Wither Smithers?

TheRealGreatWhiteNorth
BCVille


When I checked the weather last Friday morning I couldn't believe that it was snowing in Prince George.

We're talking about Sept 15th here.

PG is the largest town in central British Columbia north of Kamloops, about 80,000 people.

And I was getting ready to head up there to do a little of the teaspoon filling that Pete Seeger was talking about a few posts ago.

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Flying to Prince George is magnificent. While Westjet sends a 737 in there now, I took the little plane offered up by Robert Milton et al.

I like those little planes, at least when the weather's OK, because they fly lower. And when you fly lower you can actually see stuff. And this time around we flew up the coast then cut east over the mountains and into the Cariboo just as the sun was setting.

When I got to town it was still pretty early, or so I thought. After settling in at the hotel I headed out for a walk at about 9pm looking for a bite to eat at somewhere more interesting than the White Spot right next door.

Unfortunately, an hour or so later I ended up right back at Mr. Toigo's place, after first having an interesting discussion with the fine fellows in an RCMP cruiser who couldn't figure out why a slightly nebbish looking science-geek-type guy would be walking the streets, alone, on a Friday night.

Which I can sort of understand now.

Because the entire downtown core was a ghost town.

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After doing my thing the next day I took a walk with a couple of the local volunteers that I'd been working with and they showed me the sights up close and personal late on a beautiful, cool and crisp Saturday afternoon.

And there really was lots of interesting stuff to see, including a quite marvellous community center area.

Just no stores or restaurants.

Why?

The malls of course.

And specifically the Big Box monstrosities, all of which live in the cheap and ugly sodium flare glare of what was once the darkness on the edge of town.

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At dinner that night, which was held at an old fishing lodge on the edge of the Nechako river, I got talking to a group of folks from up the road in Smithers.

Now, it is entirely possible that, even if you live in BC, you know absolutely nothing about Smithers except maybe that it is the setting for that great set of books for teenage girls by Susan Juby, the first of which was titled 'Alice I Think'.

Bigger E. loves that book, and the whole series in fact. It has since been made into a TV show that we haven't seen yet.

Anyway, it turns out that Smithers is a whole lot more than that. For example, it is a haven for artists and musicians. It also has a real, live downtown, filled with locally owned and operated shops and restaurants that people like to go to and hang out in, even in the dead of winter (see photo above).

The impression I got of it while talking to everybody is that it is kind of like the town in Northern Exposure, except that it is the real thing.

But that is all in danger now.

Why?

Because Wal-Mart wants to bring in its 1500 car parking lot vampire act and suck the life out of the entire town.

Luckily, the local folks are fighting, hard.

As a result, they've already stopped them once.

But now the town council, with barely discernible marks on their necks, are apparently getting ready to give the ghouls another chance.

And we down here in Vancouver thought we had problems. I mean, the behemoth on Marine Drive will certainly cause problems on the south side of town, but Main St. in the 20's where we live will probably survive, at least for the now.

But as for downtown Smithers?

Well, if the ghouls prevail, it's done for.

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