BNSF series by Peace Arch News

Friday October 22, 2010 (Vol. 35 No. 85)

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Iron will: Though there were times during the grueling race when she felt like packing it in, South Surrey resident Jackie Davidson refused to quit, battling the elements at Ironman World Championships last weekend in Hawaii. see page 39

4,000 homes estimated to have multiple suites, according to poll

19,000 known secondary suites in Surrey Kevin Diakiw Black Press

It is estimated about 4,000 homes in Surrey contain multiple secondary suites, according to a recent poll conducted by Ipsos-Reid. Don Luymes, the city’s manager of community planning, said in the survey of 1,400 residents, three per cent admitted they have multiple secondary suites in their houses. Given the number of homes

in Surrey – about 130,000 – that puts the multiple suites estimate at about 4,000. The figure represents a thorny issue for council as it tries to develop a strategy for regulating secondary suites that will increase the amount of affordable housing while respecting the integrity of single-family-home neighbourhoods. Multiple suites are not allowed in

Surrey. The city’s planned housing strategy allows one suite per home, while shutting down homes with more than one suite. But critics say the city has done nothing to shut multiple suites down, or even keep an exact tally on how many there are. Many residents are concerned about a lack of enforcement that has allowed so many new homes with multiple suites to be built in

the first place. Elected officials say they want them eliminated, but don’t want to leave tenants homeless as a result. Luymes pointed out there is no policy developed yet regarding what would happen with the people dwelling in those units. One possibility discussed among staff is to create special zoning for multiple suites. However, that would be an

onerous process as the homes are spread out across the city. The other option considered by city staff is to allow people inhabiting the suites extra time to move out. The one-suite-per-home policy would eventually create more dwellings where people could relocate. Luymes expects there will also be some way to augment enforce see page 4

99 years and counting

Keeping track Alex Browne

Staff Reporter

t’s a persistent rumour, but one with origins shrouded in the mists of time. Nobody seems to know, now, where the idea that the former Great Northern Railway – succeeded by BNSF – had a 99-year lease on the White Rock and South Surrey foreshore, on which the tracks were built in 1906-1909, came from. “It’s a question that comes up regularly,” said Hugh Ellenwood, community historian and archivist with the White Rock Museum and Archives. “We don’t really know why.” The fact appears indisputable that an early subsidiary of the Great Northern received a Crown grant of 150 acres from the border to Mud Bay in June 1907. And city officials confirm any current leasing of land along the tracks is being done by the city from BNSF, not vice versa. Ellenwood agreed one likely reason for the confusion is that any mention of a railway lease might suggest to the public that the railway is the one leasing the land. Local historian Vin Coyne, former editor of the Semiahmoo Sun (later the White Rock Sun),

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Photo courtesy of White Rock Museum & Archives

In 1915, six years after the Great Northern line was completed along the waterfront, White Rock station was integral to the developing community. suggested the rumour has been kept alive by “people who would like to see the railway removed from White Rock.” But Coyne has no doubt about the land’s ownership. “The railway owns the property outright. There have always been rumours the land was leased from the government, but no one’s ever been able to present any proof of an existing lease,” he said. City manager Peggy Clark, noting the lease with BNSF was last renegotiated in 2002, said it is taken for granted the railway owns the land.

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First in series on the Peninsula’s relationship with its rail route The current lease – which Clark said renews automatically every five years unless one of the parties objects – extends to 2023 and covers the beach parking lots, the promenade and part of the museum site. The only major change in land coverage when the latest terms were negotiated was that the lands on White Rock’s “hump” reverted to the railway, Clark added. Much more significant to the city was that the parking lot lands, which had been leased

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for a nominal $200 per year, were reassessed by a property management company retained by BNSF to maximize revenue flow from its land assets. That resulted in an increase to $300,000 annually, city treasurer Sandra Kurylo said, noting the amount might have been higher had the city not agreed to provide some upgrades the railway was seeking, including railings between the museum and the track. The current annual lease is $350,000, or 20 per cent of

revenues from the land, whichever is higher, Kurylo said. The notion of the railway having a 99-year lease on the land is a long-standing one. Ellenwood’s mother, Lorraine, in her book, Years Of Promise: White Rock 1858-1958, reprints an item from the Sun’s Jan. 5, 1956 edition, in which writer Ann Hanley states: “Do you know that the G.N. has a 99-year lease on the foreshore for railway purposes...?” Hanley continues: “Whenever I hear of a large grant of timber or land being given to a foreign see page 4

