Tuesday - Feb. 27, 2024 - The origins of the valley's college

🌥 High 4C

Good morning!

Today’s story is a historical piece that is possible to write largely because of three hugely useful online sources. I’ve written about the Chilliwack Progress’s online archives as recently as in Saturday’s members-only newsletter. (Become a member here to get it every weekend!) But also incredibly useful are the online archives of the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers. Those ones require an account to access. But if you have a library card, you’re already in! You can find the newspapers’ archives on this page on the FVRL website. Just click “BC Historical Newspapers.”

– Tyler

Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

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🛣 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

From ‘nonsense’ to ‘no time to waste’:
How an education revolution led to a college for the Fraser Valley

It was a preposterous idea. A college located in the Fraser Valley?

“Don’t be silly,” Les Peterson said into the phone the morning of March 1, 1960.

It was the turn of a new decade and this was the sort of poppycock that BC’s minister of education was dealing with.

• As the University of the Fraser Valley prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Tyler writes about how regional colleges stopped being ridiculous and started being seen as the thing that would save post-secondary education in British Columbia.

Related

Need to Know

👉 Abbotsford gangster Jamie Bacon will have to serve out his entire jail sentence, the parole board has ruled [Vancouver Sun]

⚠ A rainfall warning has been issued for the eastern Fraser Valley [Infotel]

🙄 Harrison council again quarreled about what they would discuss during their meeting [Agassiz-Harrison Observer] / One of the issues concerned several trees in the centre of town that FVC reported on earlier this year [FVC]

👉 A sex offender who will soon be released has been banned from entering a Chilliwack park [Chilliwack Progress]

🔥 Police are looking for the driver of a truck that hit a tree and burst into flames in Langley [Langley Advance Times]

🚑 A Maple Ridge man died in a crash over the weekend near Manning Park [CityNews]

🥛 A new smoothie store is opening in Garrison Crossing [Fraser Valley Today]

🚔 A Mission teen was arrested after allegedly breaking into mailboxes and damaging a police car [Mission Record]

🔎 Langley Mounties are asking for help to identify a serial groper from last year [Langley RCMP]

🚨 Chilliwack police are looking to find the driver of a red SUV seen near the site where a man’s body was found [Fraser Valley Today]

👩‍🎓 Abbotsford Tech District will mean affordable housing, education and innovation for the next generation of farmers, and major private sector investments that support economic recovery.*

*Sponsored Listing

The Agenda

Chilliwack motel may be set for demolition

A derelict motel in North Chilliwack is up for sale, with the sellers touting its development prospects.

The motel near the intersection of Yale and Quarry roads has been declining for years, with multiple units boarded up. The listing for the property says that a demolition permit has been obtained, but also that it has two bachelor suites and nine one-bedroom units, and has received “lots of renovations.”

The owners are seeking $4 million for the property, which doesn’t include an adjacent gas station. They say the site has the potential to build a 35-unit condo project, though a conceptual image features a much larger building.

Hospital tax hike to be considered

The Fraser Valley’s politicians will finally decide this week whether to hike property taxes to pay for new health care projects.

While almost all health care spending is controlled by the provincial government, the Fraser Valley Regional Hospital District Board collects money through property taxes that it passes on to Fraser Health to help fund large new projects like long-term care residences and hospital upgrades.

In recent years, Fraser Health has asked for more money than the hospital district has planned for, leading local politicians to push back on the funding requests. On Thursday, though, the hospital district board will consider whether to hike health care property taxes by up to 29% to meet Fraser Health’s demands. They’ll also consider a smaller 6% increase that would fail to meet the health authority’s requests for funding.

The average property tax bill currently includes a hospital tax charge of about 75%. Because hospital district taxes are relatively low, neither hike will hit local taxpayers too hard. By the time new construction is factored in, a 6% tax revenue increase would only cost the average household an additional 10 cents. The 29% hike would boost taxes by about $16 on average.

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