But what is success?  How do we measure success or recognize its sometimes-fleeting presence?

At home in Chetwynd success is many things:  It is the gorgeous flowers lining our streets in summer telling everyone that we are proud to live here.  It is putting our litter in the proper receptacles instead of tossing it out the windows as we cruise by.  It’s stooping to pick up someone else’s litter just because this is home and we respect it.  It’s keeping our commercial and industrial sites tidy and, maybe, at least fantasizing about shrubbery, grass, and pavement. It’s driving at the posted speeds because our neighbours live here, too.  It’s climbing Old Baldy on a snowy day to keep in shape to climb it on a sunny day.  It’s keeping the noise levels down in the apartment because someone next door has to sleep and get up for work.  It’s kicking the drug habit so our kids don’t have to kick it, too.  It’s jumping to the rescue when we face a community or neighbourhood emergency.

Successes like these over human apathy, greed, laziness, unhealthy habits; like rising above personal setbacks and tragedies; like saying no to the status quo, and the hundreds more that you could name, carve Chetwynd into the community in which we love to live.

We’ve come 50 years since 1962 and things have changed.  Not all of us had telephones then and few had private lines.  The ball-point pen was only about 16 years old.  Daily mail was barely beyond a novelty in this Community carved by success.  Now we enjoy or abominate instant communication.  Even little children go about with cell phones stuck to the sides of their heads.

Luddites, you might as well join the times; we’re in a new age that has brought us the web site, speaking of which, I want to applaud the creation of the new gochetwynd.com.  It’s very attractive and easily navigated (thanks to the folks here at District Office who are overseeing its construction) even for a guy that was around when the ball-point pen was introduced.

I encourage you to come aboard and take a trip around gochetwynd.com.  Notice how easily you skip from wall climbing to employment opportunities to water and sewer to maps to what to do to real estate to starting a business to events – so very easily!  It even gives the Council meeting dates (with agendas as the date nears).

For those whose love of literature drives them to read anything, the site even archives the Mayor’s columns.  Now that’s a real bonus.

Merlin Nichols, Mayor

What about that semi idling at the intersection?  Are its brakes up to DOT standards?  Is the driver awake, texting, distracted?  And your neighbour’s chimney as it emits that homey little curl of smoke – has it been cleaned in the last five months?  The child across the street gassing the lawnmower without killing the motor…  Are these the things that give you nightmares?

Add the potential for human failure to the potential for natural disasters – does it make you want to pull the wool over your eyes and stay in bed.  Should we all hide in the dens and caves of the earth and pray to the rocks to fall on us and hide us from a far-worse fate?

What happens when things go wrong and we’re suddenly faced with a crushing communal disaster?  Who takes charge; who gives the orders?  Who is responsible for containing the mess and minimizing the damage?

You should be pleased that trained people and efficient systems are in place to maximize your safety.  They’re ready to go to work within minutes at the first sign of a problem.  I received a personal tutorial from Leo Sabulsky, Fire Chief and Municipal Emergency Program (MEP) contact person, on the processes and systems that are ready to protect you and us when disaster strikes. 

There are three levels of emergency.  A bus-car collision with injuries, for example, will activate the level-one response.  Provincial authorities are notified and a TASK number is issued.  Locally, roads may be closed, traffic redirected, non-emergency hospital appointments cancelled.

At the second level, a larger emergency such as a gas leak within the community, provincial authorities are notified and a TASK number is issued.  A state of local emergency can be declared by the Mayor, enabling authorities to enter private property, evacuate residents, and take other necessary steps to contain the effects of the leak.

You guessed it.  At the highest level of emergency provincial authorities are notified and the TASK number is issued.  The Mayor may declare a state of emergency over the entire community allowing responders to enter private property, restrict access, evacuate the entire community, and take other measures to minimize the effects of the disaster.  If you must be evacuated, you will encounter volunteers of the Emergency Social Services Team, wonderful people, who will assist you with registration, shelter, and basic needs.

Firefighters, ambulance attendants, search and rescue, and police are usually the first responders.  They undergo frequent training sessions to keep themselves in top condition and thoroughly competent with the latest equipment.  Keep out of their way and obey their directions in emergency situations.

Merlin Nichols, Mayor

More recent memories include the collapse of the Peace River Bridge (1957) and the economic hardship resulting from the broken traffic artery.  I can still picture the exact spot where I stood watching as the Chetwynd sawmill went up in flames (1972) – flames that caused the deaths of two of our people and produced enormous hardship and sadness in our community.   Still too fresh in the minds of many is the anger, pain, despair, disgust, and hopelessness we felt as we saw our own pristine Pine River contaminated by almost a million litres of oil (2000). 

