HERITAGE SIGNS SHOULD INCLUDE A FEW SCANDALS
They’re part of our history, too, and B.C. is covered with them
At mid-morning Monday, reporters were invited to the west lawn at the legislature to hear two cabinet ministers issue an open invitation to British Columbians to suggest new heritage signs around the province.
Todd Stone’s Ministry of Transportation is busy updating the 139 existing “stops of interest” alongside provincial highways and wants to supplement those with another 75 or so over the next year.
“We wanted the public to help us create signage that would evoke excitement and cement our position that B.C. is a premier tourism destination,” declared Tourism Minister Shirley Bond.
“Submissions will be evaluated on criteria including the impact the place, person or event has had on the lives of British Columbians,” according to the accompanying media handout from Stone’s ministry.
The two ministers then posed for photographs in front of a newly placed sign commemorating the legislative grounds as site of the “first house of assembly west of the Great Lakes.”
But amid all that inspirational talk, I found myself thinking about the chosen spot in terms of the less flattering aspects of the provincial heritage.
For if excitement is one of the criteria in determining where to put the signs, what better way to attract atten- tion and get the blood flowing than by highlighting “spots of interest” linked to B.C.’s many political scandals.
The sign that figured in Monday’s announcement at the ledge stands in direct line of sight to the lower breezeway where on Dec. 28, 2003, RCMP officers exited the building with boxes of files seized during an unprecedented police raid that was part of a long-running scandal over the sale of government-owned B.C. Rail.
Along the same lines, there’s a crying need for a heritage sign in Richmond to commemorate Fantasy Garden World, the weird theme park that framed Bill Vander Zalm’s rise and fall as premier.
Given the roadside theme, one could readily imagine marking the first place where “Flying” Phil Gaglardi, Social Credit’s reckless minister of highways, was pulled over for speeding. Or a sign outside the Victoria hotel where back in 1978, the Socreds redrew provincial election boundaries to their political advantage.
There’s no darker day in provincial political history than the one that might be commemorated outside the old courthouse in Vancouver: “Here on Nov. 1, 1958, Forests Minister Robert Sommers became the first man in the history of the British Commonwealth to be convicted of a conspiracy to accept bribes while a cabinet minister. Although allegations of bribery were first made in the legislature on Feb. 15, 1955, it took more than three years to bring Sommers to justice because the Social Credit government balked at treating the charges seriously.”
As for the New Democratic Party, the Nanaimo bingo scandal, where the party’s financial arm was caught ripping off charities, ought to be singled out for the benefit of future generations.
The only issue being where to put the sign: Outside the hall where the Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding society ran its so-called “Pinko bingos?” At the money-losing hotel, nicknamed “the Comrade Hilton,” bankrolled in part with charity money? Or at the society’s former office complex, jokingly known as “Red Square?”
The most appropriate place to commemorate the dark side of the NDP time in office is probably the shipyard in North Vancouver where 20 years ago, then-premier Glen Clark fired up the first cutting torch for the fast ferries project.
Priced at $210 million (“right down to the toilet paper,” said Clark), they ended up costing $454 million and proved to be a poor fit to the ferry service to boot.
Then again, one can imagine a whole subcategory of heritage signs dedicated to budget overruns and located in all the right places.
The Socreds promised to build the Coquihalla High- way for $500 million and delivered it for $1 billion. The B.C. Liberals claimed the Vancouver Convention Centre expansion would cost $495 million and missed the mark by $350 million. Looking ahead, one can readily imagine that the day will come when there are similar overruns on the hydroelectric dam at Site C on the Peace River and/or the promised replacement bridge for the Massey Tunnel.
Some 15 years and counting of B.C. Liberal government has supplied a number of possible entrants on their behalf in the heritage equivalent of the hall of shame.
Premier Gordon Campbell’s decade in office suggests one out of province possibility: the roadside spot in Maui where he was stopped by police and charged with drunk driving, becoming the only B.C. premier to spend a night in jail.
But Campbell survived that episode in early 2003. I’d nominate ground zero for the exercise in bad judgment that ended his political career: the cabinet offices in Vancouver where in July 2009 he announced the harmonization of the sales tax, 10 weeks after a provincial election in which his party barely mentioned the possibility and then only as something not on the radar screen.
Christy Clark’s record as premier remains a work in progress. But for now a good placeholder for her failure to deliver would be the site in Kitimat where five years ago, she launched the drive to “establish three liquefied natural gas plants by 2020.”
Not even one terminal can be plausibly up and running until well into the next decade. But if the sign painters put their minds to it, I am sure they can come up with the appropriate wording long before then.
Here Forests Minister Robert Sommers became the first man to be convicted of a conspiracy to accept bribes while a cabinet minister.
PROPOSED HERITAGE SIGN