The Alberni Valley Community Forest Society has put its support behind the city's tourist train with a $5,000 donation.
Chris Duncan and Jim Sears from the community forest board visited the Alberni Pacific Railway during Labour Day weekend to deliver the donation to Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society president Richard Spencer and longtime conductor Kevin Hunt, and engineers John Land and Ted Mollett. The IHS operates the railway.
It is one of two donations the community forest society will be making this year after asking for submissions from community organizations. "These donations come out of the legacy fund," created with the annual dividends the society gives to its sole shareholder, the City of Port Alberni, said Sears, board chair.
The community forest annually gives back dividends of $300,000 or more to the city from timber and firewood sales.
"Through the legacy fund the city has given us a donation budget," he explained. Both the IHS and Navy League Cadet Corps Armour Ford received donations this year. Both non-profits were selected by committee, which considered four requests for proposals that met the criteria.
Donations cannot be used for operating budgets or labour. "It has to be creating something, like building or re-building one of these railcars or upgrading the train," Sears explained. "For the Navy League it's to buy a boat trailer so they can get their boats to the water."
The community forest society was happy to support the IHS and railway because of the logging heritage behind both entities. "The Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society brings some of the heritage back to us, to see it and operate it," Sears said.
"If we're going to make decisions that are reasonable and sound for the future we have to have some idea of the past. The IHS brings that forward to us, so we don't just hear about (history), we can actually see it.
"Having a connection with forestry makes it easy."
The new process went well for the first year, and the society intends to have another round of requests in 2025, Sears said.
