Monday - April 7, 2025 - Keep the boardwalk, residents say again

🌧 High 11C | Your forecast

Good morning!

After running The Current for four years and spending more than a decade in local news, I like to think I know which stories are going to draw large numbers of readers. But I still get surprises every now and then. Last June, I did a little sleuthing on the potential location of the new provincial animal health lab. Having spent a day in the facility a decade ago (for this story), I was very interested in its successor. But I didn’t really expect it to draw a huge number of readers. For some reason, though, the story was one of our better-read pieces of last year. Last week, we got more information about the new facility—plus confirmation my previous detective work was correct. So we have a new story. But I have absolutely no idea whether it will be just as widely read. You readers can be an unpredictable bunch.

– Tyler

News

Animal health lab site confirmed

The provincial government is planning to build its massive new farm-disease lab on a plot of Abbotsford farmland next to the University of the Fraser Valley, a new application confirms.

The new Plant and Animal Health Centre will replace a lab on Sumas Prairie that was flooded in 2021 but has since re-opened. The lab tests plants and animals for hundreds of different diseases and other problems, and is BC’s only lab that can handle testing for avian influenza.

• Today, Tyler writes about plans for the province’s new animal health lab—including how its crematorium influenced its eventual location. 

Related

Need to Know

👉 A group of Langley neighbours have launched a petition against a proposed 302-unit apartment building that would include below-market rental units and a daycare [Langley Advance Times]

🚔 Abbotsford Police have released a sketch of the suspect in a sexual assault in Mill Lake Park late last month [Global]

🚓 No charges will be laid against an RCMP officer involved in a two-vehicle car crash that injured four people near Agassiz in 2022 [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

👉 Police say an impaired driver was to blame for an Abbotsford car crash that knocked out power to a neighbourhood [Fraser Valley Today]

👉 Soowahlie First Nation has evicted residents of a camp on their land near the Chilliwack River [Chilliwack Progress]

🏒 Hockey legend Brett Hull will be at a collectible convention in Langley next weekend [Langley Advance Times]

⚖ An Abbotsford man has been sentenced to nine months in prison for sextortion [CityNews]

🔥 A vehicle fire closed a section of Highway 1 between Chilliwack and Abbotsford Saturday [Fraser Valley Today]

🗳 Election 2025

The federal election campaign continues until election day on Monday, April 28. Advance voting will take place over the Easter weekend, from Friday, April 18 to Monday, April 21. Find everything you need to know—including where to vote—by visiting one of our local election hubs:

Chilliwack, Hope, and the Eastern Valley | Abbotsford and Mission | Langley

The latest

👉 A Langley conservation group is hosting an all-candidates meeting for the Abbotsford-South Langley riding, but the Conservative candidate has refused to attend [Bertrand Creek Enhancement Society/Facebook]

👉 Polls suggest Langley’s three federal ridings may all be up for grabs during the coming election [CBC]

👉 The NDP promised national rent control, while the Conservatives pledged to stop new supervised consumption sites [Global/CBC]

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The Agenda

Abbotsford residents tell city (again) to keep Mill Lake boardwalk

Abbotsford residents don’t want Mill Lake’s boardwalk to be replaced by a path on the nearby shoreline.

As part of work to create a new masterplan for the city’s most-used park, officials have been sketching out a long-term vision for the site, including the future of the loop trail around the lake.

As part of that work, they have suggested that when the trail’s 150-metre long boardwalk reaches the end of its life, it be replaced by a path on the nearby shoreline. During previous surveys, residents voiced their broad opposition to the plan. City planners, however, thought the opposition may have been the result of people thinking the end of the boardwalk would also be the end of the loop trail.

So they returned to the public with another survey that clarified the choice at hand and asked whether the city should spend money to replace or retain the boardwalk, or replace it with a wider path on the land that emphasized accessibility. And again, the public called for the city to keep the boardwalk. More than three-quarters of respondents said the boardwalk would stay.

During planning work, city staff have said they preferred a land-based path because of the accessibility challenges the current boardwalk presents to users. Although the survey presented users with a choice between keeping the boardwalk, or creating an accessible path on land, it did not give respondents the choice to choose both options.

The feedback to the boardwalk question and nine others in the new survey will inform work on a new draft masterplan for the park. You can see all the survey responses here.

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🤝 Now hiring

• Early morning sorter at UPS in Abbotsford

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• Restaurant general manager at Hellcrust Pizza in Langley

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Hiring in the Fraser Valley? Reply back and let us know!

🗓 Things to do

Build your park: The April Abbotsford Mission Nature Club meeting will look at "homegrown national parks" and how people can create their own. The meeting will be at the Ravine Park Hatchery at 7:30pm on Wednesday, April 9. Details online.

Purse power: The Soroptimist International of the Langleys hosts its Power of the Purse fundraiser on Thursday, April 10. Shop gently-used purses and jewellery and support vulnerable patients at Langley Memorial Hospital. Details online.

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Catch up

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