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Owners of 14,400 suites pay fees from page 1 ment, although he couldn’t say how. Asked if that would mean more bylaw officers, he said that would have to be a decision made by council. He also acknowledged not every community wants to allow even one suite per home. Luymes pointed out the city already has a system in place where residents can “downzone” if they want to opt out of the one-suite-per-home policy. Similar downzonings took place in St. Helen’s Park, where a large portion of the North Surrey community wanted to keep houses at a smaller size. What a downzoning process would look like would also be up to council. The city knows of 19,000 single secondary suites in Surrey, yet councillors and staff acknowledge there are likely many more than that. Of those suites, 14,400 pay Surrey a $700 annual utility fee to cover the cost of extra services, such as water, sewer and garbage collection. Of the 19,000 suites, just 1,800 are in areas legally zoned for secondary accommodation. Suites are more likely to be found in Fleetwood/ Newton (28 per cent), and Guildford and Whalley (20 per cent), while much fewer are found in South Surrey (14 per cent) and Cloverdale (12 per cent). How suites will be regulated will be the subject of discussion in focus groups in subsequent weeks. Luymes said a report to council could come as soon as fall, but he wants to have an iron-clad plan prepared before asking councillors to vote on it.

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been “an exemplary citizen,” in White Rock, citing work it has done over the past 100 years by bringing in rock to stabilize and preserve the foreshore. “The railway was very important in opening up the province,” he said. “People begged them to come here. It’s my understanding they were almost given the land, or it was given to them at a nominal price. “They came in, opened the place up and allowed the people of the community to use their property.” Next week: The ambitions that led to the building of the railway.

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added. Subsequent negotiations to which he was party included persuading senior Burlington Northern management that allowing a promenade alongside the track – an international anomaly among railways – was a good idea. “From their viewpoint it was stupid, but my belief was that it made the track safer,” he said. “The only contentious issue (in the community) was that we were spending a lot of money on developing parking lots and the promenade on what was someone else’s property.” Hogg said the railway has

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‘Exemplary citizen’ in White Rock from page 1 company without considering the generations yet to come, I recall that the G.N. grant has some 50 years yet to run.” But Surrey-White Rock MLA Gordon Hogg, who served on city council from 1973 to 1993 – the final 10 years as mayor – said he has no recollection of the land’s ownership ever being in doubt. When Hogg was first elected to office, principal negotiations with the railway were about redevelopment of the parking lot just east of the museum – the only lot there at that time, he

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Friday, October 29, 2010 Peace Arch News

lifestyles

Fervour over rail possibilities led to land grant The second in a series examining the Peninsula’s relationship with its rail route Alex Browne

Staff Reporter

t was a sweet deal for the Great Northern Railway and its supporters in B.C. In 1907, 150 acres of land from the U.S. border to Mud Bay were granted to the Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railway – an early subsidiary of the GNR – and that grant is still in effect for the railway’s successor, BNSF. After more than 100 years, the motives and reasoning for an outright grant are difficult to fully establish – anyone party to the decision is long gone. And as community historian and archivist Hugh Ellenwood of White Rock Museum and Archives suggests, one cannot underestimate the day’s pro-railway fervour among residents and land speculators. “That kind of story was happening all over North America,” he said. “People benefited wherever railways were built.” Two major regional histories – Lorraine Ellenwood’s Years Of Promise: White Rock 1858-1958 and Barrie Sanford’s Railway By The Bay – suggest specific factors may have significantly swayed the decision. One was empire-building ambitions of Great Northern president James J. Hill (1838-1916), who wanted to outstrip competitors in the Northwest by establishing an international harbour in Semiahmoo Bay for GN’s steamship fleet. Another was Hill’s desire to build a betterengineered and more economical route to Vancouver markets than that provided by one of GN’s Canadian subsidiaries – the New Westminster Southern Railway. But just as significant was the symbiotic

Photo courtesy of White Rock Museum & Archives

Labourers work on the construction of the railway along the waterfront in 1906. relationship between Hill and B.C. lumber magnate John Hendry (1844-1916). Hendry was not only an important customer of GN but also owner of key tracts of land Hill needed to build stations in Vancouver. And he and Hill seemed inextricably linked in a number of rail and land deals as far east as the Kootenays. Whether Hendry played a direct role in persuading the government to grant the land can only be a matter of conjecture. But it is a fact that the industrialist had acquired most of the land in the White Rock area at the time of the Crown grant, and that he was able to sell it – at a huge profit – after the waterfront line opened in 1909.

