This story first appeared in the Tri-City News on Oct. 2, 2018
If your idea of a post-workout treat is a high-protein shake or thick fruit smoothie, you’re not Hamid Haji.
He heads for the freezer to scoop himself some ice cream.
In fact, the karate sensei and yoga instructor who runs Pro-Fit Boot Camp in Port Moody with his wife, Kelly Pearce, loves the frozen desert so much he embarked on a mission to make his own.
Fitness and indulgence don’t have to be mutually exclusive, said Haji, who has been part of the city’s fitness scene for 20 years.
“You limit yourself but you don’t have to cut yourself off,” he said. “Limitation makes the rewards sweeter.”
Two years ago, Haji set out to make the best ice cream he could. He and Pearce toured artisanal ice cream shops around the Lower Mainland, sampling their wares, chatting with staff and customers, trying to deconstruct their secrets. Then the couple would put their findings and intuition to work in their kitchen and share the results with clients at their gym.
“They were our guinea pigs,” Pearce said.
Armed with their feedback, they’d head back on the road to source local, natural ingredients and return to the kitchen to experiment with new flavours and conquer new challenges, like concocting a vegan ice cream that doesn’t skimp on creaminess despite its lack of, well, cream.
At some point, Haji’s quest outgrew their counter and freezer space at home, so he and Pearce decided to convert a storage area at the back of their St. Johns Street gym into a white-tiled, stainless steel ice cream factory. Several weeks ago, they christened it Vashti Rose, after their eight-year-old daughter, and started offering the frozen fruits of their labour to the public, one or two scoops at a time.
For now, the ice cream shop is only open on weekends as health regulations don’t allow Haji and Pearce to operate it at the same time people are sweating their workout in the adjoining gym. But kids are free to burn off some of their ice cream-fuelled energy on the matted floor while their parents savour a scoop of salted caramel or cookies and cream at the expansive white countertop.
Haji said he and Pearce have developed more than 100 flavours but they put only 11 of them in rotation at a time. And they’re open to requests, which have already included toasted marshmallow, mint flake and even saffron.
Port Moody’s Shoreline Shuttle could be making a comeback.
Mayor Meghan Lahti says the free service that connected the city’s Inlet Centre area to Rocky Point Park, Brewers Row and the downtown heritage district for the summer in 2018 but then was deemed too expensive, could be paid for with revenue from paid parking.
Council will debate Lahti’s motion to revive the service at its meeting on Tuesday, June 10.
In a report, the mayor said the shuttle service would reduce traffic congestion, improve safety for pedestrians and improve air quality.
“Perhaps more important though,” said Lahti, “ensuring that transportation to the busy area is accessible to everyone, regardless of economic status, will promote inclusivity and enhance community engagement.”
Lahti said money from the city’s parking reserve fund could be used to relaunch the service, As of Dec., 2024, that amounted to $72,500.
The pilot shuttle program in 2018 was budgeted to cost $50,000, including the cost of contracting a 20-passenger bus and the installation of signs for its 13 stops. The service ran every 30 minutes on weekend afternoons and evenings until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and 10 p.m. on Sundays. Adjustments were made to accommodate extra demand during events like RibFest, Canada Day and car-free day.
Despite a $20,000 subsidy from Richmond-based developer Panatch Group to operate the shuttle, council decided in 2019 it was too expensive to continue the pilot. A report estimated the 3,700 rides ended up costing $13.50 per passenger.
Rob Vagramov, Port Moody’s mayor at the time, said it would have been cheaper to put every passenger in a taxi or limo instead.
“Not every idea pans out exactly as we’d hoped,” he said.
Lahti said now that the city is charging for parking in busy areas like Rocky Point Park, along Murray Street and around Eagle Ridge Hospital, a portion of revenues could support relaunching the shuttle service.
“By utilizing pay parking revenue for this shuttle, the community directly benefits from the fees paid by users,” she said in her report. “It creates a sense of accountability and transparency about how the funds are being used.”
According to the report, the pay parking stations generated $158,120.70 in gross revenue since they were implemented midway through Sept., 2024 through March, 2025.
This story first appeared in the Tri-City News on Aug. 2, 2018
Accounting’s loss has been Coquitlam’s gain.
For 50 years.
