I would like to thank Keith Sones of Squamish for his well written letter to the editor in the Dec. 18, 2014 edition of The Squamish Chief newspaper.
I thought that LNG Woodfibre put on a great presentation on Dec. 16 and 17 at the CN Roundhouse and Conference Centre. I was very disappointed by the low attendance by the actual Squamish residents. It was very sad that there was little interest in such a huge opportunity for our town or that the ones in favour of the project are scared off by the environmentalists and the ones against the project. The environmentalists and the ones against the project were out in full force. I mistakenly sat amongst them, noting that most were not even from Squamish.
I enjoyed looking through the various displays about the trade schools, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and natural resources. However, I didn’t have time to watch the Science World demonstrations.
I moved to Squamish as a child with my family. My dad was a forest engineer with Weldwood of Canada for 25 years and has the Deminger Trail named after him. When I was growing up, there were plenty of jobs in forestry, logging, BC Rail, chemical plants, Woodfibre, etc. These jobs no longer exist and the logging industry is very minimal in Squamish now. A family can’t exist on the tourism jobs and Walmart-type jobs, so most people commute either to Whistler or the lower mainland. My husband is a good example: He has to live in Abbotsford during the week to work at his job at Peter Kiwiet Construction, so I have had a weekend husband for four years now. It would be nice for him to be able to work in Squamish so that he could live here full-time and not have to commute back and forth on weekends.
I hope that the Woodfibre LNG project gets the go-ahead to build the project so that some good-paying jobs return to our town and also the much needed tax dollars.
I find that people are misinformed in regards to the Woodfibre LNG project and really should have made the effort to go out to the seminar. I know that I gained a lot of knowledge by doing so. I sat through the three seminars: Presentation by “The safe management of LNG shipping in BC Coastal waters” by president captain Stephen Brown, Chamber of Shipping B.C.; the government panel dialogue and proponent panel dialogue. All of these presenters were very well informed and knowledgeable. They were able to answer all the questions asked of them.
Maybe instead of listening to misinformed people, go to an LNG seminar open-minded, willing to listen and learn!
Suzanne Kirkman
Squamish