Among others who prospered in the real estate boom was Rev. William Pascoe Goard, a Methodist minister from Winnipeg, who had purchased 136 acres of land at Kwomais Point in 1905. Goard had a more altruistic purpose than many other speculators. The sale of lots for the area that became Ocean Park helped fund his dream of developing a religious education centre. The result was the Kwomais Point church camp – later the United Church’s Camp Kwomais – recently preserved as Kwomais Point Park. As eagerly as the prospect of the railway had been anticipated, conflict between residents and the railway was apparent almost as soon as the route opened, much

of it focusing on disappointment with the service provided. But there was also a sense that promises had not been honoured. According to Years of Promise, White Rock pioneer H.T. Thrift – himself secretarytreasurer of the International Railway and Development Company – was not opposed to a waterfront railway, but campaigned unsuccessfully in Victoria for the community to retain its original seafront road. Access to the beach and provision of street ends was vital in his view, and he was upset when he discovered the grant had taken place – two years after the fact – that no such provision had been included. Great Northern further raised community ire by fencing off access to the foreshore. Residents petitioned the Railway Commission for a safe route to the water in 1912 and the result was an order for a tunnel under the GN tracks. Located at Elm Street, it was completed in 1913. When the public wharf was constructed the next year, Federal Public Works and Surrey entered into tough negotiations for a crossing. Surrey and the federal government wanted a 66-foot crossing; GN only wanted to allow 16. In the end, the hard-won compromise measured 20 feet. A lack of other beach access at Washington Avenue (now Marine Drive), Great Northern’s substitute for the original seafront road, continued to be a sore point up to the 1930s. In addition, property conflicts were exacerbated by a blunder made when Washington Avenue was surveyed, which left a strip of land between the road and the tracks still in private hands. Settlement of those issues dragged on for decades. Next: The railway’s view of its relationship over the years with the City of White Rock.

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Friday, November 12, 2010 Peace Arch News

lifestyles

The ties that (still) bind The third in a series examining the Peninsula’s relationship with its rail route Alex Browne

Staff Reporter

he Peace Arch proclaims Canadians and Americans as “children of a common mother.” That link is more practically seen in the tracks that run between the Semiahmoo Peninsula and its neighbour to the south, Blaine, Wash. – a crucial connecting stitch in the economic fabric of the Pacific Northwest. As far as Gus Melonas is concerned, the cross-border ties between the railway and the cities of White Rock and Surrey, and beyond, are as strong as they ever were. “We have a consistent, close relationship,” said the spokesperson for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. “We view ourselves as a partner in the community, and recognize the important role we play in moving traffic through Canada, as well as in movement in the U.S.” But there’s another, historic reason for the almost familial feeling, Melonas said, noting the orange colour scheme of BNSF rolling stock is a conscious nod to its heritage and history as heir to the Great James J. Hill Northern Railway empire. “Some people view the first BNSF president railroad as an American company, but our first president, James J. Hill, was a Canadian, and the company retains strong Canadian ties. That

Brian Giebelhaus photo

The American-owned Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railway has Canadian roots. includes having some management based with the western frontier.” out of Canada, in the Lower Mainland.” Hill was thinking internationally in 1879, As recounted by Peninsula-raised railway when he became one of the founders of the historian Barrie Sanford, in his book Railway St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway. By The Bay: 100 Years of Trains at White He and his partners knew that a Canadian Rock, Crescent Beach and Ocean Park, James Pacific Railway was being planned. Jerome Hill was, indeed, Canadian by birth. Hill reasoned that instead of building a A native of the Guelph region in Ontario, costly route through the Canadian Shield, it he was born 1838 when that province was would be logical for the CPR to connect with still known as Upper Canada. his railway, dipping into the U.S. for an easier Confederation was still almost 30 years route between Ontario and Winnipeg. away and Hill was part of a cross-border He and two of his partners became pattern of migration – driven by opportunity directors of the CPR project, but reckoned more than nationalism – when he went to St. without the stance of then-prime minister Paul, Minn. There, he found work as a clerk John A. Macdonald and William Van Horne for a steamboat company which, as Sanford (ironically an American invited in to oversee points out, was involved in transportation construction at Hill’s suggestion), who were on the Red River between St. Paul and Fort adamant the railway should be built only on Garry, near present-day Winnipeg. Canadian soil. “In Hill’s mind,” Sanford writes, “the people When the majority of directors backed of Canada and the United States shared a a Lake Superior route west, Hill resigned bond forged from their common struggle his directorship. He vowed revenge on