That’s how long Ted Bordeleau has been cutting hair at Plaza Hairstyling and Barbers in the old Burquitlam Plaza on Clarke Road, an occasion he marked Wednesday with snacks and refreshments for his customers and $2 haircuts — but only if they showed up with an actual $2 bill because that’s what he charged when he first started in the business Aug. 1, 1968.
And if a customer didn’t have a $2 bill, since it’s been out of circulation since 1996, Bordeleau said he’d be happy to sell them one of his — “for $25.”
In Ted’s venerable shop, every story has a punchline.
Even the one about the elderly customer who expired in his chair back when he was learning his trade at Moller’s Barber School on Hastings Street in Vancouver.
After perfecting his straight-edge shaving skills first on a bottle, then a balloon, then other trainee barbers, Ted had finally graduated to giving shaves to real, live customers, many of them elderly or impoverished who put their necks on the line for the young apprentices in exchange for cut-rate haircuts. When one of those customers failed to flinch after Ted nicked him, he called over his instructor, who checked if the client was breathing, then confirmed the worst.
“I cut him three times,” Ted recalled. “No wonder he didn’t bleed.”
Ted almost didn’t become a barber. He loved numbers and was studying accounting when his grandfather urged him to pick up clippers because, he told Ted, “We need barbers.”
Ted trained at Moller’s for six months, then embarked on a two-year apprenticeship, as per the requirements to obtain a provincial barbering license at the time. He said he would have stayed another six months at barber school but he couldn’t afford the bandages.
Again with the punchlines.
Over the years, Ted has cut hair for generations of families as customers whose locks he first tended when they were kids bring in their kids and, eventually, their grandkids. He has trimmed politicians’ pates, CEOs’ sideburns and manes of people who’ve walked out of his shop without paying.
Some of his longtime customers travel hours out of their way to keep getting their hair cut by Ted. And when they walk through his door, there’s no guarantee they’ll be served right away because Ted doesn’t take appointments.
Ted met his wife, Jean, in front of his barbershop. She drove by in a bright pink 1957 Buick with fins, and Ted loves cars, so he ran out the door to ask for the driver’s phone number.
“She wasn’t quick enough to give me the wrong number,” Ted said.
He’s also found love for some of his customers, matching them up with female friends, acquaintances or just regular visitors who passed by as they shopped at the once bustling plaza.
Oh yeah, there’s that.
As the big city caught up to the suburbs, Burquitlam Plaza lost much of its bustle. The butcher shop left, so did the video store. SkyTrain severed part of the sprawling parking lot and the Safeway grocery store moved into the first two stories of a gleaming new condo tower on the corner. Many of the storefronts between the Dollarama and Value Village are dark.
The neighbourhood has changed, too, Ted said. Fewer families can afford to live there as small apartment blocks and modest mid-century bungalows are gobbled up by new development, so he’s not giving as many first haircuts to tentative toddlers.
But Ted perseveres, propelled by stories exchanged, friendships made and the knowledge that, while everyone may not need the services of an accountant, everyone at some point needs their hair cut.
This story started when we heard about a sign affixed to some fencing alongside a popular uphill hiking trail. It first appeared in the Tri-City News on May 10, 2018.
Tanya Leibel had just witnessed evidence of humanity at its worst when she received a very personal reminder of humanity at its best.
Last month, 66-year-old Port Moody woman was in her hotel room in Krakow, Poland after visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp, where more than 1.1 million prisoners were exterminated during the Second World War, when she got an unexpected call on her cellphone.
That call would connect her to the person who had saved her life.
A year before Leibel took a bucket list tour of Europe that also included stops to see the Churchill War Rooms museum in London and Anne Frank’s home in Amsterdam, she was just another Tri-City resident hiking the Coquitlam Crunch. It was a dreary spring day and her son-in-law, Chris Langridge, had just passed her on the stairs, dialled into the music on his headphones, when she suddenly felt dizzy.
‘I knew I was in trouble’
Leibel had been climbing the Crunch’s stair section three times a week for about a year, so she was confident her fitness wasn’t flagging.
Then she felt pressure on her chest and her arm went numb.
“I knew I was in trouble,” Leibel said this week.
She called to Langridge up ahead but he couldn’t hear her because of the headphones. She waved her arms and he happened to glance back, seeing her distress.
He sprinted down to Leibel and called 911.
