Catch a whiff of something foul in Metro Vancouver’s air? Notice some new faces at North Shore Rescue? Get the good gossip about the kid who wrecked an Italian supercar?
Our editorial staff have sifted through the 2024 headlines and these are the ones that really defined 2024 – or at least the ones we couldn’t stop talking about.
It stinks
Of course, more ink gets spilt over housing than anything else, but 2024 had another story that kept us and everyone holding their noses. The revelation that the stalled North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant will cost almost $3 billion more than originally budgeted landed like an overturned honey wagon.
Metro Vancouver and Acciona, the engineering firm fired from the project, are due to face each other with duelling lawsuits in court in 2027, but the two sides have also been slagging each other publicly with their own version of events in the meantime.
The North Shore’s mayors and council members led a charge at Metro Vancouver’s board to see the cost overruns shared equally around the region, but in a series of weighted votes, the majority of the board rejected that option, putting 37 per cent of the almost $2.8 billion cost of the increased costs on North Shore ratepayers. That means, roughly, an extra $600 on our annual utility bills for the next 30 years.
After hearing a chorus of demands for transparency and accountability, Metro Vancouver announced an independent audit of the boondoggle. But, for many politicians and advocates, that isn’t enough assurance that we’ll get the full story, so there have also been calls for the province to convene a full public inquiry.
House and home
The year started with the news that property assessments for the year had been flat for a change, but housing was no less a marquee issue than ever.
The population of the North Shore crossed 200,000, although our two district municipalities had among the slowest growth rates in Metro Vancouver.
With B.C.’s population expected to reach 7.9 million by 2046, the province brought in an omnibus of legislative and regulatory changes and initiatives – all with the intent of flooding the market with new housing supply. Among the changes: mandatory upzoning of residential land near transit; automatic allowances for four-plexes on single-family lots; a ban on public hearings for many redevelopments; expansion of the speculation and vacancy tax; a crackdown on short-term rentals; and the requirement for municipalities to meet provincially set targets for new home completions. The province estimates the changes could produce 293,000 new homes over the next decade.
The two North Vancouver councils bristled at the province’s intrusion into their control over land use but adopted fairly restrictive interpretations of the rules. West Vancouver council, however, spoiling for a fight, rejected some of the new requirements for density. One council member said it amounted to “communism.” Housing Minister Ravi Khalon shot back, saying councils like West Vancouver’s are exactly why the province was taking such drastic measures. When Khalon gave council a 30-day ultimatum to adopt the rules or face a ministerial order, they interrupted their summer break and passed the rules in a 4-3 vote.
At the end of the first year of provincially mandated housing targets, West Vancouver only achieved 26 per cent of its required new homes – 58 net new units, mostly single-family homes with secondary suites.
West Vancouver council did, however, give final approval for Cypress Village, a new mixed-use neighbourhood on Cypress Bowl Road that will bring 7,000 residents and businesses over the next 20 years.
The owners of Capilano Mall debuted preliminary plans for 11 towers ranging from 12 to 40 storeys with roughly 3,100 homes, plus more commercial space and a new community centre.
After the longest and likely most controversial public hearing in the District of North Van’s history, council members unanimously voted in favour of a supportive housing project to be built on Keith Road.
The province agreed to fund 166 new affordable rental units in below-market development to be built on district-owned land on Old Lillooet Road, just north of the Holiday Inn and in June, the district celebrated the opening of an affordable rental building on Orwell Street near Phibbs Exchange.
Premier David Eby chose the City of North Vancouver’s redevelopment of North Shore Neighbourhood House to announce BC Builds, a middle-class program provide to low-cost financing, expedited approvals and grants for affordable housing being built on public lands.
Eby was also here to launch the B.C. Rental Protection Fund, which will provide financing for non-profits to buy up older affordable rental apartments to protect them from redevelopment into more expensive condos.
Provincial election
In yet another nail-biter election, the BC NDP held onto power, but only just barely. The election saw the collapse of BC United (formerly the BC Liberals) and the rise of the BC Conservatives as the official opposition.
The deal to fold BC United and let the BC Conservatives solely take up right wing of B.C. politics was brokered right here on the North Shore by Caroline Elliott, who is Kevin Falcon’s sister-in-law and was, at the time, nominated to run for his party. Across the Capilano River, outgoing BC United MLA Karin Kirkpatrick said she felt so stabbed in the back by the move, she cancelled plans for retirement from politics and ran again as an independent.