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Van Horne – according to Walter Vaughn’s Life and Work of Sir William Van Horne – allegedly pledging “I’ll get even with him if I have to go to hell for it and shovel coal!” In the subsequent development of ‘Hill’s Road’ – or the Great Northern, as it was rechristened in 1889 – one can trace Hill’s fervour to pre-empt competition by developing alternate routes westward to the coast. And while his plan of creating an international port in Semiahmoo Bay was never realized, the acquisition of land along the shoreline in South Surrey and White Rock was an undeniable feather in the cap at the time for GN – and a legacy that continues today. While the relationship between White Rock and the railway was thorny in its earlier decades – particularly over issues such as beach access – the 1950s seemed to usher in a greater sense of co-operation. Crossings at Bay Street and both ends of the beach were negotiated, and all leases and agreements were transferred to White Rock when it became a city in 1957. City treasurer Sandra Kurylo said the question of beach access seems moot today, as the current lease between the city and BNSF includes numerous easements across railway land. “We look on White Rock as a railroad town,” said Melonas. City manager Peggy Clark points out that the presence of the railway in White Rock is not anomalous in Canada. Dealing with railway right-of-ways and property is a historic fact of life in most Canadian communities said Clark, former director of community services and city planner in Regina, Sask. “In Regina, the railway (CN) wanted out of the railway station, which is now a casino,” she said. “We had to do all the negotiations with the railway to get the station – and that happened across Canada as CN abandoned its lines.” Next: The railway’s opponents have their say.

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Peace Arch News Friday, November 26, 2010

perspectives …on the Semiahmoo Peninsula

Photo courtesy of White Rock Museum & Archives

This train derailment in Ocean Park on Nov. 11, 1914 was similar to the one that killed rail worker Albert Morrow in 1912, and one along White Rock beach in 1959.

Rail worker survives 1912 mudslide, only to die four months later in similar incident

Derailments haunt track’s long history Fourth in a special series on the Peninsula’s relationship with its rail route. Alex Browne

Staff Reporter

f there were such a thing as a ghost haunting the tracks of Peninsula’s beachfront rail line it ought, by rights, to be the shade of Albert Morrow. The spectre of the locomotive fireman – an employee of Great Northern Railway when the route was first opened in the early 1900s – would symbolize what local rail and environmental safety advocate Don Pitcairn now terms “the real double-edged sword” of the presence of the tracks in our community. While the railway – now the BNSF – has an undeniable place in the history of the Peninsula, Pitcairn says, it also introduced a risk factor that continues to cast a shadow over the community to this day. As recounted in Barrie Sanford’s authoritative history of the line, Railway By The Bay, in the early hours of Jan. 28, 1912, the Ontario-born Morrow, just 23 years old, was at his place in the cab of train 356, the “owl train,” steaming northward on an overnight run from Seattle to Vancouver. Just before daybreak, the train was passing through Ocean Park when Morrow and the engineer saw the kind of nightmarish vision that would strike fear into every old-time railroad man’s heart – the hillside above the track in motion, a cascade of mud moving inexorably downward into the path of the train.

Province reporter in time for the paper’s There could have been time for only Jan. 29 edition. one or two warning moans of the whistle “It was a terrible experience,” he said. before the locomotive was engulfed by “I hope I will never have to go through the water-saturated earth. The monstrous, another like it. If I’m ever in another wreck, unstoppable ooze pushed the heavy engine I’ll quit the railroad business for good.” from the track with a shrieking escape of They were sadly prophetic words. steam; the tender, mail car and two baggage Less than four months later, on May 21, cars dragging behind it. the recovered fireman was back on the The grinding, rending descent continued job, making his first trip on the line since as the mud carried the front section of the recovering from his injuries. train down from the railbed, all the way to As Morrow shovelled coal southbound the beach. on train 357 heading to Seattle, the Seven people were injured in the fall, nightmarish scenario was replayed – before the weight and momentum of the another mudslide on exactly the crash slowed and halted at the ❝If I’m ever in same section of line in Ocean waterline. Among the bruised and bleeding were a postal clerk, another wreck, I’ll Park where the January accident occurred. an immigration official and one quit the railroad This time the mud derailed the passenger. business for good.❞ locomotive, tender, smoking car, A visiting dignitary, Sir and mail and baggage cars, and Donald Mann, president of the Albert Morrow Morrow was once again swept Canadian Northern Railway, away with the engine. was by chance on board, but his private car There is no record of the young railway was the last on the train. Like most of the worker’s reaction to the eerie stroke of fate. passenger cars, it stayed on the tracks and Though he was pulled from the wreckage Mann was unhurt. and taken to hospital in Vancouver, he The most serious injuries were sustained died of his injuries there later that day – as by Morrow. On the left side of the engine Sanford points out, grimly fulfilling his when the slide struck, he had been carried promise to quit the business for good. to the beach by the weight of the mud and The accident might have cast an eternal the train itself. pall over the new shoreline route, less than Yet, after crew members pulled him free three years after it began operations in and he was taken to hospital, Morrow March of 1909. seemed – all considered – to have had a lucky escape. But, as Morrow’s own words seemed to recognize, working for the railway – any Shaken as he was, the battered fireman railway – in those rough and ready early was even able to talk to a Vancouver

