Columbia Commonwealth ... a River Runs Through It

all the views we dare to share

The Place In Which We Live:

Columbia Commonwealth

Nature, fish, people and other parts of the environment were among the items ignored when the Columbia River Treaty between Canada and the United States was signed in 1964. Power generation and flood control were what mattered.

 

Things have changed. Eileen Delehanty Pearkes has studied and written about the complex ecosystem which is the Columbia River Basin. She has also curated an exhibition on the Columbia River Treaty and its impact on the people and other parts of the environment in the two signatory nations: Canada and the U.S.

 

 

 

Eileen graciously sent us a copy of Treaty Talks: A Journey Up the Columbia River For People and Salmon. It is an excellent way to see and better understand the challenge of the Columbia Commonwealth. We thank Adam Wicks-Arhack for making it available to us.

 

 

 

Elected Representatives

Mayor Don McCormick

Our September edition: The flume's in process; roads are a challenge; Kimberley and Cranbrook are joined at the bridge; and the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM)meets in Vancouver and tries to get Victoria's attention.

 

The earlier editions of conversations with the Mayor are here.

 

SunMine

The largest solar installation in western Canada officially signed onto the grid on 27 July, 2015. Built on a reclaimed brownfield site of what was once the world’s richest lead and zinc mines, the aptly name SunMine moves Kimberley, BC decisively toward a sustainable future.

The SunMine is Now Open for Business

27 July, 2015

Congratulations Kimberley!

Our Neighbors

 

Kim McLean — Bavarian Home Hardware

 

    Kim solved a serous hardware problem for the city.

 

                            

 

Stan Cuthill — Kimberley Building Supplies

                          
Tara Penner — Pivot Data

 

Grady Pasiechnyk — Wine Works

 

 

 

 

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Broadband is Not Enough, But It IS Essential

Before deciding to relocate to Kimberley, we looked at communities on four continents and one large island. Two important criteria in our seach were air quality and internet connectivity. Kimberley's air quality is acceptable, though significantly improved by HEPA filters.

In June, 2009 we were assured by the appropriate authorities that Kimberley had "high-speed" internet service, aka broadband. Our sources believed what they had told us. They had been given inaccurate information. Since moving here, we have become tedious on the absolute necessity of having broadband service available to our community.

With Telus now about to offer service via fibre optics and Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation working to facilitate access to broadband, we thought it time to assess where Kimberley is in the broadband-sphere.

In January we had scheduled a discussion with Johnny Strilaeff, CBT's chief operating officer. We planned to talked about the SunMine but also took the opportunity to discuss CBT's relatively new creation, Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation (CBBC).

Part 1

The other parts of this conversation are here.

Audio Bits: 

American author and playwrite E.L. Doctorow died in July. We talked with him in 2005 about his novel The March and about the relationship between writers and readers. These are excerpts from that conversation.

Why we do this

During Kimberley's 2011 election campaign, we made an offer to all the mayoral candidates to produce a regular discussion with the Mayor as part of the communication process everyone was talking about. We renewed that offer in 2014. On April 1, 2015, we recorded the first program. Here 'tis (on the right of this page).

 

This project is based on the notion of democratic dialogue, first introduced to us by Cornel West. Respectful discussions between and among the citizens of a community are the central core of a polity's ability to govern itself. That's why we're including some of our neighbors.

 

*—"Attention must be paid" is a line from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. In a conversation with Gay Talese in 2006, he pointed out to us the importance of attending to everyday events and the people who inhabit them.