Don and Sophie
1996 - 1997 Executive Directors

Previous Executives

 

 

Directors

President - Don Rathborne
Past President - Alan Buium
Secretary/Treasurer - Barb Aven
Director - Jim McGivern
Director - Ross Grierson
Director - Mike Speer
Director - Nancy Poirier

 

 

 

 

 

 

1996-1997 Executive Directors

by Don Rathborne (January 15, 2007)

donI think initiating the new drainage system would be my footprint on the community. I was President during the new year of 1996/97 when the great snowfall happened around the end of December (remember the border was actually closed for a couple of days?). Then around New Year’s eve it started to rain in biblical proportions on top of the melting snow which resulted in our bluff slumping in several places. Actually I remember Jim Ramsay, Brian Baynham and me on the bluff that night and the grass in front of the bluff cabins actually had pools of water. The old drain was stressed to capacity and couldn’t relieve the runoff pressure although it was shooting through the narrow opening with great velocity. It was Jim who suggested that we knock off the small pipe at the end of the outfall going over the bluff and we all agreed. He hit it with a sledgehammer a couple of times and opened up the pipe. The water exploded through the larger outfall pipe and within 15 minutes the grass bluff surface water had receded. That was the moment of clarity with respect to drainage. We definitely needed a new drainage system to handle these “one in a hundred year” weather situations.

That spring I went to Bellingham to engage the services of an engineering firm and then at the AGM that summer we secured approval from the community to collect a drainage levy fee of $100 each for each lot. That was the year the AGM was held in the community centre hall on Gulf road because of inclement weather. As I recall the vote was called and passed after lengthy discussion and at that moment lighting flashed in the window and a tree fell over. Everyone in the hall gasped and Barb Aven and I, who could not see what had happened behind us, thought the great gasp from the membership was something about the vote!  Anyway the rest is history.

Thanks to the insightful direction of Jim Ramsay and Donn Aven, plus the combined labour from a cast of dozens, the drains are now mostly completed. The one in a century weather patterns seem now to be repeating about one in every ten years so I guess that 1996/97 evening was a critical warning that, fortunately for us, did not go unheeded.