days, was always classed as a hazardous occupation. According to historian Lorraine Ellenwood’s Years of Promise: White Rock 1858 - 1958, even before the line was completed a worker lost his legs in an accident, and, as early as May 1909, a GN timekeeper – last seen running to catch the “owl” train – had been found dead next to the tracks near White Rock. Two other GN fatalities followed within the first decade of the beachfront line – White Rock’s own station agent, W.A. McCray, who perished in a 1919 collision between two ‘speeder’ cars used for track maintenance, and a ‘track walker’ who died the same year in yet another of the ubiquitous mud slides that imperilled the route. In the earliest years of the line, stability of the hillside above the tracks had been compromised by extensive clearing of trees, and fires in the summer of 1910 had destroyed most of the unlogged forest on the North Bluff, making the terrain prone to slides. But over the first 50 years of the line, mudslides continued to happen with depressing regularity – causing serious derailments in 1914, 1946, 1954 and 1959 – even with the introduction in the late 1940s of slide-detector fences at crucial points between White Rock and Crescent Beach. Even when derailments were avoided through that period, wave washouts of the track – like the one that occurred in see page 15

Friday, November 26, 2010 Peace Arch News

lifestyles

Tracks buried beneath seven feet of mud after 1941 slide from page 14 the winter of 1930 in White Rock – and mudslides and landslides succeeded in holding up rail traffic for hours. The scale of such incidents can be judged by the fact that in January 1941, a slide on East Beach measured 75 feet long and buried the tracks to a depth of seven feet; while another landslide on the foreshore between White Rock and Ocean Park dumped tons of sand on the tracks. Deaths of members of the public struck by trains have been a fact of life since 1933 – the most recent when a man was hit in 2007, determined to be a suicide. In many cases recklessness and inattention have been seen as the cause of such accidents, but critics of the line say they’re inevitable when a rail line Don Pitcairn and the public are in such close proximity. rail critic Great Northern’s repeated solution was to deny any public access to the line by fencing it off, while BNSF – less draconian and more touristfriendly in approach – continues to monitor the dangers and insist on such measures as safety railings along the promenade. But mudslides pose a potentially greater hazard – and they’re far from a thing of the past, according to Pitcairn’s Surrey United Naturists and Peninsula rail-safety watchdogs SmartRail, both of which made submissions to a Transport Canada Railway Safety Act Review panel in 2008. Among points made in the submissions, it was noted that as recently as the early months of 2007, there were 12 mudslides,

Photo courtesy of White Rock Museum & Archives

The derailment of a BNSF train at White Rock beach in 1959 is the only slide on local tracks in the last 50 years. including two that held up Amtrak’s passenger service for 72 hours. The submissions also pointed out that in the winter of 1984, during a severe weather period, the City of Surrey recorded no less than 64 mudslides into the BNSF corridor in the space of two weeks. In all, they noted, there have been nine derailments since the shoreline route opened – all of them from mudslides. In seven of these cases, it appeared that “train tremor” – the vibration from the heavy passing train – initiated landslides on what Pitcairn describes as the “saturated soils of the Ocean Park bluff.”

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The derailment in 1959 was the last such incident on the line in 50 years. It’s a record BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said the company invests “millions of dollars” each year upholding, through safety inspection and other work to ensure slope and track stability. Even critics like Pitcairn acknowledge BNSF has made significant safety improvements to the railway corridor through the Peninsula – including some $5.5 million spent over the last three years in replacing worn-out segmented track with a continuous-weld rail that is stronger and more resistant to derailment forces.

But in an era in which much more hazardous materials – such as tanker cars containing chlorine, ammonia, sulphur dioxide or liquid petroleum gas – are routinely carried by freight trains, groups such as SUN and SmartRail sound the alarm that the current safety implications of a derailment for the general public are far more serious and life-threatening than could have been imagined in 1912, or even 50 years ago. Next: Safety and environmental concerns around the railway continue to be debated – while BNSF upholds its position as a ‘greener’ transportation alternative.

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Friday, December 3, 2010 Peace Arch News

lifestyles

Critics, BNSF differ over derailment dangers Fifth in a special series on the Peninsula’s relationship with its rail route. Alex Browne

Staff Reporter

n April 20, 1959, a Great Northern diesel engine piloting a northbound freight train hit a mudslide and derailed near Ocean Park. The diesel wound at the rocks by the water’s edge, while its accompanying diesel engine and two freight cars were off the tracks, but still on the roadbed. There was no major damage or injury as a result. It was a relatively unspectacular end to the first 50 years of operation along the White Rock and South Surrey shoreline route. During that period, trains had derailed eight times – three as result of mudslides hitting moving trains, five as a result of trains hitting mudslides that already covered the tracks. In the more than 50 years since, it is the boast of BNSF – which inherited the GN line – that no further derailments have occurred on the route. BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas has said the company spends “millions” each year to ensure this record stands. “It all comes back to technology, training, equipment and investment in track,” he said. But Phil LeGood, of local railway safety watchdog SmartRail, said that, even with the $5.5 million BNSF recently spent to upgrade the line to continuous-weld rail (CWR), derailments are still possible. And the ante for collateral damage is much higher than it was during the first 50 years of the line, he said, considering the number

