Port Moody wants builders of future developments to pay more heed to accommodating alternate transportation options.
On Sept. 9, council’s city initiatives and planning committee will consider a new mandatory points system that rewards infrastructure and incentives designed to change travel behaviour away from single-occupied vehicles.
A staff report said measures proposed by developers — like providing bicycle parking or a car share service, as part of their rezoning application — are currently negotiated on a case-by-case basis.
But new provincial housing legislation, which gives municipalities more authority to require plans for managing transportation demand, has opened the door for the implementation of more rigorous and standardized requirements.
“These changes to the legislative context created an opportunity to improve the city’s approach to TDM [transportation demand management],” said the report.
If council endorses the new plan put together by Urban Systems, a community consulting firm, developers will be able to choose their approach to managing traffic demand from a list of 38 options, including measures to encourage active transportation, transit use and parking management.
They will then be given a score based on the impact the measures have on shifting transportation away from single-occupant vehicles, reducing the number of vehicle kilometres travelled and greenhouse gas emissions.
And measures that can work together to change behaviours can achieve a higher score.
Some of the measures to be scored include:
enhanced bike parking that is sheltered from the elements
additional parking spaces with EV charging facilities
on-site daycare spaces
The report said the points system can be refined further based on feedback from developers.
“This approach will help ensure the requirements meaningfully promote sustainable transportation without placing an undue burden on applicants.”
Paul Dal Monte was on the green wooden floor at New Westminster’s Queen’s Park Arena as a player the last time the Salmonbellies won the Mann Cup.
That was 34 years ago.
Now, as the commissioner of the Western Lacrosse Association, Dal Monte knows the importance of bringing the Canadian senior lacrosse national championship back to the old structure.
“From a league perspective, to have it played in Queen’s Park, where you’ve got 3,500 fans every night in a building with such tradition and history — you just have to look around at all the banners and retired jerseys to understand that this is something special,” said Dal Monte, who won three Mann Cups as a player but has yet to witness a WLA team win it during his tenure at the league’s helm that began in 2017.
Dal Monte said the success of the Salmonbellies is often the measuring stick against which the other WLA teams assess their own achievements.
After all, New West has won the Mann Cup 24 times.
And now, with the Bellies’ two appearances in the past three years, others are starting to pull up their bootstraps.
Dal Monte pointed to the Coquitlam Adanacs, which pushed the Salmonbellies to five games in the WLA final after years as the league’s doormat.
He said the Maple Ridge Burrards is another team on the rise again.
“It’s good for the league. There’s great awareness and passion,” Dal Monte said.
MARIO BARTEL PHOTO An honour guard from New Westminster Police Department stands watch with the Mann Cup.
It’s also good for the City of New Westminster, said Mayor Patrick Johnstone.
“Lacrosse is in its blood,” he said, equating the Salmonbellies and the team’s iconic logo of a salmon leaping through a giant W to hockey’s Montreal Canadiens and its distinctive CH symbol.
Johnstone said Queen’s Park Arena holds a special place in residents’ hearts, especially when it’s the centre of the lacrosse world.
“It’s the dusty old barn that rocks.”
Dal Monte said players feel that energy, especially if they’re part of a victorious home team.
“There’s that expectation and history that goes along with it because you are following in the footsteps of others,” he said. “It’s like winning the lottery.”
Mann Cup facts
The Mann Cup has been contested since 1910, after it was donated by Sir Donald Mann, an Ontario railroad baron and entrepreneur
There was no winner in 1916 and 1917 because of WWI, and the COVID-19 pandemic scuttled the 2020 and 2021 championships
For the first 22 years, the national senior lacrosse championship was played under traditional field rules
The first indoor championship was awarded in 1932 at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens
The Mann Cup trophy to be awarded to the winner of the series between the New Westminster Salmonbellies and Six Nations Chiefs is actually its third incarnation: the original was retired in 1985; the replica that replaced it was destroyed when it was accidently dropped into a bonfire as the Peterborough Lakers were celebrating their championship in 2004
The last WLA team to win the Mann Cup was the Victoria Shamrocks, in 2015
This year’s best-of-seven series begins Friday, Sept. 5, with game two scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 6. Games three and four are scheduled for Monday, Sept. 8 and Tuesday, Sept. 9. If subsequent games are needed, game five will be played Wednesday, Sept. 10, game six on Friday, Sept. 12 and game seven set for Saturday, Sept. 13. All games begin at 7:30 p.m. except the seventh game, which would begin at 7 p.m.