The floods of last summer are still too fresh in the minds of many in our region.  We hardly have to remember. 

All of us could contribute to a list of hardships and tragedies, personal and community, that have contributed to forming our individual and collective characters.  Times good and bad come and go.  It is how we respond that is important.  

Just now Burns Lake is still an open wound – and will be for months ahead, if not for years.  We feel the pain in Chetwynd 300 plus miles from the epicentre.  For some, friends and family are immediately affected.  For others, it is just human compassion that is moving us.  I spoke with the gritty young mayor the day after the tragedy occurred.  Hope is mixed with pain.  What can we say?  How can we feel his pain? 

One small way would be to contribute to the Burns Lake Tragedy Fund at our local CIBC.  With almost 4 million souls resident in British Columbia, the price of a cup of coffee from each of us would pour millions into the Burns Lake efforts to recover.  But I’m not quite that optimistic.  Realistically, the average citizen in BC will entertain a good, but fleeting, intention – only to be forgotten before she darkens the door of a CIBC with cheque in hand. 

Remember Canfor (1972)?  Memory’s shorter?  Then recall the people of Chetwynd, just last summer, responding with enormous volunteerism.  When we pulled together things happened.  Burns Lake desperately needs our pull right now!  Chetwynd will remember!

Merlin Nichols, Mayor

 I have followed Al into a sinister-looking concrete-block building to have a look at another muscular back-up generator and a wall full of electrical boxes housing breakers and switches.  It’s just another part of the apparatus that helps keep us healthy, comfortable, and sweet smelling.  Al informs me that every Tuesday morning the generator is fired up for an hour just to keep it in good tone for an emergency.  The pumps in the vault fifteen feet below us cannot be idle for more than about ten minutes without the whole mess flooding the facility and erupting through the doors.  And even here everything comes in twos.  See, feel, and smell what I am saying!

 The drainage segment of our water system begins with a collection pipe emptying into a vault in a lift-pump station at the foot of Westgate Road.  You’ve seen it; have you noticed it?  From this lift pump it is forced up through a 3-inch line to a manhole at the west end of North Access Road.  It’s all downhill from here through progressively larger pipes.  If you look closely to the south as you cross Wabi Bridge, you can see one of the pipes crossing the creek below the foot bridge.  This one has collected from all points between Wabi Creek and Nicholson Road and as far north as the Crown Sub; it joins with a drain pipe from the Rodeo sub and then turns south along the creek to connect with the pipe from the west end of town just before emptying into the grinding-pumping station.

 I saw it with my own innocent eyes, smelled it with my own discriminating nose.  It’s at once awesome, inspiring, entertaining, terrifying.  And to think, your very own district staff keep it operating 24-7-52.  The floods this past summer nearly did us in and we can thank our heroic crew that the water kept moving within the pipes.

 The most difficult material to deal with, the stuff that really gums up the works, is grease – including kitchen drippings and motor oil.  (If you read the story of Larry Vezina in last week’s Echo you’ll understand.)  Frequent cleaning of pumps and grinders is required to keep them grinding and pumping. 

 Inclined to help our crew keep you healthy, clean smelling, comfortable?  Use other receptacles for your stuff that should not be flushed into the sanitary sewer.  These include motor oil, paint thinner, prescription drugs, poisons. 

 Good health to you!

 Merlin Nichols, Mayor

Hurry!  We don’t got all day.  Get into your water-proof suits and breathing apparatus, pop this little pink pill, and follow Lorraine and Al.  You’re about to begin the journey of your life!  You might have thought that the sewer drain was just a simple pulling of a plug or pushing of a lever.  Surprise!  You’re about to be disabused. 

Hey!  How’d we get here?  What’s this?  Looks like we’re in a tunnel of sorts.  A drainage tunnel?  I think so.  Careful, all of you.  You wouldn’t want to slip and end up with your nose under this water!  Hey, look.  Here’s another stream coming in from the side.  And is it ever movin’ – looks like a flood or something happening upstream.  Wish we had brought a canoe.  Wading in this water up to my armpits is the pits.  More side streams.  Lots of them.  Hold your noses here, guys; there’s something goin’ on upstream on the left that ain’t according to the manual.  Here, let me take a sample.  If my guess is correct, some idiot is operating a meth lab in the neighbourhood.  This stuff puts us water maintenance workers in real danger.

