McGillveray Studios

The Wall Street Journal published a new pictures of the week gallery for June 11th. It is worth a look here.

I have lived in Fort St. John B.C. for the last 24 years and in Taylor B.C which is 15 KM south for 4 years. I got some kind of idea of the mentality of this place. It always amazes me how people manage to get their way and push things down other peoples throats. You can’t even call it an old boys club as the people that do these things are not old boys from here. They do however have the odd self interested backer.

When I first moved up here 28 years ago, one of the people that broke me in said that in Fort St. John if you can’t do it without a bulldozer it is not worth doing. How right he was.

The forman comming to chase me away. He asked if I worked for the city. I said no, that I work for me, myself, and I. He could not believe that. I had no safety clothing on. He was right and I never put up an argument. He said that I had to destroy my pictures. Right.

This is a massif structure for a town of 18,000 people (5142 taxpayers at 3.5 people per house). A speed skating rink. There is a skating rink on the second floor. City council said that this will attract athletes to Fort St. John. Right. How much money do young people training hard bring? How many athletes will come to Fort St. John when we have more coaches in the bigger cities?

City council tried to raise business taxes by 40% and home owner taxes by 15% a short time ago. They had a good show up at the next council meeting. When they started this project they said that they would get money from the provincial and federal governments. Well they started things before they got the money. Ha Ha. The Feds gave money to B.C. already for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Province did give them money, but where will the rest come from? You can see in the pictures that not to many construction people are around. When you talk to contractors that are around town they laugh and laugh about who is paying. Well Fort St. John stopped paving streets this year. We have a lot of unpaved streets as there has been no industrial tax base in this town. The oil industry is outside of town. We get ripped of this way.

Well I just have to say, well done city council. What ever the Mayor’s name is. You remind me of the past Mayor Pat Welsh. He paved streets that had no houses on them for 15 years and I lived on a street with no pavement for 20 years. Well done. You screwed this town for many many more years to come.