy and we can’t afford to go backwards. We must protect what we have built.

I am also on the Somass Basin Watershed Management planning committee and attended a recent meeting at the House of Gathering.

What we heard at that meeting, from the assembled wisdom, was that the Somass/Stamp is probably still the healthiest river system on the Island (the fourth largest salmon producing river in B.C. and possibly the most salmon per kilometre in North America).

However, it flows into one of the worst harbours – one with a very low (almost lethal to fish) oxygen level due to years of effluent fibre mat from the pulp mill covering the harbour floor.

The good news is there are new, efficient and innovative methods of overcoming this oxygen sink.

It was explained at this meeting that the Somass/Stamp is one of the most at risk systems for sockeye survival if summer water temperatures increase even a degree or two in Sproat and Great Central Lake, as they have twice in the last 10 years. However, it is also one of the easiest to fix.

The best good news at the last meeting is that almost all the stakeholders were at the table including representatives from B.C. Hydro, Timberwest, Island Timberlands, both local First Nations, recreational interests, developers, AVEA, the city, the regional district, DFO and the environment ministry (the Catalyst representative was unavailable).

There is an urgent need, a serious will and some seed money to bring this project to fruition.

Bob Cole,

chairman,

Alberni Sport Fishing Advisory Committee

Season of joy

just for consumers

To the Editor,

As this past Halloween’s TV fare competed with “holiday season” commercials for “which season is it anyway?” honours, I got to thinking: Let’s program Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol among all the other Halloween movies with ghostly themes.

And what perfect timing, immediately before what used to be the official start of what I recently heard referred to as “the giving season.”

Santa Claus is great, however he’s really starting to get the jump on the Big Guy’s birthday.

So I suggest tuning into Dickens now, rather than waiting for Christmas Eve, as a pre-shopping season reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.

No matter what religious faith, the message A Christmas Carol reinforces is universal: for everyone to truly consider “the plight of mankind who live in poverty” by perpetuating that “giving season” attitude for the whole year instead of just at Christmastime.

Liz Stonard,

Port Alberni