Here are your newsmakers for 2018 — brought to you by December.
That’s right, this final month of the year is going out with a bang.
Thank you giardia and cryptosporidium, because of your willingness to share, the more than 12,000 residents of Prince Rupert were without drinking water for approximately two weeks.
The boil water notice is the most far-reaching story we’ve covered all year, effecting the most people, in our opinion at least, next to the tsunami alert that held us on edge from Hartley Bay to Port Edward on Jan. 23.
December was a business high and low month, with Shutter Shack closing its doors after 40 years, but then finding a new partnership to reopen on Third Avenue; the Port of Prince Rupert handled its millionth container for the first time in calender year; then we found out the port plans to challenge provincial environmental charges by declaring Crown agent immunity. And remember WCC LNG, the project with visions for Lot. 444? You don’t have to wonder any more, in a quiet posting on its site, the company announced it was no longer pursuing the $25-billion project.
On a B.C.-wide scope, we learned that of the 40 per cent who voted in the mail-in electoral reform referendum, 61.3 per cent want to stick with the tried and true first-past-the-post.
Now, for the rest of the months, we had the whole cherry tree saga that capped off beautifully with a plaque, a family reunion and a $46,000 bill for the feds. Justin Trudeau paid a visit, announced more ocean protection measures and walked along our rainbow crosswalk. Rushbrook Trail was at last renovated, and upped the city’s game by a lot. But then an ammonia tank leaked outside the civic centre, a tank that no one seemed to know about. Salmon restrictions in the Skeena were tight, but then miraculously the fishery opened briefly for gillnetters.
It’s the back and forth, the ebb and flow if you will.
Let’s just say, it was yet another eventful year for this end of the rail line.
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