Brian Giebelhaus photo

BNSF is proud that there have been no derailments on the Peninsula in the last 50 years. of cars of hazardous materials – including tankers carrying chlorine, ammonia, sulphur dioxide or liquid petroleum gas – that freight trains carry through the community. “Observers in the White Rock area have witnessed as much as one-third of the cars of one 100-plus car train carrying hazardous or dangerous materials,” Le Good said. Melonas cited security concerns for BNSF not releasing numbers on the amount of hazardous materials shipped, and acknowledged that such materials amounted to a “small majority of overall product.” “There has not been one recorded death (on BNSF lines) in the Lower Mainland as a result

of hazardous materials,” Melonas added. “Our record speaks for itself.” Le Good said that while continuous-weld rail eliminates the risk of derailments from faults in segments bolted together, it doesn’t rule them out altogether. Undetectable internal defects could exist in welded joints that might also cause “cracking and failure” at the joint – which could also precipitate a derailment, he added. Melonas countered, saying BNSF has invested heavily in onboard equipment that alerts employees of any danger. On the positive side, Le Good notes that BNSF trains observe a speed limit through the

Semiahmoo Peninsula rail corridor (Melonas confirms Lower Mainland BNSF freight train speeds range from 21 to 50 mph). “This is good news, as lower speeds rarely result in catastrophic derailments,” Le Good said. “However, the US National Transportation Safety Board has indicated that even the most advanced rail tanker can puncture at speeds less than 30 miles per hour.” The worst case scenario, safety advocates agree, would be a Peninsula accident that resembled one that took place in the small town of Graniteville, S.C. Nine people died after a 42-car freight train hit a parked train on a side track. Among 14 cars that derailed were three chlorine tank cars, one of which leaked, according to news reports, “a cloud of deadly green gas.” Add this kind of scenario to the local route – particularly in Crescent Beach, where a BNSF train recently stopped due to a mechanical alert, blocking both access routes – and, safety critics say, you have a recipe for disaster. The Crescent Beach Property Owners Association emergency planning committee is currently studying escape plans, but Le Good doubts responders would be able to arrive fast enough to prevent inhalation injuries. Melonas said BNSF plans and procedures are constantly being updated to “avoid this unlikely type of situation.” “Our employees live in these neighborhoods, too, and we are working to ensure that we don’t block access routes for more than 10 minutes at a time.” Next: Plans – both past and future – to move the tracks from the waterfront.

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Peace Arch News Friday, December 10, 2010

lifestyles

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The possibility of a high-speed passenger-rail service on the Peninsula may mean new tracks are built away from the shoreline.

Moving the tracks not a new concept ing high-speed trains in Europe have been able to operate successfully in densely populated areas. Alex Browne The establishment this week of a Staff Reporter new City of White Rock Amtrak Task t’s an idea that many today might Force is a clear indicator the city is find hard to get their heads still willing to embrace the rail line around – a White Rock and South that gave it life in the early 1900s – Surrey community without its beach- particularly if having the city once front railway. again serve as a stop on the Amtrak But in 2007, when the organization passenger route succeeds in pumpSemiahmoo Peninsula Citizens for ing millions of dollars into the local Public Safety began lobbying for the economy. tracks to be relocated – citing fears The task force is headed by former of disaster if a railcar carrying toxic mayor Hardy Staub, who negotiated a materials derailed – it was only the memorandum of understanding with latest manifestation of a longstand- Amtrak on White Rock and Semiing disenchantment with the route ahmoo region passenger service in among some segments of the com- 2001 – before all such moves were munity. stalled by 9/11 and subsequent secuBack in the late 1960s and early rity issues. 1970s, relocating the tracks was a Council representative on the task distinct possibility. The provincial force is Coun. Grant Meyer, whose government even put through a bill campaign platform included reincalling for it. statement of passenger service. And foes of the shoreline And, Meyer says, even if the ❝There’s a route say it might yet be line is ultimately relocated on the cards – if the wish huge segment out of White Rock – one of Amtrak and Washing- of the public long-studied plan, he notes, ton State officials to have a includes bypassing the Pen2½-hour “high-speed rail” that loves the insula with a tunnel under train.❞ service between Seattle and Highway 99 – it would still Vancouver by 2018 is realmake sense to have the city Grant Meyer ized. established as an interim councillor B.C. and Washington State stop, and for there to be a have an agreement in principle sup- station nearby or at the border to porting high-speed rail; U.S. pres- serve the south part of the Metro ident Barack Obama has gone on Vancouver region. record as being in favour of such con“I’m thrilled this is getting started,” nections, and advocates predict a ser- Meyer said this week. “This is great, vice between Seattle and Vancouver not just for White Rock, but the whole – while much slower than high-speed region – it would benefit people from rail connections in Europe – would Langley all the way out to Delta. require a new line bypassing the cur“You look at 2.3 million people in rent BNSF route along the shoreline. Metro Vancouver and there’s just one The big question in relocating the station near Science World in Vancourailway, as Barrie Sanford suggests in ver – when you cross the border there his history of the line – Railway By are numerous stations. I believe from The Bay – is who would pay for it? Bellingham to Eugene, Ore. there are The unique shoreline features of the 16 or 17 stops – and there are several Peninsula route are part of its intrin- between here and Seattle.” sic appeal for travellers, he adds, notMeyer said its historic fact that the ing the eagerness with which Amtrak railway built White Rock and noted passengers still wave to people stand- there are many still attracted to its ing trackside in the ‘slow’ section presence in White Rock. through White Rock. “You could see it the last couple of Fencing the existing line and build- times the Royal Hudson was here ing overpasses along it in White Rock – the turnout was phenomenal,” he and South Surrey could be a more said. “There’s a huge segment of the reasonable compromise if higher public that loves the train.” speeds are necessary, he says, not see page 19