She sat on a rock, then passed out.
Just below them on that day, Tammy Bryant, 58, was on an exercise break from her job driving school buses for First Student Canada, chatting and solving the world’s problems with a friend, when she saw Leibel slip from her perch. The women ran up to her.
Quick action
Bryant, who just two days earlier had completed her CPR re-certification program as required by her job, leaped into action. She placed her favourite foul-weather jacket on the ground to protect Leibel from the rain-soaked earth, then began assessing her unexpected patient.
“I thought she was having a seizure,” Bryant said.
But when Langridge told her he thought his mother-in-law was having a heart attack, Bryant said she “put into motion what we had just learned.”
She applied steady, rhythmic compressions to Leibel’s chest as she hummed the Bee Gees’ disco hit “Staying Alive” because that’s what her instructors had advised.
“I had the cadence and rhythm, and that’s all I concentrated on,” Bryant said.
After about 12 minutes, first responders from Coquitlam Fire and Rescue arrived and took over. BC Ambulance paramedics arrived and applied a defibrillator twice, then loaded Leibel into their ambulance.
That was the last Bryant saw of the woman she knew only as Tanya.
Search for closure
Subsequent calls to Eagle Ridge and Royal Columbian hospitals, as well as Coquitlam RCMP, failed to turn up any information about Leibel’s fate because of privacy laws.
Bryant and her friend often chatted about that day on their subsequent hikes but they eventually became resigned to the likelihood they would never know whether Leibel had survived. They just resolved that she had lived and that was that, Bryant said, adding, “It was over and forgotten about and seldom mentioned again.”
Until this spring.
Bryant’s son and his girlfriend were halfway up the Crunch when they spied a handwritten sign affixed to some construction fencing just below Lansdowne Drive.
It read: “Did you save my life with CPR here? Please call me. Would love to thank you.”
Confusion
After she passed out on the rock, Leibel has no memory of what happened next. She was transported to RCH in New Westminster, where Dr. Albert Chan, a cardiologist, installed two stents to overcome blockages in her coronary arteries. She recovered from surgery in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Family gathered, her son flew in from Iraq, where he works in the oil fields.
“I was confused by all these people around my bed,” Leibel said.
Five or six days later, she went home, where her daughter lives in the basement suite and was able to care for her as well as take over tending to Leibel’s husband, who has dementia.
Leibel reflected on the circumstances that got her back to familiar environs, back to the embrace of her family.
“It was a master class in organization, precision and professionalism,” Leibel said. “Everyone did everything perfectly.”
When Leibel was able, she visited the fire hall to thank the Coquitlam firefighters who’d tended to her. She thanked Dr. Chan, too.
“But nobody knew who the lady was who saved me,” she said.
Filling in the blanks
Life carried on. Then, as the first anniversary of her second chance approached, Leibel reinvigorated her effort to fill in the blanks of her survival story.
She put up the sign just before embarking on her European trip because “it’s a big deal to save someone’s life.”
“It really centres you and focuses you on what’s important,” she said of her brush with mortality and the rush of circumstances that brought her back.
“Kindness has always been the ultimate gift — it has a ripple effect.”
Afraid to call
Bryant said when her son and his girlfriend told her about the sign and its location, she knew she was the person its author was seeking. But she was too afraid to make the call herself and kept putting it off.
It was her son’s girlfriend who was on the other end of the line when Leibel picked up her phone in that hotel room in Poland.
Once the details were confirmed, they arranged a connection for when Leibel returned from her trip. The patient and her rescuer met in person recently at the Tim Horton’s not far from the base of the Crunch.
“It was very emotional, overwhelming,” Leibel said.
“It’s up there with the birth of your first child,” Bryant said. “It was wonderful.”
For Leibel, her gratitude knows no bounds: Bryant not only saved her life but also spared her family the pain and heartache of her absence, she said.
For Bryant, meeting Leibel not only means the story of that day continues happily but it also confirms the importance of knowing a life-saving skill like CPR.
“I needed to know whether it worked,” she said. “I needed the affirmation. It was easy to save a life.”
In 2018, happenstance reconnected me with one of my favourite stories of my career. A local historian had acquired a vintage letterpress that had once belonged to a renowned typographer in New Westminster whom I had photographed back when I worked at the NewsLeader. I did two takes on the story; a personal recollection of that reconnection for the New Westminster Record, the paper I once competed against, and this more general feature for the Tri-City News.
