If all goes as planned, the Old Fire Hall will be transformed into a interpretive centre by the end of June, bringing music, theatre, workshops and programs to Patricia Street all summer long.
The Planning and Development Advisory Committee heard a proposal from Parks Canada’s Brian Catto, May 22, and now has until the end of the month to present Supt. Greg Fenton with a recommendation as to whether or not he should approve the interpretive centre as a discretionary use. Fenton will then have 15 working days to make his decision.
Currently the fire hall, which is a heritage building and was recently transferred back into Parks’ control, is zoned institutional. Permitted uses for buildings in the institutional district include community recreation, public education, public libraries, cultural exhibits and public parks.
Catto said Parks wants to bring its interpretive programs into town from June 28 through to the end of August, in order to attract and entertain visitors who don’t normally make the trek out to Whistlers Campground, where the programming takes place throughout the summer.
“The application is just for the one year for now,” said Catto. “We’re going to suss things out this year.
“We’re going to have a number of scheduled programs throughout the day, including the explorer program for kids, the street theatre and then there’s going to be an 8 o’clock presentation.”
The idea is to have programming begin at 12 noon and carry on to about 9 p.m. each night.
“Some of the key messages we want to get to our visitors are around human and wildlife safety, especially along the roadsides—safe wildlife viewing,” explained Interpretation Coordinator Gloria Keyes-Brady in an interview, Monday. “So we’ll have the step ups that we use for point duty, where we have the horns and antlers and hides of animals [in the fire hall]; that generates conversation and opens up the opportunity for visitors to get a better understanding of the park wildlife.”
Other programs would include Aboriginal drumming and dancing, street theatre, puppet shows, dress-up and crafts, like drum making and Aboriginal bead work.
“The programs we’re going to do in the evening are the same ones that we would have done out at the campground,” said Catto, noting that it could be anything from a PowerPoint presentation to a sing-a-long around a campfire outside the bay doors. Those programs will begin at 8 p.m. each evening.
Margo Simpson, a resident of the neighbourhood, attended the PDAC meeting May 22 to raise her concerns about noise.
She said, although she’s supportive of Parks’ programming—especially for kids—she is concerned about disturbances in the evening.
“That neighbourhood is extremely compromised already, with a lot of noise in the summertime especially.
“I’m very happy to see [the building] being used, but my concern is the hours of operation. I’d just like to state for the record, if there is noise, if there’s fires outside, if there’s anything that could be of a disturbance past a reasonable time—10 o’clock at night—I’d like to raise my concerns on that.”
Catto then assured Simpson that the plan for this summer is to have programming end at 9 p.m.
“My scheduling realities right now will have us closing that place down at 9 o’clock this summer, because I don’t have the staff to extend it later in the evening, plus by that time the crowd demographics change on the street out front there and I’m not overly interested in dealing with the party scene.”
If approved by PDAC and the superintendent, the interpretive centre will result in a reduction in the programming offered at Whistlers Campground because there won’t be enough interpretive staff to do full programming in both places, said Keyes-Brady.
“Some of the rationale behind that is that we’ve been trying to invite the general public and the townspeople to Whistlers Campground for the programs and it just doesn’t happen,” she said. “So this year we hope to experiment with a number of different types of programs—different lengths, different styles, different mediums—just trying to see what will work and what won’t work in the Old Fire Hall.
“We’re pretty excited about it.”
Nicole Veerman
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