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- Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023 - Inside Cedar Park
Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023 - Inside Cedar Park
Tyler Olsen
October 24, 2023
🌧 High 7C
Good morning!
My family carved our pumpkins Sunday night. My patience and creativity for these activities is usually…limited to say the least, but this time I came up with something half-decent, I think. My son, meanwhile, undertook the classic Olsen design and put his own spin on it.
Speaking of pumpkins, Grace recently visited a pumpkin patch in Chilliwack to learn all about how farms become tourist attractions. To go along with that story, we'd like to make a list of every little pumpkin patch, Halloween barn, and corn maze and any other agri-tourism stop in the Fraser Valley. We've got a good list to begin with, but you can help us make sure we don't miss your favourite by listing it here.
– Tyler
Insiders Exclusive: We’re interviewing the mayors of Langley City and New Westminster on Thursday about how they went from blogging about their respective city halls to running them.
Become a Current member today and sit in on the interview - and ask questions yourself!
WORTH KNOWING
🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope
🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.
NEWS
The evolution of Cedar Park
Cedar Park is a fixture of South Asian food and fashion in Abbotsford. 📷️ Joti Grewal
The kaleidoscope of colourful awnings trimming aging retail storefronts along Cedar Park Place demand your attention.
Located along the south side of South Fraser Way Abbotsford, Cedar Park includes a long row of ethnically diverse businesses that is unlike any other strip mall in the Fraser Valley. Walking along the storefronts, you’re inundated with signs in different languages of various colours and sizes advertising sales, store hours, and when the latest Punjabi concert is coming to town.
The pungent smell of fabric dye signals you’re nearing a clothing store while a wide range of rich spices dominated by the fragrance of coriander and cumin reveal the location of Indian food. All of this surrounds a busy parking lot at the centre of the plaza.
Over the years, the shopping centre has evolved into the cultural hub it is known as today. But before it transformed to include businesses of diverse backgrounds, shop owners there were primarily from Mennonite families.
Related
Need to know
🚔 An explosion led police to a dead body in Langley; homicide investigators have been called in [CBC]
🖥 A new database has collected information on 21 missing and murdered BC men, women and children, including Langley’s Kellen McElwee [Vancouver Sun]
👉 The BC government says it is fast-tracking the approval of the credentials of immigrants to address labour shortages [CBC]
🥚 An outbreak of avian flu at a Chilliwack egg farm doesn’t come as a total surprise, given the time of year [Chilliwack Progress]
🌈 A rainbow crosswalk in Fort Langley was vandalized again [CTV]
🔥 Agassiz firefighters were called to a trailer fire in Kent early Monday morning [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]
🚑 One person was hospitalized after a garbage truck collided with an SUV in Langley [Langley Advance Times]
🚨 An Abbotsford man who pleaded guilty to four robberies last year had been charged with 13 robberies in 2017 [Abbotsford News]
🏫 UFV welcomed 1,500 guests to its Open House event on October 21 to explore its programs, campus life, and more at the Abbotsford campus. Learn more about what UFV has to offer.*
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Don't miss Dog Man: The Musical!
Only performances in Metro Vancouver! Dog Man, Petey the world’s most evil cat, Flippy the cyborg fish...are you ready for an epic musical adventure with these popular graphic novel characters by Dav Pilkey? Don't miss Dog Man: The Musical, a TheaterWorksUSA production, at New West's Massey Theatre, on October 28 to 29!
The Agenda
Chilliwack has 8,000 catch basins and 400km of storm sewers. 📷 Dmitry Markov/Shutterstock
How old is that manhole?
Chilliwack is trying to bring some order and knowledge to its storm sewer network. The city has 5,500 manholes, 8,000 catch basins and 400km of storm sewers, 20% of which are now more than 70 years old. The city doesn’t even know the age of another 20% of its storm infrastructure. It also hasn’t modeled exactly how that infrastructure performs—and where all the water goes—during a major storm. The city is now trying to fix that by hiring a private company to create a hydrologic and hydraulic model and a related evaluation of infrastructure.
The project will cost about $200,000. Two companies submitted bids, with staff giving the nod to Stantec Consulting. Council will make a final decision at today’s council meeting.
Nooksack deal aims for co-operation but has ‘no legal effect’
On Friday, the BC and Washington State governments—along with five First Nations, the City of Abbotsford, and Whatcom County—signed a deal that sets out how they will co-operate to try to limit damage from future Nooksack River floods.
Yesterday, we wrote about what the deal may mean for future flood prevention efforts in the Fraser Valley. But the actual wording of the agreement was not yet available. Late Monday afternoon, the province sent The Current a copy of the deal. (It’s an unsigned version). You can read the document here.
The agreement says the parties will “Seek agreement on a coordinated flood management and implementation strategies that are incorporated into respective local flood risk and integrated management plans.”
But in general, the agreement includes no promises, and it declares that while it is signed by nine parties, it has “no legal effect” and doesn’t create any obligations on the parts of any of the government.
The deal sets up three different meeting formats—one for leaders, one for policymakers and one for technical staff—though it doesn’t stipulate how frequently the groups will meet.
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