On Election Night, West Vancouver-Sea to Sky voters made history electing Jeremy Valeriote, the B.C. Green Party’s first MLA in the Lower Mainland, with 38.9 per cent of the vote. West Vancouver-Capilano was won handily by B.C. Conservative Lynne Block, named on 46.67 per cent of the ballots. North Vancouver-Lonsdale NDP incumbent Bowinn Ma and North Vancouver-Seymour NDP Incumbent were re-elected by landslide margins 64.6 per cent and 52.6 per cent respectively.
Ma has since been named B.C.’s infrastructure minister and Chant, parliamentary secretary for seniors’ services and long-term care.
Atmospheric River
While voters were flooding the polls on Oct. 19, rain was flooding the North Shore. A record-smashing 292 millimetres of rain fell over the weekend, which led to millions of dollars in property damage.
The hardest hit areas were Deep Cove and Dundarave, where catch basins above creeks and culverts became clogged with debris, sending a deluge of water down the streets and into homes and businesses
“The system is only designed for so much water, and we had much more water coming in a short period of time,” West Vancouver’s fire chief said at the time.
Fire departments on the North Shore carried out rope rescues of people stranded by flood waters, including those in Gallant Avenue businesses, and numerous homes were put under evacuation orders. District of North Vancouver mayor Mike Little described the rocks pelting the properties as being as big as pumpkins.
One man who’d gone hiking on Grouse Mountain the day the storm arrived was found dead on the mountain three days later.
Because of the state of emergency, the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness made compensation funds available for residents and businesses that suffered uninsurable losses of essential items.
Recognizing the climate change at play, Little said the district would be reviewing the capabilities of its current infrastructure to handle more frequent and increasingly destructive and storms.
Environment
The North Shore’s creek stewardship groups – the West Vancouver Streamkeepers, the North Shore Streamkeepers and the Seymour Salmonid Society – completed major habitat restoration projects on Cypress Creek, Mosquito Creek and the Seymour River. The goal in all of them was to bring the fish-bearing bodies of water closer to their natural states, allowing returning salmon to spawn and juvenile salmon to survive until their ocean migration.
Frustratingly, it seems we could never go more than a few weeks without receiving reports of a chemical spill fouling creeks thanks to people carelessly allowing contaminants into the stormwater system. In one case, dozens of young salmon were killed on Maplewood Creek. The Streamkeepers installed a rain garden to help capture and filter chemicals before they hit Wagg Creek, another hotspot for pollution.
The City of North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Energy Corp., which currently heats about 7,000 homes and businesses, announced plans to begin capturing waste heat from raw sewage and install electric boilers to help transition the public utility off natural gas.
The B.C.-based Raincoast Conservation Foundation published a study that found the southern resident killer whale population could be extinct in 75 to 100 years, if nothing is done about dwindling stocks of chinook salmon, increased underwater noise from boat traffic and higher concentrations of industrial contaminants.
In May, West Vancouver council formally dedicated almost 2,000 acres of district-owned land above the Upper Levels highway as park, protecting in perpetuity.
Organizers of the Dundarave Festival of Lights warned that climate change may soon put an end to the waterfront Christmas tree festival as local suppliers of grand firs say seedlings simply aren’t surviving our increasingly hot and dry summers.
And Metro Vancouver announced plans for an experiment at the Lions Gate Wastewater Treatment plant to run treated wastewater through crushed up minerals with a hope it will mimic and accelerate natural processes that capture carbon and reduce ocean acidification.
Controversy in politics
The North Shore did not go without scandal in 2025. West Vancouver mayor Mark Sager was suspended from practising law for a period of two years after he admitted to misconduct in the handling of an estate he was executor of. The Law Society of B.C. found Sager had withdrawn $44,800 in executor’s fees and more than $26,000 in management fees from the estate and reimbursed himself $162,800 in travel expenses to visit his client’s sister in England without receiving approval from the beneficiaries or the court. Sager also admitted to not maintaining proper records regarding the estate funds and not keeping in contact with the residual beneficiaries – including four local West Vancouver charitable groups. Former mayor and one-time ally of Sager’s Mike Smith called on Sager to resign.
A week later, the Crown announced that a special prosecutor has been appointed to oversee a Port Moody Police investigation into allegations of campaign finance irregularities in Sager’s 2022 election bid. Port Moody Police confirmed that investigation was completed in July and that a report had been forwarded to the B.C. Prosecution Service for consideration. Sager denied any wrongdoing and there has been no further update from the Crown.
