Get out the barbells, diet sodas and nicotine patches West Coast, it’s New Year’s resolution time and the alarm clock is ringing on our self-improvement pursuits.
Whatever dish you’re hoping 2018 serves you, you’ll need ambition to sit at the table and perseverance to stay seated while being peppered with adversity.
Improvement can’t be made without sacrifice. It takes time and effort to get better.
Whether you plan to give up smoking, get more exercise, volunteer or eat better, you will need to slay the dragons of doubt to get there. Naysayers abound and the rocks they throw can turn the back of your own mind into your biggest critic.
The sword of sticktoitiveness is heavy and monstrously easier to put down than to wield. Just ask anyone who’s ever pitched a project through the labyrinth of our council chambers or been pummelled with harrumphs by our local gossip gauntlet.
Telus has resolved to spend roughly $400,000 on erecting a new cell-tower in Tofino. The province plans to spend $30 million to make a 1.5 kilometre stretch of the only way in and out of where we are better. The West Coast Multiplex society wants to build us an ice-rink and then a swimming pool as part of a staged Multiplex project that would significantly enhance our recreational options.
Improvements can’t be made without sacrifice and we’re set to make a few if those three dreams come true.
The highway work’s set in stone and nothing we say at the province’s public engagement sessions this month—Jan. 23 in Tofino and Jan. 24 in Ucluelet—will stop the only door in and out of here from slamming shut on us each night.
Taking away those blind corners and widening that currently treacherous stretch to four lanes is both needed and long overdue though, so thumbs up to the province’s perseverance. Accidents are never scheduled though and thinking about ambulances and search crews maneuvering those closures is terrifying. We assume contingency plans will be hashed out to get our heroes, and those who need them, through, but that’s an awful lot of blasting being done and rock being removed to simply yell, ‘Car!’ and clear a path.
Telus is claiming their resolution for 2018 is necessary too, but considering the company has promised not to force their 40-metre tower onto Tofino’s sightline, it’s tough to see that one going through. The Tofitian landscape doesn’t change without a fight and the tower’s opposition dominated the day at Tofino’s Dec. 14 council meeting. Sometimes it takes noise from the no-side to wake up the yes-side though, so we’ll see if Newton’s Third Law of Motion brings an equally adamant opposite reaction when Telus returns.
The regional district’s Multiplex survey results were predictable, yet somehow the decision our leaders make based on those results will be surprising either way. The results suggest raising taxes for an ice rink is unpopular, though Tofino and Electoral Area C were the only communities staunchly opposed and local First Nations communities gave the project a considerably rousing endorsement. Do we simply rip up 2012’s referendum results because a survey suggested 51 per cent of us now oppose the plan, or will the Multiplex Society find a way to persevere? I hope it’s the latter. Recreational diversity for our local youth is a sweat-worthy pursuit.
