The Prince George Heritage Commission is hoping that its upcoming efforts to commemorate local history will prove the value of its work after city council only approved one of several requests for more resources at recent meetings.
Back at the March 10 city council meeting, chair George Davison gave council an annual report on the commission’s activities.
During that presentation, Davison made five requests of council:
- Increase the number of annual meetings from four to seven,
- Endorse reconciliation with Lheidli T’enneh First Nation through future commission projects,
- Provide additional funding to update and replace heritage signs around town,
- Increase the number of members on the commission from nine to 12 and
- Direct staff to increase their support for the commission.
In response, council referred those requests to administration for further study, also directing staff to investigate the possibility of making the commission an external entity rather than a council committee and directing the heritage sign request to a committee of the whole meeting that took place on June 25.
At the July 14 meeting, staff returned with a report on the four requests after previously addressing the signs at the June 25 committee meeting.
At that meeting, staff estimated the cost of replacing all 61 of the city’s heritage signs at a cost of around $106,000 — about $1,700 per sign. The commission had asked for $60,000 for the project.
Ultimately, the committee moved for the heritage sign project to be included for consideration with the city’s 2026 budget.
Regarding an increase in meetings, administration said it would provide commission members more opportunities to meet, but it would increase the workload for staff tasked with assisting it.
“Under the current quarterly meeting schedule, the number of agenda items remains limited, and few tangible deliverables are reported,” the report said, recommending no change to the number of meetings.
“Staff are able to support the commission at this frequency, as the associated responsibilities with the commission are managed in addition to their primary duties.”
On reconciliation, staff recommended that efforts continue to be pursued through the memorandum of understanding on communications and co-operation between the city and Lheidli T’enneh but said they could engage the First Nation should a heritage project come up that would benefit from its input.
To increase the size of the commission, staff said, they would need direction from council to prepare a bylaw amendment.
The section on increasing staff support received the most attention in the report. It said that under the bylaw establishing the Heritage Commission, the city manager appoints two members of city staff to assist its work: a staff liaison and a committee clerk.
“The staff liaison role is currently assigned to a land use planner within the development services division,” the report said.
“This responsibility is in addition to the planner’s core duties and day-to-day workload. Expanding the staff liaison role to provide additional support to the commission would significantly impact the planner’s capacity to manage existing workload, potentially resulting in delays and increased processing times within the division.”
On top of that, the report said that enhancing the staff liaison role is not currently contained within the planner’s job description and would need approval through the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Because of that, staff recommend that the city instead add a heritage planner if they wanted to pursue the action.
“At this time, administration is unable to determine whether the creation of a new position is warranted, as the commission’s current level of activity and number of deliverables remain limited,” the report said.
“A clearer understanding of the commission’s future scope and workload would be necessary to justify and define the need for additional staffing resources.”
The final section of the report addresses potentially spinning off the commission into an outside entity, which is allowed under BC’s Local Government Act.
It argued that such a move would allow the commission to address a wider ranger of funding opportunities, have greater autonomy, be more flexible and “establish a governance structure tailored to its mission, potentially enhancing its credibility and visibility within the community.”
Coun. Trudy Klassen moved a motion calling for extra commission meetings, saying the city needs to enable its committees to have success and that it’s no wonder they aren’t getting much done with only four meetings a year.
Manager of legislative services Ethan Anderson said that after the Standing Committee on Public Safety was created by Mayor Simon Yu last year as well as the creation of a committee reviewing council remuneration at the same meeting, his staff are stretched thin already.
He requested that council consider holding off on the idea until 2027, after his department is finished organizing next year’s municipal election.
The motion was defeated.
Coun. Garth Frizzell moved for staff to work on bylaw amendments to increase the number of committee members. It passed.
Klassen then moved the item regarding engaging with Lheidli T’enneh on future projects. She said she thought it was important to honour the commission’s request.
City manager Walter Babicz brought up the existing memorandum of understanding, saying it is administration’s preference that liaising between the commission and the First Nations be handled by either the city’s intergovernmental department or itself.
