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April 2, 2015 Y www.CloverdaleReporter.com Y 604-575-2405
Tram ‘tots’ to ride once more
By Jennifer Lang On a spring morning 60 years ago, an excited group of school children from Yarrow Elementary clambered aboard a big red train for a ride home from Chilliwack. They watched in awe as a yellow diesel hooked the interurban car to a freight train, and then they were off. For some of the kids, it was their very first train ride. “With more bell-ringing and horn blowing than usually accompanies a freight run, the train pulled into Yarrow 45 minutes later to discharge its young cargo,” the Chilliwack Progress reported on May 4, 1955. The hoot of the B.C. Electric Interurban hadn’t been heard in the Fraser Valley in five years – the passenger trains had been replaced by buses, and there was no longer electric power for the trams on the valley line. The Grade 3 students had been studying transportation in class, and their teacher thought a train ride would be a fitting conclusion. She wrote to BCE president Dal Grauer, who passed the request onto the interurban and freight department, the paper reported. “And last
Wednesday, BCE training instructor Ralph Grieve was at the siding near the bus depot with a train ready and waiting.” After stepping off and inspecting the red caboose, the children waved to the engineer and crew as the train resumed its trip to New Westminster. “It took 38 eager youngsters to bring the interurban out of its fiveyear retirement for one last special run,” the story ended. Fast forward to August 2014, when a woman named Elsie Giesbrecht was taking a tour of the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society’s operations in Cloverdale. As tour guide Hugh Parkinson pointed to a display featuring photos of that historic Yarrow field trip on car 1304, Giesbrecht gasped, “I know those kids!” Parkinson then pointed to the teacher, identified as Miss J. Fowlie in a clipping from the B.C. Electric Family Post. “That’s JOY Fowlie,” she told him. “You know this teacher?” Parkinson recalls asking. “And she said, ‘Yes! She was my teacher.” See INTERURBAN / Page 6
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B.C. ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES COMMISSION
New seats have been proposed for Surrey and Richmond in the latest electoral boundary review.
WELCOMING NEW PATIENTS
JENNIFER LANG PHOTO
Anne Dyck, her sister Marlene Penner, and Elsie Giesbrecht tour interurban car 1304, the focus of ongoing restoration efforts in Cloverdale. Penner’s Grade 3 class rode the car on its final journey and are planning a summer reunion here.
New riding proposed for Surrey By Tom Fletcher New MLAs for Surrey and Richmond and adjustments to other electoral boundaries have been proposed before the 2017 provincial election in B.C. The B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission recommended the changes after studying population data and touring the province last year. If approved, they will bring the number of MLAs in the B.C. legislature from 85 to 87. Boundary shifts in fastgrowing Surrey would produce two new constituency
names, with Surrey South inserted between the existing Surrey-Cloverdale and Surrey-White Rock seats. The other new seat is Richmond-Queensborough, taking in an area of New Westminster to balance the population of the existing constituencies in the region. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Thomas Melnick said efforts were made to keep “communities of interest” together, while equalizing the populations of constituencies as much as possible. Even at that, the population of some urban constituen-
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cies is as much as 60 per cent higher than rural seats, where travel by the elected representative is much more time consuming. The commission, which is required to review boundaries after every election, is prevented from combining seats in the Cariboo-Thompson, Columbia-Kootenay and North regions. Other major changes involve shifts in Langley, Abbotsford and Chilliwack boundaries, and including Hope in the Fraser-Nicola constituency that extends up to Merritt.
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Princeton is proposed to be added to Boundary-Similkameen. Boundaries are shifted on Vancouver Island to rename seats Courteny-Comox and Mid Island-Pacific Rim. The proposals and maps can be found at the commission’s website, www.bc-ebc.ca. Public input on the proposed changes is being accepted until midnight, May 26. Comments can be made through the website, by email to info@bc-ebc.ca or by mail to PO Box 9275, Stn. Prov Govt, Victoria B.C. V8W 9J6. – Black Press
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