Friday, Jan. 10, 2025 - Chilliwack school board by-election nominations open

🌧 High 7C

Good morning!

Some of you may have noticed we had a little problem with the link to our main story in yesterday’s newsletter, namely that it didn’t work. We don’t know why. Sometimes these things just happen.

If you were looking for the story yesterday and couldn’t find it, you can give it a read here. And in the future, you can always check our homepage if you find a broken link in the newsletter. Even if the link doesn’t work here, if we wrote the story, it should be on our front page.

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope (We have had to temporarily change our forecast links to the Weather Network due to a technical error.)

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

NEWS

The Hope Slide, 60 years later

BC's deputy highways minister was as shocked as anyone by the scene he found just outside of Hope in January of 1965.

“If any mountain was to have fallen down in BC, this is the last one I would have picked,” Tom Miard told reporters as he surveyed the destruction caused by the Hope Slide. Johnson Peak cracked in half at 7am on Jan. 9—sixty years ago yesterday—and sent a flow of rock and rubble over the Hope-Princeton Highway and destroyed nearby Outram Lake.

The landslide was one of the largest in Canadian history. It sent 47 million cubic metres of rock and mud into the Nicolum Valley just east of Hope, creating a debris field up to 500 feet deep in some spots.

The disaster killed four people who had huddled by their stalled vehicles on the highway, waiting for crews to unblock a snow avalanche further up the road.

“There was nothing, you couldn’t even get close to where they had been,” Bob Sowden, a local resident who had gone to help the stranded motorists, told the Vancouver Sun at the time. “I tried to get up high, out of the mud, so I could help them, but then another slide started and I had to run.”

Two bodies, those of 27-year-old Penticton man Bernie Beck and 39-year-old Aldergrove resident Thomas Starchuck, were eventually recovered. Mary Kalmakoff and Dennis Arlitt, both in their 20s, were never found.

Highway crews were able to clear a path over the rubble in 13 days, reopening the Hope-Princeton Highway to traffic. But it took much longer for construction to be complete.

Today, the slide’s scar is still visible on the mountainside. Experts still aren’t sure exactly what caused the slide. Visitors to the Hope Slide viewpoint can see the massive boulders that flowed like water down the rockface still perched where they landed. The continuing visual reminder echoes the Aldergrove newspaper’s warning against man’s hubris, published a few days after the disaster.

“He can build his roads and his dams and his cities, but nature’s projects are much bigger,” the editorial read. “She has so much time at her disposal that she often lets man’s puny works stand untouched until he has forgotten all about her, but in her own good time she will sweep away everything that man has ever built or will ever build.”

Today, in remembrance of one of the largest slides in Canadian history, we are sharing details from the disaster, as it was reported 60 years ago.

• You can find the Vancouver Sun’s front-page coverage of the slide a few days after the disaster here. 

• You can read the Chilliwack Progress’ coverage of the slide, including photos of locals helping with recovery, here.

• You can see rare photos of the aftermath of the slide from the Ministry of Transportation and Transit here. The photos were released in 2020, and show search and rescue workers during the initial recovery, and road crews during road reconstruction.

• You can read about the bus driver who saved his passengers by driving backwards at full speed away from the slide here.

• And, you can take a virtual road trip down Highway 3 in 1966, showing where crews had cut a path through the debris.

If you have any memories or photos of the Hope Slide, send us a line. We may share them in a special section of this month’s history edition.

Need to Know

🚓 BC’s police watchdog is investigating after a man was injured while Abbotsford police were responding to a reported domestic dispute on Boxing Day [Fraser Valley Today]

🐕 The owners of a Langley pit bull that allegedly mauled a contractor say they are not responsible for the man’s injuries [Langley Advance Times]

👉 The Sunshine Valley Recreation Society is looking for an organization to use and help restore its historic pole barn [Hope Standard]

🚔 Two people were arrested after allegedly fleeing police in Abbotsford in a stolen vehicle [Abbotsford News] / Another driver caused a power outage after crashing into a power pole while also trying to escape police [Abbotsford News]

🏘 Langley City should not have exempted a development from the city’s new tenant relocation policy, a councillor says [Langley Advance Times]

😷 BC has reintroduced masking requirements to hospitals to help curb flu, RSV, and COVID cases [The Tyee]

🚑 More BC ambulances are sitting idle as BCEHS cracks down on overtime in an attempt to balance its budget [CTV]

🌋 BC’s Axial Seamount, the most-active underwater volcano in the North Pacific, is primed to erupt; it is not expected to threaten any cities, but could provide important information for scientists [Business in Vancouver]

👩‍🔬 Grow your knowledge in 2025. Explore KPU’s Science and Horticulture programs like biology and sustainable agriculture to develop skills that tackle tomorrow’s challenges today.*

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MEMBERS ONLY

This week’s FVC Insiders’ Edition

In tomorrow’s members-only newsletter, Tyler writes about Canada and the importance of finding shared values. He also explains why we'll be asking our readers for their perspectives on Canada and its future. Get this weekend edition in your inbox tomorrow at 7am—and support our daily journalism—by becoming a member here.

Our members-only newsletter now also includes our week-long FVC picks section, where we profile some of the most interesting events happening in the valley each week. (If you want a sneak peak of the members' newsletter, email us!)

The Agenda

Chilliwack school board by-election to get underway next week

People wanting to take a stab at being a Chilliwack school board trustee will be able to begin submitting their nomination papers starting Tuesday, Jan. 14.

The by-election is set to fill the empty space left by former trustee Heather Maahs, who was elected to the BC Legislature for Chilliwack North back in October. Maahs resigned her school board seat in December, saying she wanted to focus on her job in the legislature.

Two other Fraser Valley local politicians who were elected to the legislature have declined to resign. Abbotsford West MLA and school district trustee Korky Neufeld and Langley Township councillor-turned-MLA Misty Van Popta say retaining their old seats will save their local governments money by avoiding a by-election. (They'll also continue drawing their salaries; Township councillors make about $63,000 each year, while Abbotsford school trustees make about $24,000.)

The Chilliwack school board by-election will take place on March 1. Nominations for candidates will be open between Tuesday, Jan. 14 and Friday, Jan. 24, with the campaign period getting underway on Saturday, Feb. 1.

Two potential candidates have already come forward: former BC Liberal MLA Laurie Throness and DPAC chair Katie Bartel.

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Classifieds

• Fort Langley Women's Dragonboat Team Recruiting for 2025 Season [LINK]

Annual FVC members can find a link to submit their annual classified in the weekly FVC Insiders Edition. Become a FVC member here.

🗓 Things to do

Library time: The Agassiz Library hosts Storytime for kids and caregivers each Friday starting at 10:30am. Details online.

Folk concert: Canadian folk singer Valdy is in Harrison on Saturday for the Harrison Festival Society's season of performing arts. Details and tickets online.

Winter art: Chilliwack's Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve hosts a winter art class with John LeFlock on Saturday. Details and registration online.

Have an event to tell us about? Fill out this form to have it highlighted here.

Catch up

That’s it!

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