Nearly 300 people packed the banquet room at the Powell River Town Centre Hotel June 16 to attend a presentation about a road to Squamish.
A volunteer committee that has been working on the project for nine months unveiled its findings through maps, a digital fly-through and a video of the backcountry from Powell River to Squamish.
Many people in the audience expressed support and even enthusiasm for the project, which the committee calls the Vancouver Island-Interior Connector.
Jim Donnelly, a Powell River resident who attended the presentation, used the example of Bella Coola, where residents first built the road connection to the Interior without government help.
"Let's just get behind these guys," Donnelly said. "If they need $200,000, that's not much to get a proper study done. Then let each of us pick up a shovel, because we could have that road through darn fast if everybody in this room picked up a shovel."
The route, with a maximum elevation of 1,000 metres, is about 215 km, of which 62.5 km will be new road and the remainder an upgrade of existing roads.
Colin Palmer, chairman of the Powell River Regional District board of directors and a committee member, pointed out there might be funding available through the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
"If it was a project that tied in with the Olympics, maybe somebody could pick up some money that way," he said. "If you wanted to really dream, I don't know why there couldn't be an ATV [all-terrain vehicle] trail through there to the Olympics."
When someone from the audience said he was concerned Powell River would change dramatically, Palmer, who has lived in the community for 40 years and has been in local government for 14 years, replied he was nervous about the community. Palmer said BC Ferries was "making every effort to try and get rid of the first sailing out of Saltery Bay, so you will be locked in here for longer hours."
The committee's next step is to form a society with a representative cross-section of participants from government, first nations, communities, business and other stakeholder groups. It has identified four phases for the project, the first of which is a pre-feasibility study. To come are estimates of the costs to build a road and a survey to determine if the route works on the ground.