These words you’re reading were crafted by the reporter then turned into digital zeros and ones before being printed on paper or uploaded to the internet.
Not so many years ago, the craft of printing words on paper was a much more involved, laborious task that involved dozens of skilled journeymen and tons of heavy machinery.
Each word, paragraph and story committed by the writer to paper had to be assembled into frames with cast lead dies, letter-by-letter, punctation mark-by-punctuation mark.
Those heavy frames, or chases, were then placed into large presses where rollers inked the raised metal letters and then pressed paper to them to create a printed page.
But like so many arduous processes borne of the Industrial Age, manual typesetting and printing is becoming a craft lost to the speed, efficiency and cleanliness offered by computers.
“There is a problem when we go too fast,” said Markus Fahrner a Port Moody graphic artist who’s also the coordinator at the city’s Station Museum.
So, in an effort to slow the process of printing down and reconnect with the skills he first learned as a boy growing up in Germany where his mother was a book designer, Fahrner acquired a Colt Armoury press that was likely built by the gun manufacturer in 1914.
But this is no ordinary old press.
It was once owned and carefully maintained in working order by Jim Rimmer, a world-renowned typographer and letterpress printer who kept the old-world craft alive from a studio behind his New Westminster home until he died in 2010.
MARIO BARTEL/THE TRI-CITY NEWS
The late Jim Rimmer at work on one his vintage typesetters in the studio of his New Westminster home in 2004. Rimmer was a world-renowned typographer who salvaged and restored old printing press machinery and then used them to create fonts and print limited edition posters and books that were coveted by collectors.
The stained glass lit studio and Rimmer’s basement were crammed with old letterpresses, typesetters and spare parts salvaged from print shops that had moved on in technology. He restored the machines and designed dozens of typefaces in metal for printing limited edition books, posters and one-sheets that were coveted by collectors around the world.
Shortly after his death, he was awarded the Robert R. Reid award for lifetime achievement or extraordinary contributions to the book arts in Canada by the Alcuin Society, a volunteer society dedicated to the artistic side of printing books.
Fahrner said he couldn’t believe the good fortune of his find.
While much of Rimmer’s printed works, printers’ dummies, manuscripts and type design work was acquired by the Simon Fraser University library after his passing, the fate of his collection of heavy machinery was less certain.
Fahrner said it’s important to keep the old machines running rather than have them end up as decorative curios in restaurants or antique shops.
“I really admire the craft,” Fahrner said. “I love the way it forces you to slow down.”
In fact, a poster that might take Fahrner a couple of hours to design on a computer can take days to assemble and print on the letterpress.
“It’s slow and precise,” he said. “You suddenly have so much to know about the process, like the way the ambient temperature of the room affects the ink, the type of paper you’re using, how heavy an impression you want to make on the paper.”
The end product, Fahrner said, has a depth and life that can’t be produced digitally.
“There’s an intrinsic love and energy in the things you produce,” he said.
And an eternal connection to a craft whose purpose hasn’t changed since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, even as its technology evolves.
This story first appeared in the Tri-City News on April 13, 2022
Todd Labranche decided pretty quickly that an ongoing problem with shin splints would limit his lacrosse aspirations as a player.
So the former PoCo Saint pulled on a striped referee’s jersey.
On Saturday (April 16), Labranche will officiate his 400th National Lacrosse League game, between the Vancouver Warriors and Calgary Roughnecks at Rogers Arena.
He’s one of only two referees in the pro league to reach the milestone.
Labranche, who grew up in Port Coquitlam but moved to Red Deer, AB, in 2014, said he fell in love with the speed and athleticism of lacrosse the minute he picked up a stick and ball when he was nine years old.
A few years later — as soon as he was allowed — he supplemented his passion by refereeing mini-tyke games.
Wear and tear
Labranche played in the Saints system through junior. But the sport’s quick starts and stops, turns and cuts across the floor pained his shins so much he could never finish a game. Referees, however, move mostly in straight lines.
So Labranche put away his lacrosse stick and devoted himself to officiating, working his way up through the ranks until he was hired at the age of 22 as one of three part-time referees at the time in the Western Lacrosse Association.