Port Moody’s land use committee will recommend whether a proposal to add a fast food fried chicken restaurant to a gas station is a finger-lickin’ good idea.
The owner of the Petro-Canada station at 3102 St. Johns Street wants to add a KFC restaurant on the 32,098 sq. ft. lot between Buller Street and Electronic Avenue.
The application requires the property be rezoned for comprehensive development because its current C4 designation prohibits retail food services.
In a report, development planner Sarah Bercu said the proponent also wants to expand the gas station’s existing convenience store by about 300 sq. ft. and relocate it to the southeast corner of the lot, as well as increase the number of parking spots from 18 to 23 — eight of those are at the gas pumps.
The changes would require the removal of eight trees and two hedges and the existing westbound bus stop in front of the station would have to be relocated slightly east.
Bercu said while the property is within the Moody Centre transit-oriented-development area that recommends greater height and density for residential development, “the proposal to renew the commercial building is seen as an interim development until the property owner is prepared to fully develop the site to the highest and best use.”
Bercu said the proposal will also require a review by Port Moody’s architect and landscape architect consultants. She added modernizing the gas station and expanding its commercial component “is a positive advancement for the site.”
The land use committee next meets on Sept. 8. It is comprised of representatives from Port Moody’s various neighbourhoods who are able to review development applications to comment and offer advice on whether they’re an appropriate use of land prior to council’s consideration.
A version of this story was first published in the Tri-City News on April 8, 2024
An Anmore wrestler is a step closer to realizing his Olympic dream.
On Sept. 3, Peiman Biabani was named to Canada’s national wrestling team that will compete at the senior world championships in Zagred, Croatia, Sept. 13-21.
Biabani will wrestle in the 65 kg weight class. He’d previously won silver and bronze medals for Canada at the Pan-American championships and in 2016 he was the junior world champion in the 60 kg weight class when he was still living and training in Tehran, Iran.
There, Biabani was a superstar in that country’s national sport.
Prior to becoming world junior champion, Bianbani won the junior Asian championships in 2015, just three years after taking up wrestling.
SUBMITTED PHOTO Anmore wrestler Pieman Biabani was a champion in Iran before coming to Canada to pursue better opportunties to realize his Olympic dream.
To continue his development, Biabani attended a special sports academy that allowed him to train full-time 15 days out of 20 while also getting an education. All his expenses were paid for, as was his travel to competitions in countries like Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia and Georgia.
But when decisions within Iran’s wrestling federation got in the way of Biabani’s further advancement, he knew it was time to forge another path to glory.
A chance discussion at a meet in Siberia with Dave McKay, of the Burnaby Mountain Wrestling Club, pointed Biabani to Canada. He talked to his family, who gave their blessing. Wrestling’s governing body in Iran also agreed to the move.
Then the COVID pandemic hit.
Biabani was forced to stay put for another year, training, staying optimistic but rarely competing at important meets like the 2021 world championships.
“It was real hard for me,” Biabani said of his delayed dream.
Meanwhile, in Canada, McKay worked diligently to secure the paperwork that would allow the young Iranian to live, train and compete in his chosen destination. He reached out to the close-knit community of wrestlers across the country to help fund Biabani’s move, find him a place to live and get him settled when he arrived.
“There was a lot of things to set up,” McKay said, including the hiring of lawyers to help Biabani navigate the tricky and lengthy process of attaining the proper visas as well as an international transfer from Iran to Canada in his sport.
When Biabani arrived in Canada on a visitor’s visa in late 2021, he didn’t know any English, and without status to compete for his new country, he had no funding to support himself.
But, said McKay, he knew the common language of the wrestling community.
An old contact of the coach found Biabani a family in Anmore where he could live. He volunteered to help out with coaching between his training sessions at Burnaby Mountain, as well as at other wrestling clubs at Coquitlam’s Pinetree Community Centre and in the Fraser Valley. To support himself and pay his expenses to get to competitions he took on labour jobs like flooring and construction.
“I don’t have any choice but to push myself,” said Biabani of the juggling required to stay on course with his training while managing the day-to-day challenges of life in a new country.
Results started to happen, at meets like the SFU Open.
In October 2023, Biabani achieved permanent residency and in January, 2024, he finally secured the international transfer that allows him to compete for Canada.
