If Port Alberni city council watchdog Roland Smith’s stunt surrounding the Alberni Pacific Railway name hasn’t left a few city councillors feeling the heat, it should.
Smith has been asking city council for nearly a year for documentation proving who owns or operates McLean Mill and the Alberni Pacific Railway. He started quietly. When repeated letters were not answered to his satisfaction, he took more drastic action: he searched for the name ‘Alberni Pacific Railway’ with the BC Corporate Registry and, discovering that it was vacant, he put a reserve on the name.
Should he go through with incorporating a company under this name, the city—or its McLean Mill Society—could be forced to either change the name of the railway it currently runs between the Port Alberni Train Station and McLean Mill, or pay a fee to the rightful owner of the name to use it.
Smith has said he is not interested in incorporating—it costs a lot of money, and he fully admits he reserved the name to gain the attention of city staff and council. He’s not interested in making money off this venture, he wants answers.
Smith has finally got council’s attention, and he expects those answers in the next few weeks.
It’s the least the city can do: he should not have had to wait 10 months for answers to his queries.
Smith’s actions have also brought up questions about liability, and about who has authority to run the train.
These are questions the MMS, despite its infancy, should have addressed. Smith asserts the city’s paperwork concerning the train and railway shows three different owners—none of them corroborating who, in fact, is in charge.
This needs to be fixed; otherwise, how can the society or the city justify asking for funds to fix tracks and trestles if no one knows who’s in charge?
—Alberni Valley News