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Friday, December 10, 2010 Peace Arch News

lifestyles

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The railway has long been a fixture on the Peninsula waterfront, even though there are those people in the community who would like to see the line moved inland.

Coal triggered relocation movement from page 18 But, as much of a self-confessed railway fan Meyer is, he acknowledged “relocation is always going to be on the agenda.” The roots of the relocation movement go back 60 years to the post-war period, Sanford said. In a time when use of the railway by White Rock and Peninsula residents had declined dramatically, visions of the future of White Rock abounded, according to Sanford. One included a 1947 request from the White Rock Board of Trade and Surrey council for Great Northern to build a large tourist hotel in White Rock – rejected by railway representatives, noting, quite accurately, that the company was not in the hotel business – and others included an airport at the top of North Bluff, a major waterfront highway from Delta to the border, a Vancouver Island ferry terminal and even establishing White Rock as the ocean port for of the Trans-Mountain oil pipeline from Alberta. According to Sanford, some

of the community boosters proposing the schemes became the strongest advocates for relocating the tracks from the beach. “The inertia to be overcome in moving the tracks away from the beach at least spared the community from any of these proposed ‘improvements’,” he said. The next wave in the movement to relocate came in the late 1960s, fueled, quite literally, by coal. The scheme to ship coal from the Crows Nest region of the Kootenays to the port at Roberts Bank for shipment in Japan, pushed by then-premier W.A.C. Bennett, led to constitutional storms between the federal and provincial governments and a war between rival railway companies over who would transport the coal and what line would be used. At one point it appeared that White Rock would see 100-car coal trains through the waterfront several times a day, turning the city into ‘Black Rock’. Maneuvering by the provincial government, and then-White Rock and Delta MLA Bob Wenman, drew Great Northern into

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the scheme, with Great Northern to be promised a new right of way from Blaine to near Cloverdale in exchange for relinquishing its roadbed on the waterfront. On March 1969, the provincial government introduced Bill 42, ‘An Act for the Improvement of White Rock and Adjacent Areas’ – essentially setting out the building of a new route from Blaine to Cloverdale, to be built by B.C. Hydro and turned over to Great Northern. But not only did citizens of Blaine and South Surrey object to a route through their quiet backyards, the provinical government could not secure necessary federal support for it. In 1972, Dave Barrett’s NDP swept into power and gave a monopoly on transporting Crows Nest coal to the CPR – effectively killing any chance for Great Northern, now re-organized as Burlington Northern, to profit from the deal, and eliminating any incentive to relocate the tracks for decades to come. Next: A look at the future of the railway on the Semiahmoo Peninsula.