Coun. Cori Ramsay said she thought Lheidli T’enneh should be part of the discussion and wondered whether it would be worth having city staff discuss the matter with the First Nation’s staff, especially since the heritage sign project will be discussed during the next budget cycle.
Ultimately, council voted to direct staff to engage the First Nation on the matter.
On the final item, Klassen moved for an investigation into providing the commission with additional staff resources. It carried.
At the Monday, July 28 council meeting, councillors approved the first three readings of a bylaw amendment that would increase membership from the current maximum of nine to 12.
Included in those three new positions are dedicated seats for representatives from the Prince George Public Library, The Exploration Place and one additional member of the general public.
Speaking to The Citizen after a special meeting of the commission of Tuesday, July 29, Davison said when he first joined five years ago, he had the goal of recognizing two notable people from Prince George’s past: Charles Sager, a black barber who called out racism in the city in the 1920s and Steve Berlinic, a victim of work camps near the city during the great depression.
However, he came to realize that there was more work to deal with existing efforts like heritage signs dedicated to buildings that no longer exist than new projects.
While representatives from the library and museum were welcomed to the commission’s meetings, they weren’t members and couldn’t often speak.
“Adding designated seats for those two entities makes a lot of sense because they are partners in heritage in Prince George,” Davison said. “That was the only one of our recommendations that really got through.”
Even before the membership expansion, the commission had already been searching for someone to volunteer for a vacancy.
One area where Davison said the commission and the city have compromised is on meetings. He said they had recently received their schedule for the next year and a half and it includes the addition of special meetings between some of the four regular meetings.
Davison said that there was a challenge for the commission in having its last meeting of a calendar year in December and having to wait until March to present their final report for the previous year.
Included in the special meetings is a special meeting in January to help fill in that gap.
Speaking about the request for extra staff support, Davison said the commission has been tied to the city’s planning department for years because of the requirements associated with adding buildings to the heritage register.
However, he noted that there haven’t been any new additions to the register since 2018 and the commission’s work noticeably slowed down since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As one example, Knox United Church in downtown Prince George, was on track to be added to the register but the process was never completed. The commission is now working with the church to get that process going again and hopefully add the church to the register later this year after being submitted to council for approval.
At this point, Davison said, just about every heritage building that could be added to the register has been nominated.
Vice-chair Ayesha Rogers — an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Northern BC — has pointed out that heritage is more than just buildings. It’s also sight lines, neighbourhoods, industrial history, educational history and people.
There are also a lot of buildings that no longer exist — like the Shasta Café or Columbus Hotel — or no longer match their original use — like the Northern Hardware building. Though they may be altered or gone, they can still be acknowledged.
“The plan is to broaden the definition of heritage, invite and engage the public in what heritage is in Prince George and then have some recognition either on the register or beyond the register,” Davison said.
The early stages of recognizing these other heritage elements is starting this summer, with commission members due to set up shop in the old South Fort George School House near the Exploration Place on days when the Little Prince miniature train is running.
There’s no set process for how those other elements will be recognized and Davison said that’s something they’d like to have city staff help with.
While administration had criticism over a lack of results from the commission, Davison said it’s a catch-22. They’re not recommended to receive more resources because of a lack of results and they have a lack of results due to a lack of resources.
Going forward, the commission wants to make a splash and show the importance and desire of commemorating local history.
“We’re hoping that this is going to maybe break that cycle,” Rogers said.
As for the suggestion that the commission because a separate non-profit, Davison is against the idea.
“The city has a responsibility to maintain and celebrate its heritage,” Davison said. “It’s not something that a non-profit society can do effectively. A non-profit can’t do the register because that’s a formal registry that’s under provincial legislation, not just a city bylaw.”
Rogers pointed out that under the city’s Official Community Plan, the city “states clearly and repeatedly how important heritage is to Prince George, the role that is plays in terms of identity and sense of place.”
“It also states repeatedly that the responsibility of the city is to support and to help and to manage the heritage in Prince George, so it (the city) can’t turn around and say ‘but it’s too much trouble dealing with the body we created to do that, so why don’t they become a little club?’” she said.
The Heritage Commission’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 11 at 11 a.m. in the second-floor boardroom at Prince George City Hall.