As the “new kid” with a whistle, Labranche opened his ears to learn all he could from senior officials in the league like future Hall-of-Famer Ron Crosato and Ray Durante.
Labranche said they taught him how to carry himself on the floor, how to talk to players and coaches so each would walk away feeling like they got a fair shake.
They showed him the importance of developing thick skin and a short memory because no referee is ever perfect and they can’t afford to dwell on past mistakes.
Don’t take it personally
Most importantly, Labranche said, he learned how not to take things that happen in a lacrosse game personally.
“Lacrosse is so subjective,” he said. “Not always is everybody going to agree with your opinion.”
A chance encounter with lacrosse legend Chris Gill at Coquitlam Centre mall in 2001 led Labranche to apply for a referee post at the NLL, just as the pro league awarded a franchise to the Vancouver Ravens.
Now, instead of being the bad guy in front of several hundred people in dark, local barns like the old PoCo Rec Centre or New Westminster’s Queen’s Park Arena, he would bear the scorn of 10,000 or more fans, with his every error or missed call replayed on the giant video scoreboards overhead and potentially inciting even more wrath.
Labranche said he also had to wrap his head around the multitude of rule differences between the way lacrosse is regulated by the Canadian Lacrosse Association and by the pro game, as well as making himself heard over the constant din of loud music that plays through games in the big league arenas.
Still, when Labranche was standing on the floor of the Marine Midland Arena in Buffalo with 19,000 fans singing the national anthems prior to the NLL’s championship game in 2008, he said the hair stood up on his neck with the thrill of it all.
Players are getting quicker
Over the course of his 21 years as an NLL official, Labranche said he’s seen the players get quicker and more skilful.
“Everyone can score goals, everyone can play defence,” he said. “The pace has increased dramatically.”
Labranche said the secret to his longevity has been coming to terms with his role.
“It’s really just a feeling of how you managed the game,” he said. “We know we’re not going to get everything; there’s some calls that will be left out there. But you have to make sure the players are safe.”
Now 57, Labranche figured 400 pro games would be his ultimate achievement in lacrosse.
But two seasons lost to the COVID-19 pandemic bought him time to build a gym in his basement so he could be in shape to shoot for 500.
“The league is getting younger and I’m not,” Labranche said.
A proposal to construct a six-storey commercial building on the south side of St. Johns Street next to the Spacca Napoli restaurant has now become a mixed-use project that includes 52 residential units with commercial and retail spaces on the ground floor.
But challenges remain.
According to a report by Port Moody senior planner, Dejan Teodorovic, concerns about the viability, height and massing of the project’s previous incarnation after it was reviewed by the city’s advisory design panel, land use committee and council’s committee of the whole, caused the proponent to withdraw their application for zoning amendments and begin anew.
The 52 residential units in the revised version that is also designed by Mara + Natha Architecture, include six affordable apartments that would be available at below-market rents.
But, said Teodorovic in his report, that’s still below the 15 per cent required by Port Moody’s inclusionary zoning policy.
Also, said Teodorovic, the new proposal doesn’t address worries about the future of a mature red oak tree — one of the oldest in the city — at the rear of the property, as well as several other trees that would have to be removed to accommodate construction.
“There is not planned tree retention or room for future mature trees that will mitigate the urban heat island effects and canopy coverage challenges in the St. Johns Street corridor.”
The planner also noted the number of units is a lot to cram onto two single-family lots, “which impact the ability of the development to achieve urban design and livability standards.”
Teodorovic suggested the proponent acquire a third property to lessen the building’s density. The property to the east is currently occupied by a single-family home, while a commercial building with the pizzeria, a butcher shop and the Block 8 Academy child care and education centre is to the west.
Port Moody’s land use committee will get its chance to review the revised application on June 2.
This story first appeared in the Tri-City News on Dec. 1, 2017
It may not have the girth and renown of Stanley Park’s Hollow Tree but Dave Menzies and his wife, Nola, think a centuries-old cedar stump on Burke Mountain is worth saving as development encroaches ever closer.
Menzies, 77, found the stump when he was exploring the woods near the couple’s Burke Mountain home, where they’ve lived since the 1970s. The retired firefighter and fire inspector makes frequent forest forays with his metal detector to root out artifacts from the mountain’s logging past, hiking along old, grown-over trails that were once used by shake-splitters for transporting cedar logs.
