A look ahead to new year
From the death of Carrie Fisher to Penticton City Council unsuccessfully suing its firemen, 2016 was a pretty lousy year. Here’s hoping the next 12 months will be better and we expect that they will be. In sports, 5,000 athletes will compete in the ITU MultiSports World Championships festival, a weeklong event being staged in Penticton this August. Meanwhile the Penticton Vees will host the Western Canada Cup junior A hockey championship. (Although it didn’t make our top 10 list of stories and it’s still a year away, Penticton securing the Scottie’s Tournament of Hearts is another great thing for our community.)
Musically, Canadian legends Blue Rodeo perform at the South Okanagan Events Centre Jan. 24 followed by Dierks Bentley, a god of “new country” on Feb. 7.
The much-anticiapted Eckhardt Avenue. hockey dorm trial will finally begin in September. Co-accused Michael Elphicke is making regular Facebook posts (see: “Bring Loren Peter Reagan to Justice.”)
The South Okanagan Correctional Centre (also known as “the jail”) will officially open near Oliver in the January. Other major projects include an additional 70 rooms at the Penticton Lakeside Resort and the new Cascades Casino Penticton.
We expect to learn the fate of historic Memorial Arena, whether it’s a minor upgrades to keep it functional, a huge facelift with Olympic ice, or the grand old lady falling victim to a wrecking ball to make room for casino parking.
We will have some new faces in key positions — Lynn Allin as executive director of the Downtown Penticton Association; Thom Tischik as executive director of Travel Penticton; and Peter Webber as CAO of the City of Penticton. Webber is expected to be formally introduced to the community next week.
At the regional district there’s a new chairperson and vice-chair — Karla Kozakevich and Manfred Bauer. The Penticton Indian Band has a new council with a lot of fresh faces and a newly elected chief in Chad Eneas.
Who knows? There could even be a new premier and MLA.
There’s going to be an election. Unfortunately for the residents of Penticton it’s not municipal. Voters across B.C. will head to the polls. Locally, incumbent Dan Ashton will face challenger Tarik Sayeed (NDP) and maybe a Green candidate or Conservative. In Boundary Similkameen, one of the craziest ridings in B.C., incumbent Linda Larson will face a yet-to-be-named NDP opponent.
At The Herald, we have a new columnist, Dr. Wendy Ross, along with a face from the past, parenting advice columnist Brenda Fisher Barber. While our newsroom remains the same, we are working on several big stories and highly-anticipated features that will appear over the first few weeks of January. We’re expecting at least one huge story to break in the very near future.
All of this sounds promising. Here’s a toast to 2017! Happy New Year everybody.
A lot will be new in 2017; much to look forward to