In federal politics, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country Liberal MP Patrick Weiler broke ranks with his party leader and was among the first to publicly call for a leadership review of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In December, Weiler publicly reiterated his call for Trudeau to step down.
Crime and punishment
In July, a B.C. Supreme Court justice sentenced Anthony Santos Del Rosario for the brutal killing of his aunt, 68-year-old Dominga Santos, in her Lower Lonsdale apartment in December 2022. Experts determined Del Rosario was in a state of psychosis induced by crystal methamphetamine at the time of the stabbing, believing he was being attacked by demons. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison.
The woman at the wheel of an SUV that plowed through a backyard wedding party in West Vancouver, killing two women in their 60s and inuring seven others, was sentenced in North Vancouver Provincial Court. Hong Xu had mistakenly stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake, the court heard, and she pleaded guilty to driving without due care. For that she received $2,000 fine and a five-year driving prohibition. The daughter of Annie Kong, one of the victims, said her family was “extraordinarily disappointed and disheartened” by the decision.
In September, a man in his 50s survived a gang shooting on East 29th Street in Lynn Valley. No arrests have been made.
And a man who tore down an LGBTQ+ pride flag from Lonsdale Quay and posted a video of himself saying he would burn it because the transgender people it represents are “pedos” pleaded guilty to a charge of mischief. Though the accused was a gay man, the judge determined that Kristopher Kamienik had committed a hate crime, because of the comments he’d made about trans people, and rejected his request to be let go without a criminal record.
The great outdoors
After 10 years as North Shore Rescue’s team leader, Mike Danks stepped down in June soon after he was hired as the District of North Vancouver’s new fire chief. Danks is credited with modernizing the search and rescue outfit with night-vision helicopters, an advanced medical team that brings the ER to the backcountry, a brand new search and rescue base at Capilano Lake, and new protocols to care for the team volunteers’ mental health.
Immediately after, longtime member and air operations rescuer Scott Merriman stepped into the role, pledging to keep B.C.’s busiest search and rescue team on the same trajectory.
The second season of Search and Rescue: North Shore debuted on the Knowledge Network, bringing the public as close as they can get to a rescue without being strapped into a helicopter long line.
Although the team wasn’t as busy as they were in the height of the pandemic, they did carry out some incredible feats in the backcountry, including rescuing a woman who survived 20 minutes buried by an avalanche, using a drone to find a man who was lost in a canyon, and the first-ever use of a motion sensor camera to alert the team to an out-of-bounds skier in dangerous terrain.
The mountains and trails did remind us they can be deadly. In April, a North Vancouver school worker was killed in a mountain bike crash in Cypress Provincial Park. And two people died in Lynn Canyon – one who drowned after going over Twin Falls in July and another who fell from a cliff beyond the safety fence – leading to pleas from local rescuers for visitors to “make good decisions.”
Elsewhere on the North Shore, Metro Vancouver made big improvements to the Grouse Grind, including installing AEDs on the trail, and Grouse Mountain Resort opened a new gondola capable of moving 1,000 people per hour up and down the mountain.
Business and economy
After years of double-digit growth, commercial and light industrial land assessments remained flat at the start of 2024 but business anxiety was spiking, the North Vancouver Chamber reported, with landlords passing the growing tax bills on to business owners who could not afford them. The chamber called for an overhaul in the way commercial properties are assessed to protect small business.
The North Shore’s biggest employer had perhaps their biggest year. Seaspan launched an offshore oceanographic science vessel and a joint supply ship, which now holds the record for the longest naval ship ever built in Canada. The company was also awarded $500 million in new contracts for design and pre-construction work on six more Coast Guard vessels.
The City of North Vancouver council voted to ban any new currency exchanges, which mostly serve Iranian immigrants, to open at street level after council members worried the proliferation of them was robbing the city of street appeal.
The Premier and Natural Resources Minster Jonathan Wilkinson announced in North Vancouver a $900-milion hydrogen gateway – three new clean hydrogen production facilities and 18 fuelling stations in B.C. and Alberta intended to set up a reliable local supply chain for the zero-emission fuel.
And, two years after an attempt to set up a new business improvement association in Central Lonsdale went nowhere, a new group of entrepreneurs got council approval and some grant money to begin setting up a new BIA.