Biabani promptly won a silver medal at the 2024 Pan Am championships but he was injured just prior to the final so couldn’t compete for gold.
But Biabani was denied his dream of competing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris because he hadn’t yet attained Canadian citizenship.
Biabani said it was a tough pill to swallow, but it’s only reinforced his resolve to keep working hard so he can represent his new country at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“Four more years is nothing,” Biabani said, adding the challenges of the past few years have given him the mental fortitude and patience to stick with his program.
“I moved here for my dream.”
McKay has every confidence his protégé will be successful.
“He didn’t have the chance, but now he has the chance,” he said, adding wrestlers usually reach the peak of their form when they’re in their early 30s; Biabani will be 31 in 2028.
“His time is now,” McKay said. “Every day counts to make it better for his wrestling.”
• Biabani is one of five athletes from the Burnaby Mountain Wrestling Club who will be competing for Canada in Zagreb. The other four are:
This story first appeared in the Tri-City News on June 3, 2023
Denis Wood remembers the time he was startled awake by a loud thunk on the wall of his second-floor bedroom.
He became even more alarmed when he heard voices outside, so he ran to roust his dad, Robert, who immediately tried to reach Port Moody’s police chief.
The Wood family, you see, lived above the city’s first Royal Bank branch on Clarke Street, and n’er-do-wells skulking around with a ladder in the pre-dawn hours of a warm spring morning in 1953 might have had more nefarious plans than a simple cat burglary.
PHOTO COURTESY DENIS WOOD A young Denis Wood outside the Royal Bank branch in Port Moody that was also his family’s home.
While the bank branch moved elsewhere long ago, and the building is on Port Moody’s heritage registry, its current owners are hoping to ensure its character inside and out lives on — by applying for rezoning from light industrial use, so the interior can’t be gutted by any future owners.
For Denis, the building was home.
He was seven years old when his dad became the bank’s manager in 1948 and moved the family into the living quarters on the second floor.
Now living on an acreage south of Vanderhoof after retiring from a career that included several years in the banking industry himself, Wood said growing up above a bank felt important.
But it also came with a weight of responsibility as he and his siblings — brothers Ken and John along with their sister, Roberta — had to be constantly reminded by their mom, Kathleen, not to make too much noise to disturb the business going on a floor below.
PHOTO COURTESY DENIS WOOD Kathleen Wood relaxes in the living room of her family’s home above the Royal Bank branch in Port Moody in 1953.
Wood said the short commute down a set of stairs on the eastern side of the building meant the family could enjoy breakfast together before Robert Wood pulled on his suit jacket and tightened his necktie to head down to open the bank at 8:30 a.m., the kids headed off to school or play and Kathleen Wood tended to the home or volunteered at the United Church on St. Johns Street.
As a banker, Robert Wood was a pillar of the community: A former flight control officer in England when he served in the Air Force prior to joining Royal Bank, he managed a staff of eight to 10, including a stenographer who wrote his letters to customers by hand.
“She had beautiful handwriting,” recalled Denis.
PHOTO COURTESY DENIS WOOD Staff at the Port Moody branch of the Royal Bank celebrate Christmas in 1953.
Among Robert Wood’s duties was ensuring the security of the bank’s two vaults: A big time-locked unit on the main floor and a smaller one in the basement, where he once offered to store a customer’s winning ticket in the old — and then illegal — Irish Sweepstakes, until he could file for his prize.
Also in the basement was the coal furnace that Robert Wood had to stoke himself to keep the building warm.
“I was often amazed the place never burned down,” Denis said, as the tall chimney could easily become choked with soot.
In the mid-20th century, Clarke Street was Port Moody’s thriving commercial core. There was a hotel kitty-corner from the bank, a dry goods store next door, a liquor store nearby and the railway tracks were busy with freight trains pulled by hulking steam engines.
“It was a good town to grow up in,” Denis said.
And while the family moved up to a new home on Gatensbury Avenue in 1956 when the Royal Bank opened a new branch on St. Johns Street, Robert Wood continued to serve as its manager until he retired.
Since then, the building has had various commercial tenants, including a Sears outlet shop for a stretch.
Denis said he still occasionally drives by when he’s in the Lower Mainland to visit his son, who lives in Coquitlam.
As for the possible heist that was foiled by his light sleep, Denis said the men down below were so shocked when his dad leaned his head out the window to yell at them, they scrambled into the bushes along the railway tracks, leaving their ladder behind.
MARIO BARTEL 