Prince George Free Press,  Aug 25 2006

There is a buzz in the air around this region that says boom. We have nowhere to go but up. Resource development, transport supply opportunities and the chance to become the true hub of the central part of the province. An optimist by nature, I like that kind of thinking!

It was surprising how long people were allowed to believe that good things were happening before BC Stats came upon the scene. Headlines declared that most of those good things were not going to happen because there was still the mountain pine beetle problem, resources weren’t really proven and the British Columbia world was still going to focus around the lower south-west corner of the province. This point of view was supported by academics who gave us many reasons to believe it would never be.

I guess we need economists and economics, but keep in mind that economics is somewhat of a loose grouping of opinions, masquerading as a science. In a real science such as Chemistry or Physics, you combine the exact same elements together the same way each time and you will get the same results. Not so with economics, because they have all those silly people out there going their own unpredictable way. I tend to agree with the gentleman who commented, "If you laid all the economist end to end, that would probably be a very good thing". If they had the power of insight that they are sometimes attributed with, they would be multi-millionaires. Most economists aren’t: take their opinions with the proverbial grain of salt.

Visionaries are much more fun. They form their opinions from experience and creative imagination. They frequently stake their business and personal success on being right and, amazingly, they frequently are.

Those who know the history of this area will be aware of the late 1940s plans of the Swedish Industrialist, Axel Wenner-Gren, to tap into the vast resources of the northern part of the province. This visionary saw dams producing electrical energy to fuel the sawmills and pulp mills. He saw great tracts of logging with timber, supplies and finished products brought out to the transportation hub via a monorail train. It didn’t happen, but it just may have been a stimulus for much of what did happen in this area.

Premier W. A. C. Bennett was another visionary. He had this radical idea that if you built good highways throughout the province, economic activity would follow. He was enthusiastically criticized for his crazy notions and was accused of just practicing blacktop politics to get votes. Can any of you imagine what the city would be like today if we were still trying to transport goods over narrow gravel roads with frost boils, potholes and dust? This little city would still be somewhere around ten to fifteen thousand people.

It was under his government that the British Columbia Railway made its final lunge from Quesnel to Prince George, opening another transportation link that helped build our prosperity. His Minister of Forests, Ray Williston, did a great job on selling the opportunities in the area to the forestry companies. The late-fifties boomed and we have never looked back. The development of the forest sector created many other opportunities in the supply industries and put the city and region on the map. Before those crazy visionaries came into power, there truly was no hope beyond Hope, if those in Victoria could even find it on the map.

Let’s go with John Brink who dares to see the potential we have. He may be a dreamer, but it is the dreamer who sees what tomorrow can be.

Victor Bowman was born in Vanderhoof and raised in Prince George. He returned to this city to live 32 years ago and currently operates a consulting business. Please direct comments c/o editor@pgfreeprress.com

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