It was along just such a trail he encountered the big old hollow stump, its interior charred likely decades ago from — Menzies surmises — a forest fire that swept across the mountain in 1914. The trunk of the tree fell over and was absorbed into the forest floor years ago, possibly weakened by the fire, as he can find no evidence that it had been logged.
Menzies recalled his first impression of the stump, which is big enough that up to 10 people could stand in its hollowed interior: “I was in awe.”
Over the years, he and Nola have brought their children and grandchild to visit the stump and marvel at its history.
Menzies estimates the stump could be 500 years old — maybe as old as 1,000 years — and it probably soared 200 or 300 feet into the air at the peak of its health.
“You don’t get to see them this close anymore,” he said. “I can sense it has the history.”
But its days may be numbered.
Developers are moving into the area. Roads have been built, trees have been tagged. The wild mountain is being tamed by subdivisions of expansive homes.
“Everything is just turning into progress,” said Nola Menzies, 75.
She’d like to see the stump saved, protected from the march of bulldozers through the woods or maybe even uprooted and moved to where it can become an educational monument to what the mountain once was.
“It’s real, it’s natural,” she said.
But first, people have to know about it, which is why the Menzies have pulled on their gumboots and stomped across the loamy, rain-saturated forest floor to show it to a reporter.
Said Dave Menzies, peering up through the hollowed stump towards the sky: “This is amazing.”
The story of the COVID-19 pandemic is still being written. While the immediate fear and uncertainty of the public health scare has faded into the background of our memories, its impact on our daily lives endures. The first story, about a pair of local athletes preparing to represent Canada at the World Ultimate Championships, was actually ready to go into the Tri-City News when the pandemic hit. A quick rewrite of the lede accounted for the unknown we were all facing at that time while still sharing their journey. Of course, the pandemic turned out to be more than just a minor speed bump, and three years later I was able to connect with the same athletes to reflect on how it had shaped their lives and aspirations and their own plans to move forward.
A pair of Ultimate players from the Tri-Cities will have to wait a little longer to get to know their teammates on Canada’s national U20 team.
A special four-day training camp that was scheduled to be held at Coquitlam’s Gleneagle secondary school March 19 to 22 has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coquitlam’s Devon Bringeland and Port Coquitlam’s Ricky McLeod are among the 28 Ultimate athletes who will compete for Canada at the 2020 World Junior Ultimate Championships in Malmo, Sweden, July 18 to 25.
Bringeland, who turns 19 this week, said it was Ultimate’s supportive, nurturing spirit that attracted him to the sport when he was in Grade 6 at Stratford Hall, an independent school in Vancouver.
“In Ulitmate, we’re all in it together,” said Bringeland, who’s now studying kinesiology at the University of British Columbia.
McLeod, who’s also 19, said the community vibe of Ultimate is a marked contrast to the negativity he experienced when he was playing competitive soccer.
“Being nice to your opponent is part of this sport,” said McLeod, who finally made the national team after he failed to make in his first attempt a few years ago.
MARIO BARTEL/TRI-CITY NEWS
Ricky McLeod and Devon Bringeland get ready to play for Canada at the World Ultimate Championships in Sweden in 2020.
Not that players’ competitive zeal is diminished by their collegial attitude, that’s been a touchstone of the sport since it was invented at a high school in New Jersey in 1968, said the national team’s head coach, Michael Fung.
To get named to Canada’s roster, athletes first had to catch the eye of coaches responsible for selection camps in each of the sport’s regional hubs in Canada — Vancouver, Winnipeg, Metro Toronto and the Ottawa-Gatineau area. Prospective players were tested for their fitness and then run through various drills and scrimmages to showcase their skills. Those who made the cut then attend two training camps prior to worlds to get to know each other and learn how to work together.
“Chemistry is huge in Ultimate,” Fung said, adding each part of the country approaches the sport and its strategies a little differently.
Turning disparate athletes into a cohesive unit when everyone is mostly apart, doing their own thing on club or school teams is an ongoing challenge, he said. Players stay in touch via a Facebook group, they review game recordings and strategy sessions together online, and they share fitness challenges.
“We have to create a platform for them to get to know each other,” Fung said, adding the training camps, that are often based out of someone’s home, can be especially beneficial to achieve that as players have to live, cook, and eat together in close quarters.
