If you call $30+ per hour longshoring jobs, increasing demand for tradespeople and slow but steady growth the scraps on the floor then I agree with you.
People forget easily. Less than 5 years ago everyone was disappointed that the pulp mill wasn’t starting up. In a short amount of time we’ve seen some significant interest and investment in our community. Look around, it’s happening and faster than most people realize.
Somebody expressed their opinion on the highway sign:
[original attachment deleted after 2 years]
saw this as I was leaving Butzie Rapids this afternoon, had to go back and take a snap!
If you had looked over your left shoulder you would have seen MiG taking the same picture. Were you two boys hanging out today?
I’m with those who think an economic turnaround cannot happen overnight or even in the space of a couple of years. Just as Rupert slowly became more and more rundown over time, it’s going to take time to build things back up…what I do have an issue with is those individuals who go around with their heads up their asses and insist that “great times are just around the corner!” and mislead others about how Rupert is just going to boom overnight and it’s going to be great for everyone. If such a thing did happen, the city infrastructure and housing is not equipped to deal with it anyhow! Slow and steady is the best you can hope for, especially in a city that has teetered on civic bankruptcy for the past few years.
You have some of those too?
Do they smile when Global TV shows up?
So the people down south can watch and say ‘oh great, they’re all okay up there! Go ahead and sink another billion on the highway to Whistler and tack on a carbon tax, we can all just take SkyTrain to see the specialist’s!’
That sign sucks and if you can take the time to do that then you must have time to save the world! TARD
ya the sign should have said muskeg and not rock bottom
Why don’t the people who have enough time to do that(Sign)Put there energy into something possitive, There is always the highway out of town or the ferry ,and I’m sure that there is a booming town somewhere that has enough room for people with a poor me shit eating attitude
Well sadly too many of your neighbours and maybe even your friends have had to make that choice of the ferry and highway, in the last ten years due to the decline of the town’s economy.
Rather than seek out more of an industrial base that will provide for full time, year round jobs, the city has for the most part over the last few years courted an industry (in the tourism sector) that runs for less than six months, offers part time wages and work, and doesn’t provide for the kind of economic development that will have many folks buying up all these suddenly expensive houses.
Going after the tourist dollars is wise owing to our location, but it shouldn’t be the be all and end all focus that it seems to have become for the city. (While they’re fixing the sidewalks on McBride for the tourists maybe throw some pavement down on a few roads too eh)
It’s a little different with the Port, as there is the promise down the line of further expansion and such (depending on the US economy now we guess), but still you have to wonder at the end of it all how many full time ie: 40 hr a week jobs that will provide for, near as I can tell so far the container port isn’t exactly running seven days a week, with jobs for all. I know it all takes time and such, but when 850 some odd jobs disappeared with the pulp mill, so did a whack of affiliated jobs around the city.
Most of those people took your advice and took the ferry or road out of town and haven’t come back in the same numbers that left.
Since only toursim and the port seem to be the focus of development at the moment, and we don’t seem to have much else on the horizon, I’m not sure that the “boom” is quite here yet.
Maybe one day, but I’d feel a lot better about it all if the city council maybe could provide some more substance to the future than the always faithful, “our best is yet to come”
Sound bites don’t seem to turn into jobs and economic prospects. We’ve been led down the road here far too many times by the “next big project” that never actually seems to get developed.
China Steel, LNG plants (twice for that one), our new overlords of the Pulp mill, lots of smoke, never any fire it seems.
Hence why folks get a little jaded I’m afraid, I don’t see it as negativity, just a bit of here we go again.
If the city can show some tangible progress towards a more reliable industrial base then I’m guessing folks will jump on the train again, until then it’s all just speculation (especially it seems property speculation)
^^ That’s a very good post, I agree with your take on the situation 100%. We left Rupert in 1999 because we thought there was more to life than what the city was offering and it looked very much like things were going to keep going downhill for a while…both of us had good jobs with no possibility of lay-offs at the time but it was still worth taking the chance since neither of us were buying the “things will be much better soon” line that local politicians and business leaders had been spouting. I’m glad we left, it’s not like we didn’t have struggles along the way since we’ve left but while I wish nothing but the best for Rupert, for us it was the right move in the long run.
Tourism is great but it needs to be a year-round situation to really create a true economic prosperity for the citizens. Having lived in a ski-resort based town the past seven years, you really saw how getting people in to do things in the summer was the only way to have locals balance out the excesses of the winter season and keep their staff employed year-round. That town is creating summer get-aways for tourists to fly-fish, bike, hike and the like but I’m stumped to think of something to attract tourists to Rupert from October to late March I’m afraid to say…
While I agree with alot of what you said I do have to disagree with the above statement. We are seeing our first new residential development in over 10 years and retail developers have expressed interest in our community. Retail outlets such as Canadian Tire, Quiznos, Dairy Queen and Boston Pizza , in some cases, have placed ads in the local rag looking for franchisees or have shown interest in locating here. Chances and Rogers have also invested significantly in our community.
Although I agree that the boom is not quite here yet there are some very positive signs that we are moving forward. While there may be alot of focus on the port and tourism, I see that as a positive thing. The spin-offs are there. You just have to notice the trucking companies hauling conatiners and fuel for CN through town or go check out the docks on cruise ship day to see all of the charter operators lined up. There is so much more to the big picture than just “the port” or “tourism”. We aren’t exactly flourishing yet but we are well on our way to recovery.
well with all these fast food places wanting to come here then maybe they should look at more clothing stores as we will all need bigger cloths to fit us… WHY MORE FOOD STORES… Can’t buy cloths from canadian tire… or hey maybe we will all look like tires at the end…
Forget Disneyworld kids! let’s go see the rainiest city in the world!
Considering this announcement:
charts.technorati.com/posts/8TN% … uTKHmGE%3D
was that an ironic slap at Rupertites’ naiveté?
Rupert doesn’t even rate that title…I’ve been to Hilo and it’s a lot wetter but I suspect there are places that are even rainier out there. At least in Hilo, you get a fair bit of sun with the rain, something Rupert can’t deliver in the late fall and winter.
Rupert just has to be really careful not to sell out to some big mall development that will further deplete 3rd and 2nd Aves. Look at PG. They might have Big Box Heaven out along the highway there, but their downtown looks even worse than ours. And that’s saying something.
Welcome to HTMF, guitargrrl:-)
PG could itself cleanup in an hour if they put a bounty on hoodies…
WOW. Reading all this gets a person depressed. Especially one who just opened a business in PR. www.lastingmemoriesscrapbooking.ca
If you are into scrapbooking or know someone who is, you should let them know. Maybe we can get this town back on track one scrapbook at a time!!!