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YEAR IN REVIEW: Looking back at May headlines

Garbage troubles, woken bears and self-healing concrete
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After servicing Hope for nearly a decade, the District refused to renew First Class Waste Services Inc.’s contract after it expired in December 2018. (Sarah Gawdin/Hope Standard)

May 2019

• This was the year of Hope’s very own GarbageGate, and May was the month that it became an issue for residents. On May 1, Hope had no waste-removal services, after its existing contract expired in December 2018. First Class Waste Services Inc. had been providing services, and operated throughout the beginning of the year in good faith a new contract could be hammered out. It wasn’t.

Valley Waste got the contract and there were some hiccups in coverage as they moved to take over pick-up.

• Chawathil First Nation became Canada’s first community with a self-healing road.

Self-healing concrete reduces crack formation by more than 90 per cent compared to regular concrete, uses recycled products and has the smallest carbon footprint, and lasts at least five times longer. Concrete structures naturally develop cracks over time, but these fibres are designed to bridge the cracks as they form, enabling the structure to withstand extreme weather conditions and last longer.

A parking lot and driveway was retrofitted with the concrete in May.

• Have you checked out Mile Zero yet?

Sponsored by Hope Communities in Bloom, the mile-marker post marks the start of the Hope-Princeton Highway. It is located at the corner of Old Hope Princeton Way and Sixth Avenue, and has signs pointing in the direction of far-off locations, such as Santa’s Workshop, Los Angeles, and Auckland, New Zealand, which is almost 12,000 km away.

Watch for more improvements to the point of interest in the new year.

• Upon waking from a long, restful sleep, it’s important to kick-start the metabolism with some breakfast: but imagine the hunger after having been asleep for months, and how enticing just about any morsel of food would be. That’s how Lydia Koot explains the strong desire to eat that bears experience every spring. But who was to know May would be the start of such a busy bear year? “This is why we all need to be vigilant with our garbage,” Koot said. Bears who get used to eating garbage and return for it can be dangerous. “And they get shot for it, and bears shouldn’t be shot.”


 

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Victor Smith of Hope Communities in Bloom speaks at the unveiling of the Mile 0 post for the Hope Princeton Highway. (Ray Daws photo)


Jessica Peters

About the Author: Jessica Peters

I began my career in 1999, covering communities across the Fraser Valley ever since.
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