He said routine tasks like navigating meal times, cleaning up and sharing bathrooms, as well as planned bonding activities like ping pong and video game tournaments can help develop the synchronicity and communications skills that are vital to success in actual games. It also helps save money as, aside from some small sponsorship to pay for uniforms, everyone on the team pays their own way.
Bringeland said the sacrifices are worth it, especially as the sport’s popularity grows beyond its power base in the United States and Canada; 30 teams will compete in Sweden.
“It’s the next level,” he said of competing at the worlds, which are contested every two years. “It’s what everyone in the sport is driving for, to represent their country.”
Tri-City Ultimate athletes getting a second chance to represent Canada
MARIO BARTEL/TRI-CITY NEWS
Three years after they were denied their opportunity to compete for Canada at the World Ultimate Championship because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ricky McLeod and Devon Bringeland are getting a second chance.
There’s nothing like having something snatched away to motivate you to want it even more.
Port Coquitlam’s Ricky McLeod and Coquitlam’s Devon Bringeland were about to participate in a special training camp for Canada’s national Ultimate team heading to the U20 world championships in Malmo, Sweden, three years ago when the global COVID-19 pandemic yanked away their dream.
This year, they’re back as members of the U24 national side that will be one of 15 teams competing in the open division at the 2024 championships in Nottingham, England, July 2–8.
In between, McLeod and Bringeland had to soothe the sting of missing their chance to compete at the 2020 worlds and embarked on busy studies at the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, respectively, recommitted to their training and stepped up their game playing for Canada’s top men’s club: the Vancouver Furious George.
All with their eyes firmly fixed on the prize of being the best in the world.
MARIO BARTEL/TRI-CITY NEWS
Port Coquitlam’s Ricky McLeod stretches to make a defensive play during a recent training camp in Burnaby for Canada’s national U24 Ultimate team.
Bringeland said getting robbed of the worlds in 2020 was “an emotional roller coaster” that took him a while to ride out.
“It was heartbreaking,” he said. “Making Team Canada was something I’d dreamed about.”
McLeod said the COVID-19 shutdown in the spring and early summer of 2020 put his Ultimate aspirations at a crossroads.
“You could quit, or you could work even harder.”
By late summer, as public health restrictions eased and sporting activities resumed, the fire to compete had reignited in McLeod and Bringeland.
“I was missing it,” McLeod said. “As soon as I got a taste of it, I was hungry for the future.”
Bringeland said the competitive progression from U19 to U24 is significant. Speed, intensity, athleticism, skill and strategy are all kicked up a notch.
“It’s a huge step up from juniors,” added McLeod.
In anticipation of their next opportunity to play for Canada, McLeod and Bringeland hit the gym to develop their strength, power and explosiveness.
They ran 10 X 400 m laps around the track for endurance.
They honed their fitness to prevent injury and to sharpen their competitive instincts, they tried out — and made — the Furious George side that has won 11 Canadian championships.
They also play for their respective university teams that are part of U.S.-based leagues.
Bringeland said at its top level, Ultimate is no longer about the good-time vibes and tie-dye shirts that come from the sport’s hippie roots, although games are still self-refereed that commands a high level of respect and communication between opposing players.
“It’s a pure level of competition,” McLeod said. “But you don’t yell at people.”
Aside from the physical preparation to compete on the world stage, there’s also a playbook of set offensive and defensive strategies to learn — much like football — and money to be raised.
Canada’s national Ultimate program doesn’t receive government funding, so the athletes have to pay their own way to competitions — about $5,000 for the season. That means bunking down en masse at someone’s family home during training camps, carpooling to and from the fields and cooking communal meals.
It also obligates team members to launch personal GoFundMe campaigns and hit up corporate contacts for whatever support they can muster.
All while keeping up with their studies and part-time jobs.
“It’s a lot of late nights,” said Bringeland.
But the payoff will be worth the sacrifices, said McLeod.
“We take it very seriously,” he said. “Our goal is to dominate.”
A proposed development that could triple the population of the village of Anmore will have deleterious impacts on Port Moody’s utilities infrastructure, traffic, environment, wildlife, parks and recreation facilities, says the city’s mayor.
