By Raven Nyman
Longtime Barriere resident Bill Kershaw has lived in his community for over 50 years and feels that the North Thompson Valley is doing very well for a relatively new enterprise.
“We’re really young when you look at the picture,” he said. “We’re 60 years old or something like that. So we have a lot to offer.”
Kershaw has served multiple terms as the Thompson Nicola Regional District’s (TNRD) Area “O” Director for the Lower North Thompson region and is also the vice-chair on the TNRD’s board of directors.
In December 2019, the TNRD held a meeting to propose remedies for the contentious bylaw that seeks to prevent citizens from residing in recreational vehicles on their own property.
Those regulatory changes are still in the works and Kershaw hopes to see a compromise reached soon.
“It’s something you have to be very careful with,” he said. “But it was definitely something that had to be changed. It’s always the problem when you get into these deals…you put all these things in place and it’s okay until you try to enforce any policy… It costs a lot of money to have a proper sewer system, but we get a lot of feedback from people on the outside that say we don’t want people living next door to us down here, polluting the property… people who don’t want that next to them. It’s a health hazard.”
Kershaw personally supports the requirement.
“The idea is not to stop it, but to make it safe and workable for everybody… nobody’s trying to make anybody live out on the streets or something like that. I think we just want people to realize that there is two sides and let’s try to come up with a good compromise where [we can] keep everyone safe and protect the land. We don’t want to be polluting the land.”
In 2020, the TNRD will establish a new Official Community Plan (OCP) for the North Thompson Valley and Kershaw expects that tourism will continue to provide economic opportunity in the area.
“We realize the value of representing ourselves as a valley, and I think that’s major,” said Kershaw. “We’re working more and more on tourism… And that’s what our rural OCP will try to protect. We don’t want to lose what we have, like our beautiful lakes are all non polluted. We want to maintain those, what we have, and bring people in to use, but not to abuse.”
Eventually, he hopes to see the Trans-Canada Pipeline established as an additional economic driver for the region, but also recognizes the importance of protecting the valley’s natural resources.
“We take great pride in our North Thompson River, which flows completely all the way from Belmont all the way through here without a lake. If they dump a train load of oil into that North Thompson River, it’s going to flow all the way through, there’s no place to stop it, and that’s a great concern. So we hope that goes through. I’ve always been a strong advocate of that just for that reason for the protection of the North Thompson Valley with the pipeline.”
Raven Nyman is a Freelance Multimedia Journalist
ravenbrookn@hotmail.com