That was a stand pipe we just passed.  Used to collect sewer from recreational vehicles.  What we got here?  Watch your feet.  Stones?  Boulders!  Why would someone drop these into a perfectly good drain?  Don’t they know this will mess up the works real good?  When these things hit the grinders and the pumps we’ll be in big trouble.

If every citizen used the system as it was designed to be used we’d have enough challenges with only the natural disasters.  Oh, grief!  We just waded into an oil slick.  Someone must have dumped a few liters of used oil.  Probably changed oil in the driveway and didn’t feel like taking it to the recycle depot.  Such irresponsibility! 

We’re almost to the grinders (macerators) now so proceed with extreme care.  We’ll have to take the secondary side where the grinder is not operating.  Get caught up in one of them and we’d be reduced to mush.  After the grinder we’ll slip through the idle pump and make our way into the main stream beyond that will carry us into a series of four settling ponds.

We’ll need to do a little swimming there to keep ourselves from settling out and we’ll have to skirt around the agitaters, but once through the last pond it’s clear sailing all the way to the river.

That was a quick slide through the tunnels.  Next time we’ll have a final look at the way it all works.

Merlin Nichols, Mayor

Try to remember everything you sent down the drain only last year – even in the month of December:  grease drippings from the fat, basted turkey, chunks of pot pie, scrapings from the mashed potatoes, wads of paper, millions of liters of water, paint thinner, bug killer, carpet stain remover, dead mice, other stuff.  Much of the stuff you sent down is appropriate for the pipes.  Some of it is not.  What is not can and does seriously compromise the ability of the system to handle legitimate traffic – and it has potential to compromise the rate of taxes you are accustomed to paying.

Fortunately most homeowners have consciences that restrain the indiscriminate flushing of materials not intended for disposal in the sewer system.  They want to be good citizens but, occasionally, accidents happen.  How do we know?  Traces of the stuff you flushed can be detected in the effluent.

Being responsible citizens, industrial users of our sewer system also try to comply with the rules of use.  But, occasionally accidents happen and toxic or gummy stuff is spilled, ending up in the sanitary sewer.  How is the system affected by these unwanted materials?  What are the costs to the District when pumps and macerators have to be repaired?  How is the treatment of effluent slowed, changed, or inhibited when we carelessly or willfully flush materials that should only be deposited in specially created disposal sites?

Because all of the stuff that goes down the drain ultimately ends up back in our Pine River to be ingested by the myriads of living creatures from microbes to mosquitoes to minnows to moose – that is, it ends up back in the food chain, perhaps for you or your mother or your sister to eat, it is incumbent on all of us to take care of our systems, the human-made and the natural, to ensure that they perform as they were intended.

The next episode of this thrilling adventure will take you down through the dark twists and turns of the system’s actual works.  Don’t miss!

Merlin Nichols

Mayor

Since early modern times in western Europe and North America, relationships between church and state, to the benefit of all citizens, have been developing steadily, if not exactly smoothly.  Great Britain’s John Locke (A Letter Concerning Toleration), in the 17^th Century set the stage for James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other thinkers to enshrine a level of separation between church and state in the American Constitution in the 18^th.  Approaching the relationship from opposite directions, protection of the free exercise of religion by the churches, and prohibition of the establishment of religion on the part of the state, they attempted to ensure the integrity of each entity.  Since that time, the US Supreme court has been struggling mightily through shifting political, social, and religious viewpoints to define the limits of each.  Today, the lines of demarcation are not totally clear on many fronts and as we follow the debate, we cannot be at all certain who is going to win – those who would destroy the wall entirely or those who would make it even more solid.

In Canada, we have benefited largely from the experience in the USA in that our jurisprudence in the matter of separation of church and state frequently follows that of the US.  In fact, in the area of protection of the rights of the individual when they conflict with the state on religious matters, Canada may be in the lead.  In other areas of national and religious life, the separation is not as clearly defined as it is in the USA.

For 40 years, I have been following the battle through a 100-year-old journal, Liberty, that is committed to the separation of church and state and the protection of religious liberty around the world.  I am personally committed to these principles.  So, why would I permit a resolution such as the one in question to sail through Council?  Perhaps for the sake of a larger liberty?

Canada’s sense of the divide is not as acute or deeply embedded as it is in the US – where still it is not exactly clear (Senate chaplains, government prayer breakfasts, for example).  We are familiar with prayers in Council and at other levels of government – even by self-proclaimed atheists.  Clearly, your Council did not blaze any new trail in the action it took.  Having noted the ambiguity surrounding the question, will Council revisit the decision?  Sooner or later, without a doubt.  With what result?  As Mayor and Council, we, too, will have to wait and see.