Hall, Gertrude, Civic Government

Nanaimo Historical Society Fonds
Series 2 Sound Recordings

Tape 31(b)

Transcribed by Lois Park

December 2007/January 2008

The following address was presented by Alderman Mrs. G.L. Hall before the Nanaimo Historical Society Tuesday, November 20, 1973.
Subject: Civic Government, Past, Present and Future

The speaker was introduced by Mrs. Emily Kneen and thanks for the interesting address was extended by Mrs. Douglas. M. Phillips.
Mrs. Emily Kneen: Our speaker this evening hardly requires an introduction to the residents of Nanaimo. She has served this community well and long. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia the family moved to Montreal when she was 6.
All her education was in Montreal and she graduated from the University of McGill in 1923. Following which she taught five years before marrying Dr. Allan Hall. First coming to Nanaimo in 1929 for a short time. Then they lived in the U.S.A. while the doctor pursued further studies. Returning to Nanaimo in 1933 where she has resided ever since.
She was first elected to the city council in 1953 and served until 1956. Again she was elected to council in 1966 and is just starting her 7th year topping the polls this year and previously.
On the council she has served as finance chairman ever since she was elected in 1966. She was elected to the regional district council three years ago and still retains that seat. As government representative, she is vice-chairman of the Nanaimo Regional Hospital Board. She is also a director of the Chamber of Commerce and as member of Malaspina Chapter Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire serviced as Vice President on both the provincial and national chapters.
Her subject this evening is civic government, past, present and future.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I present to you Mrs. Gertrude “Happy” Hall. [applause]
Mrs. Gertrude “Happy” Hall: Thank you very much, Emily. Madam President, Officers, Fellow Members and Guests here this evening.
I’m always fairly impressed when I hear anyone introduce me. I think I wish I knew that person. Sounds like she is pretty busy and then finally I realize it turns out to be myself and I feel very humble to think over all the years I have been accepted in this community to serve it and help it in its growth.
You know when you come from the east cost where everything is as your grandfather did it – it is nice to come here where I feel we’re sitting in the lap of history ourselves and we are helping to direct the future of our community and indeed the whole of Vancouver Island. When I talk to the Historical Society I think, perhaps, you have researched everything that there is to know about Nanaimo and in fear and trembling, I stand before you so I decided I wasn’t going to talk about Nanaimo hardly at all until later. And I thought rather I would give you a few remarks I have jotted down about local government – how it began and where it began and so forth.
But before I do that I was very interested listening to the minutes and I might say that I’m not a proponent of women’s lib, I don’t stand here in the place of Willard Ireland, I’m simply his substitute. We all feel very badly that he could be with us tonight because he is such an able speaker and I’m sorry to hear he is ill.
But you know whenever anyone calls on me to fill a spot I’m willing and able to do it. But I thought afterwards what gall on my part perhaps because Saturday night was election night and if I didn’t make it here I’d come [chuckles from the audience] to talk to you on Tuesday about local government. However, all’s well that ends well apparently.
Mrs. Philips is researching the history of Commercial Street and there is just a little something that I happen to know that perhaps Mrs. Phillips might not be able to dig up. And that concerns the Hall Block at 42 Commercial Street. That I understand was a great big rock bluff and nobody thought it had any value at all and Dr. Hall Sr., my father-in-law, decided that he would remove the bluff and build his clinic on this site which he did.
And they put in an iron fireman because you must understand that I come from the era of coal mines. We were engaged not by the company but by the miners and the miners signed on the doctors’ rolls and they were our masters and therefore we must use coal. So we had an iron fireman in the building until the mines were about ready to close and then Dr. Hall Sr. felt it was time he could move along to oil. So he engaged a miner to come and dig behind the building because there was still rock there and when he got busy digging behind it and got down in, he call edDr. Hall down and said what am I going to do with all this coal – he ran into a coal seam just few feet down. And he took a number of tons of coal out in order to put in an oil tank.
I just think that is a very interesting little sidelight of what happened to the history of the coal miners and how oil took over right on Commercial Street. They didn’t carry coals to Newcastle, they were already there.
I’d like to talk to you a little bit about civic government and the need for some form of civic government has always been recognized. And strong representative institutions of local government have been regarded necessary for the help and permanence of the state. Canada has been no exception in this regard.
The municipal level of government offers the best opportunity for the ordinary citizen to participate directly in public affairs and to develop an insight into the processes of provincial and federal government as well. The latter being carried on by the great distance from the direct observation of the average citizen tends to be very obscure. But the services rendered by his local authorities whom he elects and whom he often knows personally touch him at a 100 points and well I know it. The citizen who keeps his eyes open can observe the operations of these services from day to day and has the material and the opportunity to think about public affairs, to form judgments and to act thereon. In this sense, local institutions are the laboratories of democracy.
