New banner poles, interpretive panels, and new lighting are being added to the Ts’ubaa-asatx Nation’s waterfront along North Shore Road and, boy, do they look sharp!
The plan was to add some lighting to the area but it’s become so much more.
“Over the years we’ve done a park, a memorial pole, a mini-longhouse, a washroom facility, Kaatza Adventures, and the walkway,” Aaron Hamilton, the band’s operations manager noted. “What was missing with the walkway all the way through was there was no lighting. We thought that if we were going to do any lighting, we should do something with some vibrancy about it.”
That’s when the banners were thought up.
Hamilton was quick to give praise to his wife Melanie Livingstone for the project.
“It’s Melanie’s brain power that did all that,” he said. “Over the course of the last five-plus years, all our waterfront development along North Shore Road has been mainly the brainchild of Melanie and she’s overseen the design of how all of that has unfolded.”
Hamilton said Livingstone is always looking for multiple ways to satisfy what the Nation’s needs are now and in the future.
She worked with Victoria-based Sign of the Times designing and refining for six to eight months before the final plan was made.
Hamilton confirmed the poles are up now but a secondary set of lighting is still to come.
“Some lights that shine up that will be connected to a solar grid and ambient lighting that lights the path as well,” are yet to come, he explained.
The Ministry of Transportation and B.C. Hydro have put in street lights along the road a little faster than the First Nation had expected they would but they aren’t opposed to them.
“We’ve been working with them,” Hamilton said. “It’s actually lit up the whole pathway quite nice.”
More development is on the way for the Ts’ubaa-asatx Nation.
“We’re a small nation but we think big,” Hamilton said.
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