Indigenous nations
The Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) published the results of their first-ever census, which delved into housing, employment, health, education, culture, language and experiences of racism within the community. Among its findings: only eight per cent of members reported being somewhat fluent in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Sníchim (Squamish Language) but 98 per cent said it is worth saving, with the majority ‘strongly agreeing’ that the language should be taught in schools.
The nation also opened tsíptspi7lhḵn – which translates to voices of the nest – a Sníchim immersion program for babies and toddlers to begin learning their language in a homelike setting.
Squamish journalist Kwetásel’wet (Stephanie Wood) researched and wrote Tiná7 cht ti temíxw (We Come From This Land), a collection of the nation’s history, including their creation stories, life before European contact, struggles under and resistance to colonialism, and progress being made in the era of reconciliation.
səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation) members grew their Ćećǝwǝt lelǝm Helping House garden from a few planter boxes to a small-scale farm with hydroponic growing, a smokehouse for fish and a chicken coop. More than 60 families on the reserve land come to collect healthy foods there and others come from off reserve.
A study between the Tsleil-Waututh and UBC used archeological records and Indigenous oral histories to piece together diets the nourished people living on the inlet before setters arrived and industrialization drastically reduced the healthiest and most abundant food sources – salmon, forage fish, shellfish and marine birds.
When it was announced in April that the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion would soon be online, the nation’s Sacred Trust Initiative, which had long fought against the project, said it was a blow to years of progress they’d made in restoring the environment on Burrard Inlet.
In September, the province put up $4.8 million to continue a project between the District of North Vancouver and the Tsleil-Waututh to restore the shoreline at Whey-ah-Wichen/Cates Park, an ancestral village site.
Transportation
A strike by 180 transit supervisors working for Coast Mountain Bus Company paralyzed TransLink’s system for 48 hours in January. At issue in the dispute were wages and workloads.
After more than a year of construction, TransLink welcomed passengers to the new and improved Phibbs Exchange bus loop in May.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure released a report looking into the effectiveness of the $200-million Lower Lynn Improvement Project on Highway 1. It found mixed results, with faster commute times down the Cut in the mornings but minimal improvement in the notorious afternoon rush. The number of collisions on the corridor fell by more than half, the study found.
A ministry proposal to convert the existing eastbound lane of Main Street reserved for people heading for Dollarton Highway to a shared lane for drivers headed to the Ironworkers blew up and local opposition boiled over just as the Oct. 19 election approached. The ministry opted to hit pause on the project subject to future consultation.
District of North Van council briefly considered and roundly rejected a plan that would see one of the northbound lanes of Mountain Highway eliminated with the extra space given over to left-turn lanes, curb extensions and a bicycle path.
The district did go ahead with a plan to install a concrete barrier along sections of Mount Seymour Parkway to give people on bikes some comfortable separation from vehicle traffic. The project faced a petition from residents calling for it to be removed, but cyclists said it went a long way to making their commute safer.
A technical study looking at options for an eventual replacement of the Ironworkers with a rapid transit line could attract upwards of 120,000 daily transit users per day, removing 50,000 vehicles from the road.
The BC NDP promised, if elected, the province would prioritize funding for a Metrotown-to-Park Royal bus rapid transit line.
Talk of the town
Sometimes, a standalone news story prompts an outsized amount of public discussion. Here are some of our favourites.
In March, a 13-year-old somehow came into possession of the keys to a $300,000 Lamborghini his father was in the process of buying. The kiddo took the supercar for a joyride and wrote it off, crashing into the ditch on Highway 1. Police weren’t exactly clear on why the minor wasn’t being charged with theft, but he did face charges under the Motor Vehicle Act, including speeding, driving without due care, failure to remain at the scene of a collision, and driving with no driver’s licence.
Three North Shore NHLers produced a disproportionate amount of talk in the world of hockey. Florida Panther Sam Reinhart score the game-winning goal in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals over the Edmonton Oilers. Macklin Celebrini was drafted first overall by the San Jose Sharks. And Connor Bedard was the easy pick for the NHL’s rookie of the year. Keep yer stick on the ice, boys.
In August, a guerrilla documentarian sat with a coffee outside the End of the Line store in Lynn Valley and filmed 41 drivers failing to stop at any of the three stop signs at the intersection in 45 minutes. The discussion it prompted led to more enforcement by the RCMP.
And after 12 years of being largely abandoned and neglected, the roof at the former Hamilton High School/Lucas Centre collapsed, leading to questions about the North Vancouver School District’s handling of the property.