The preservation and the strengthening of pre-local? institutions is fundamental to the Canadian way of life and the first step towards these ends is to secure a knowledge of the constitution and general operation. Although as far back as 1663, a mayor and two aldermen were elected by the citizens of a Quebec settlement. It was not until after the British occupation that clear municipal institutions made their appearance in Canada.
St. John, New Brunswick was perhaps one of the first cities being incorporated in 1785. Here in our own province of British Columbia in 1860 New Westminster was the first municipality to receive a city charter. Victoria was incorporated in 1862 and Vancouver in 1886 and our own Nanaimo, as you know, in 1874.
Now municipal incorporation is composed of all the inhabitants, all the rate payers and all the resident and tenant electors with the mayor and council within a definite area set apart for municipal purposes by the provincial legislative assembly. The increase in the number and scope of municipal functions has paralleled the growth of Canada’s economy.
Some services such as the provision of food, fuel and shelter have always been regarded except in special circumstances as the responsibility of individuals. The local protection of persons and property in pioneer times was left to the head of the house. The bucket brigade was the forerunner of the fire department while the mothers were the only health departments. Parks and playgrounds were private even if they were open to the public.
But as conditions became more settled municipal institutions gradually took over most of these operations upon a more effective basis. Until today the present functions include protection of persons and property, health and sanitary services, parks and recreation services, welfare services, communications, water, lighting and power services. Education is another service but is not administered by the municipal corporations.
Under protections of persons and property come fire fighting and prevention, policing and crime prevention, building and electrical inspection and lighting of streets and parks.
Under health and sanitation came public health and this is usually administered through a department of health. Public baths, sewers, sewage disposal, garbage removal and street cleaning.
Under communications comes streets, roads, lanes, sidewalks and transportation and telephone. Water service is almost universally owned by the corporation and operated by it directly or through a utility commission. Here we have the Greater Nanaimo Water Commission for Chase River, Harewood, Nanaimo, Northfield, Wellington, Departure Bay and a similar commission has been created for a sewer system and now both of these are regional. This is an edict of provincial government that this had to happen. Some of the public utilities are obtained by contract with an individual such as garbage although we now have it under the region or a company or other public authority.
The term of office for the Mayor and Council is for two years here in Nanaimo. The use of overlapping two year terms by which half of the aldermen retire annually is designed to ensure continuity of membership in council. A two year term allows an alderman to devote at least eighteen months to disinterested public service before he must begin to what you say mend his fences if he wishes to be re-elected.
The mayor is elected for two years also. He has no separate power of veto or superior power of initiation of policy or of appointment although he has general supervision over the administrative department. The mayors in B. C. have the powers to refer back to council within a month of its passage, any bylaw or resolution not affirmed by a vote of the ratepayers and compel council to reconsider it. Capital finance, accounting, budget control, payment of accounts are usually found together under the city treasurer. The tax and other revenue collections are under a separate tax collector.
The most important municipal document of the financial year is the current budget of estimated expenditures on civic services. It is important as a financial document but is even more important as a plan of work for the following year. The general provisions of the B.C. Municipal Act govern the current budget procedures and bylaws for most capital expenditures require the asset of the voters after approval by the Department of Municipal Affairs.
Now I think that sort of gives you a look at how we come to join in groups to be elected and to govern and my purpose here tonight was just to acquaint you with this and that is in the past.
You have an eye on what has been going on but I want you to take a look into the future with me and therefore I have brought the Mann Plan down for you to have look at and to the best of my ability which is quite limited to explain it to you. And why it came about and the reason that the regional board has decided to try and put together a project that the citizens both in Nanaimo and all districts around us could have a good look at it and to see why it was necessary.
We had an uncontrolled growth pattern around us all this time and we are getting more and more applications for shopping complexes and rezoning and so on. And for the removal of industry and places for heavy industry and things of this nature and so the region decided they would put together something like this plan here. Now this is what is currently taking place and has been over the years and this is called a decentralized concept and while you look at it, it is rather blown up and so is the centralized concept, which is what they hope Nanaimo may turn into.
But the things are larger than they are in reality and they are all coloured so you could understand where various things currently are or are proposed in Nanaimo without controls and so if you have a look at this latter don’t try to figure out the individual streets you live on or anything of that nature.
These colours that are on there override.
