February 13, 2002

"A deer was licking spilled automobile antifreeze from the road and, in a short time, it would die from ingesting the poison."

Rob Wickson, past president of Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, called up from personal observation that tragic vignette of highway pollution as he argued for the life of Vancouver Island’s alternative people-moving route -- the E&N Railway. Wickson, who is an economist and a member of the Board of B.C. Chamber of Commerce, was speaking in the Princess Mary Restaurant, Victoria, at a stakeholders’ forum about the future of the E&N organized by SaveRail Coalition, a community alliance formed to prevent the threatened shutdown of the railway.

"Pollution of land, air and water are among the unsustainable hazards of an Island highway carrying 13,000 cars a day over the Malahat, most of them occupied by lone drivers," Wickson said. He argued that the costly burden of increasingly heavy traffic and soiled environment will be lightened when a revitalized E&N is confirmed as an alternate people-moving route.

Wickson’s arrival by bicycle underscored the support of the cycling community for a railway which, they urge, should carry cyclists and skiers to recreational destinations.

“Our goal is not only saving the E&N but improving it in all aspects,” said historian and former Langford mayor Jim London, who chaired the SaveRail forum.

Brendan Read, vice-chair of SaveRail, catalogued a number of North American railway success stories, including Burlington, Vermont, with half Victoria’s population, which has a commuter rail service, and Quebec and Washington State, which have both launched aggressive programmes of switching road freight to rail.

As he prepared to embark on Saturday’s “rally-on-rails” which carried a two-car train load of people past cheering groups of rail supporters at stops between Victoria and Courtenay, Read drew attention to the comparison between the hundreds of millions it would cost to widen the highway for a growing Island population, and the estimated $30 million investment needed to upgrade the E&N as an alternate route linking Courtenay, the Albernis and Victoria.

A special lottery to finance the E&N and a takeover of the railway by a Vancouver Island-based company with Island shareholders were two of the ideas put forward in a brainstorming session at the SaveRail forum which was co-ordinated by Pam Alcorn, the sparkplug of a successful campaign to save the Mill Bay ferry from shutdown.

Other concepts that emerged from a canvas of the audience at the forum were a beefed-up Alberni ocean port to handle increased volumes of Island imports and dispatch them by rail, and a tourist circuit linking Cowichan wineries, Cowichan native cultural centre, Chemainus theatre, a possible Imax theatre in the Albernis and bus links to Cathedral Grove and Pacific Rim National Park.

Community leaders who voiced support for the railway at the forum as a maker of jobs and business income included Bill McKechnie, CEO of Point Hope Shipyard, which has the contract for servicing VIA cars; Colin Graham of Victoria Labour Council; Lorne Whyte of Tourism Victoria; and Dwayne Peverett, current president of Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce.

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