Meghan Lahti says a plan by developer Icona Properties to build 2,200 new homes on 150 acres of property the company owns at the corner of 1st Avenue and Sunnyside Road will even increase the risk of a human-caused wildfire by further expanding into the wildland-urban interface.
The draft assessment, to be considered for endorsement by Port Moody council at its meeting on Tuesday, May 27, expands on a preliminary review of Icona’s development proposal sent by Lahti to Anmore at the end of March, along with a request for more time so city staff could thoroughly evaluate several technical studies that weren’t made publicly available until April 10.
While Anmore council agreed to extend its deadline for Port Moody to submit its comments to April 30, several members were irked.
“We can’t let another municipality drive our decisions,” said Coun. Polly Krier.
“They seem to be getting overly involved in Anmore’s business,” added Coun. Kim Trowbridge.
In the latest assessment, that spans 10 pages, Lahti details a number of “significant concerns” with the proposed project, which requires an amendment to Anmore’s official community plan (OCP) along with agreement from Metro Vancouver to expand the region’s urban containment boundary before it can proceed.
More infrastructure for utilities
They include significant expansion of infrastructure like water, sewer and drainage services in Anmore, much of which would have to be built through Port Moody.
But, said Lahti, the village has yet to engage its neighbour to explore how such construction might proceed, where it could occur and how it would be paid for.
“While coordination with the city could be explored if a coordinating or shared project is identified, no such discussions have taken place to date,” Lahti said.
She added Port Moody is currently upgrading water and sewage infrastructure along Ioco Road and any further work to accommodate growth in Anmore would require full resurfacing of the busy roadway.
“If the village is interested in partnering on this infrastructure, time is of the essence.”
Lahti also said an alternate routing of utility services through Bert Flinn Park is a non-starter because of its designation as a park and the risk to environmentally sensitive areas like Mossom Creek.
“Adding an additional 4,500 residents in close proximity to Bert Flinn Park will add pressure on the natural environmental values of this park,” she said.
Strain on road network
Adding so many new residents would also strain the only two roads — Ioco Road and East Road — that connect Anmore to the rest of Metro Vancouver.
Lahti said the routes could only support about 40 per cent of the anticipated traffic the new development would generate without significant upgrades. But physical constraints like topography, property accesses and limited capacity at some intersection make them unfeasible.
Suggestions put forth in the technical reports to ease traffic along the two-lane roadways, like the construction of bus laybys and increasing transit service also aren’t realistic, said Lahti. The former poses safety and livability concerns while Translink hasn’t confirmed any plans for the latter.
A possible private shuttle service operated to link residents of the new development to transit in Port Moody would also have to run all day to be effective, Lahti said.
“Without a realistic and coordinated transportation strategy, the Icona development risks overwhelming the existing network in the area,” she said.
That assessment echoes an independent review of the proposed development’s traffic impacts conducted by Port Coquitlam transportation engineer Alon Weinberger on behalf of the Anmore Neighbours Community Association.
He said vehicle trips during peak hours on weekday afternoons would be almost double the estimate provided in the technical study commissioned by Icona. And the numbers would only increase further on warm summer weekends when visitors from around the region flock to Buntzen Lake and Belcarra Regional Park.
Environment and wildlife also impacted
Lahti said Port Moody’s environment and wildlife would also be negatively impacted by the proposed development, including the water quality of Schoolhouse Creek’s watershed, increased risk of erosion along its banks, decline in forest health because of changes in light availability and fewer trees and a narrowing of wildlife corridors.
As well, Lahti said, Port Moody will bear the pressure of more residents accessing its parks, playgrounds, sports fields and recreational amenities like its pools and arena as the proposed development includes only one park, a 5 km network of greenways for casual users and a 20,000 sq. ft. community centre that likely won’t include a pool or ice surface.
“The future residents will need to leave Anmore to meet these needs,” Lahti said.
As part of its process to consider Icona’s proposal, Anmore also solicited comments from Belcarra, local First Nations, TransLink, Metro Vancouver, Fraser Health, BC Ambulance, RCMP, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and village residents.
Anmore planning consultant Tim Savoie, who recently retired as Port Moody’s city manager, said all interested parties will have more opportunities to provide commentary if the development proposal gets to a public hearing and again if its referred to Metro Vancouver for its approval to expand the urban containment boundary.
MARIO BARTEL 