Now this covers an area of thirty miles and it starts on the north end up here at Nanoose overhead bridge and it goes down to Mudge Island which is down in Cedar so that this covers the area that the provincial government is asking us to look at with amalgamation in mind and the Mann Plan is more or less being held in limbo because amalgamation is once more to be considered by us and the provincial government have been up they have interviewed as you are probably aware all the districts surrounding Nanaimo and Nanaimo itself and Mr. Chris Woodward from the Department of Municipal Affairs was here and he tells us and he carries a message from Mr. Loremer that they would like us to start this committee of fifteen to twenty people composed of three aldermen, the director on the regional board from each of the surrounding areas; Northfield, Wellington, Departure Bay and so on, plus the chairman of fire and waterworks trustees associations in all these areas and the administrators from the city and regional district to go through all the questions that are going to be asked and come up with some firm answers about assessments, the degree of areas where the assessments will change – all the questions that were not answered last time that we had an amalgamation go around, which failed by .07 of 1% incidentally.
This time it looks as if there will be no doubt that it will go through. I don’t suppose it is a shotgun marriage but it is something awfully close to it because if we don’t do it ourselves I think you may be jolly well sure it will be presented to us. I don’t say forced but it will be presented to us and they want us to get into this no later than March or April.
The committee as yet has not been appointed by the provincial government but I think they are just waiting for elections to get over and they will be coming with all their ammunition for us to get going on this program.
So the regional board, I don’t know if any of you had these questionnaires that were circulated – community plan for Nanaimo, they took them around everywhere and they dropped them at every 5th house in Nanaimo and all the areas around us and they had a number of questions on them to be filled in. They were trying to get a consensus of opinion of what you wanted in industry, the port and parks and recreations, the residential areas, transportation, commerce where you wanted it, if you wanted it and what you wanted to have on the waterfront.
They didn’t get an awfully good response from that and then they had a display, if any of you saw it, with these proposals and a lot of other material down on Front Street right near the Villa and these questionnaires were in there, this ballot, which I am going to pass around to you after I get done talking and see if you decide you like this one or that one.
But all told, it only came to under a thousand people that took the trouble to either answer, sometimes they called back four or five times to a home in order to get the expression of the people. And they held public meetings in every one of the districts surrounding us and the city. So they are really working regionally to try and satisfy everybody if they possibly can.
Now In these various zones, today the downtown core if you can see this one, that is the commercial area and that is the heart of the city and that is down Harbour Park and Commercial Street and all that particular area and the people who are coming with applications for very large shopping centers and so on, they want to de-centralize and they are trying to get out of town.
Here’s one here, that’s McGarrigle’s gravel pit. They want to put something in there over 300,000 square feet for that one. This one here is the same. Here we have another commercial deal.
And wherever you have a commercial deal you will get residential densities around it because where’s a shopping center, like a neighbourhood shopping center people want eventually to have a high rise apartments or medium density apartments they want to be close where they can nip out and do their shopping and so it makes quite a change to your city.
The next thing is that they want is heavy industry, which is this light purple colour. That’s the controversial harbour situation and the mills that lie along there and everybody seems to, a great majority of the people want it moved out of town and so they are looking at the Harmac area out here which is heavy industry right now. They don’t have much other choice for heavy industry; they simply want to get it out of the way.
All this colour here, this sort of light brown, that is single family areas where homes could go. The area that is white here is all farmland and it isn’t touched at all, that rural.
Special uses, this is where Exhibition Park is but you can put certain things in there that don’t fit into any place else. Light industry is just back of it, running along here.
This green belt is the golf course. Now they would like all that you see green and they would like an area 20 or 30 feet along the highways to be kept green.
They have marked in here are a second roadway around Nanaimo, but there is another line that comes here which is the hydro transmission line at the moment but the thought is that it would be a backup if we were to have a bypass or alternate route back of the city and they feel that that road, if it came and on this one too back here, that they wouldn’t have any development beyond that, it would be kept greenbelt on the side of the mountain. There would be absolutely no access, no gas stations, no hot dog stands, no facilities on this road if it comes back here. It is simply and truly a bypass for the city and it would start down here, which is Chase River and it would go down even beyond Chase River it might even come out down close to Ivy Green Park somewhere and totally bypass it and keep it that way. But the trouble with this plan is that big shopping centers, this commercial deal here and here, there is another one by Vic’s at Norwell Drive area there, these could be neighbourhood shopping centers if you turn to this plan over here.