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Friday, January 14, 2011 Peace Arch News

lifestyles

For better or worse, railway here to stay The last in a feature series on the Semiahmoo Peninsula’s relationship with its rail route. Alex Browne

Staff Reporter

t’s been seen both as a cornerstone of the community and as the bane of the community; as both a defining reality and a historical anomaly. But – love it or loathe it – the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway line that cuts a swath through White Rock and South Surrey is likely to be with us for a long time. Even the most ardent track relocation advocate is bound to admit that creating an alternate route 19,000 known secondary suites in Surrey that bypasses Keeping White Rock, track Ocean Park and Crescent Beach is something that will take many years – and many PAN’s rail series millions of began with this dollars – to feature Oct. 22. accomplish. In the early 1900s, when it was first built, the rail line was seen by as an economic saviour for a fledgling community – which led directly to the B.C. government extended the charter of the Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railway to include land along Friday

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The current lease – which Clark said renews automatically every five years unless one of the parties objects – extends to 2023 and covers the beach parking lots, the promenade and part of the museum site. The only major change in land coverage when the latest terms were negotiated was that the lands on White Rock’s “hump” reverted to the railway, Clark added. Much more significant to the city was that the parking lot lands, which had been leased

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the foreshore of Semiahmoo Bay, through Crescent Beach and on to Mud Bay. When the VV&E – controlled by railway magnate James J. Hill – was absorbed into Hill’s Great Northern Railway empire, the charter rights came along with it, effectively resulting in a grant of the right of way in perpetuity to Great Northern and its successor, BNSF. It’s a fact of life for the city of White Rock, which grew up around the line, acknowledges Mayor Catherine Ferguson. “It’s a private company. They are the people that own the land and lease some of it back to us. We do not have control over that property. Our job as as a city is to work as effectively and as efficiently as possible to make the best use of that property – and to ensure the safety of residents.” That concern with safety is shared by BNSF, she added, with whom the city has “an excellent working relationship.” But what might seem a liability to others can also be viewed as an asset, Ferguson notes. That’s especially true in a city that – 100 years after the line was built – faces economic challenges as a result of erosion of business in the uptown core, a tax base that leans too heavily on homeowners, and a waterfront commercial area that limps along between summer tourist seasons. “Everything old is new again,”

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said Ferguson. “I choose to look at the railway as an opportunity and an advantage.” The city’s establishment of a new task force to lobby for an Amtrak stop in the city – something advocates see as having potential spinoffs that could bring millions of dollars in business each year – is only one manifestation of White Rock council’s current railway consciousness, she said. “We’ve been putting more money into the old White Rock train station – now the museum – as

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the promotion for the Olympics, Ferguson notes, drawing thousands of spectators each time. “We’re told the Royal Hudson has been put to rest for now, and not to expect anything similar for a while – but I never say never. I’m not one to give up on any opportunities available to us – whether it’s the Royal Hudson, or whether its other kinds of events.” Even Don Pitcairn, long an advocate for moving the tracks entirely off the Peninsula’s see page 24

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Despite constant debate, the BNSF rail line is likely be a part of the Semiahmoo Peninsula for a long time.

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Peace Arch News Friday, January 14, 2011

lifestyles

Rail history could boost tourism from page 23 foreshore to an alternate inland route, said he is in favour of retaining historic ties with the railway – even if those ties support only a few yards of track kept as a heritage attraction after the main line is relocated. “The railway definitely has historical importance to this area, and that could be a tourism opportunity,” the South Surrey resident said. “I could definitely see some old railway equipment, even some antique railway pieces down on the waterfront, particularly on East Beach where they seem to need some help.” But Pitcairn’s vision of the future is for a shoreline largely unmarred by railway tracks, where environmental damage and the potential for derailment of cars carrying hazardous materials would also be history. For naturalists, the railway has been a disruptive factor in the natural ecosystem, Pitcairn said. Boulders along the route have meant, instead of natural beach erosion processes, a cobbled beach devoid of most sand. That has discouraged the presence of feeder fish along the bottom of the food chain, he added. But pointing to shoreline preservation efforts in West Vancouver and at Lily Point Park in Point Roberts, he believes the shoreline could be rehabilitated with the

right political will – and minus the railway. “I’d like to see something that would be like morphing the Vancouver Sea Wall with the former Kettle Valley Railway,” he said, adding that a natural trail from Mud Bay to White Rock – using what is now the BNSF right-ofway – could link with the Delta Dyke Trail and the Fraser River Trail as part of Metro Vancouver’s Greenway Vision Plan. But that would also take an infusion of cash, he noted, which might have to come from regional sources. “The only problem with all this is the cost of upkeep,” he said, noting that BNSF spent $800,000 a few years back just replacing the riprap or loose rock foundation – along the line. And while fellow advocates of moving the tracks see the anticipated advent of high speed rail service between the US Pacific Northwest and Vancouver as the great hope for relocation, Pitcairn warns it is a very narrow window of opportunity. And it will hinge on business factors – just as in the old days of the Great Northern – that are largely beyond residents’ control. “When they bring in high speed rail, that is, realistically, the only time to move it,” he said. “Unless it happens then, the railway will always be in White Rock.”

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