What do you do with a mill town that is on the shores of BC's biggest lake, near mountains that have very good snow fall, sitting in the middle of good mineral resources, that has a great airport, tied to a huge road network?

I don't know.

Powder King is still about 80km by road. If they were able to have a direct link it could be cut to something like 35 to 40k. Still not ideal.

The wilderness experience is available virtually anywhere in BC. Tough competition out there.

So, rising Canuck $, rising fuel costs whether air or road, long way from anywhere, and one junior Whistler after another being built in the southern Interior and Kootenays in established picturesque and heritage towns like Revelstoke ......

You tell me .... what is the risk factor of putting $50 million into Mackenize to improve the infrastructure to have even half a chance to draw a mix of medium to high end tourists looking for wilderness experience?

How about sheep ranching?

BTW .... job

whoops .... hit a wrong key ...

job CREATION ... how about doing those forestry road improvements? Smart businesses use downtown to do long term maintenance and gear up for the next busy time when their business is in the off season or a cyclical downtime.

But then the key word is SMART businesses, isn't it? The government seems to have a hard time coupling job creation with things like the Resource Road Act and infrastructure that is not designed to the capacity to which it is actually used.

NDP ... Liberals ..... they are all the same .. a bunch of bureaucrats.

;-)

"downtown"???? ... obviously meant to be "downturn" ....

I think I will retire from this board for now and get back to work and goof up there ....

;-)

$2 million is not much. I could spent that in a weekend at Whistler and have nothing but a hang over... so competing with them in that regard would be tough.

Hypothetically one could bill Mackenzie as a biker town with dude ranch brothels where you ride your snowmobile right up to the front door after coming in from days in the wilderness... and they could probably corner that market, but is that what they want?

A better hypothetical would be if they had a really crazy person in charge of the money that bought a whole bunch of specialty machining and fabricating equipment (possibly a powder coating oven, or chroming dip tank) with a place to operate it as a co-op service center for a fabricating industry that serves the forest industry, mining industry, and oil and gas industry.

I can't think of a better more centrally situated community for that kind of economic base considering the mines are just up the road and can go all off highway from Mackenzie, the forest companies are in the community as well as nearby in PG, and the oil and gas industry currently sources truck box bodies as well as rig equipment from as far away as Kamloops and Calgary... so why not Mackenzie just down the road?

PG had that opportunity, but the yahwho's here don't have the class much less the brains to make it happen... and so they lose all their opportunities to further away place cementing a name for the towns collective service base for all the wrong reasons. PG's reputation is dirt in the Peace country or south of PG... only west of PG do they view PG as a service center. Mackenzie is just as close for these kinds of services and could avoid the bad reputation.

The key would be to have the tools available for companies that would relocate to Mackenzie were they could use these tools piecemeal on an add need basis. A lot of stuff could probably even be donated by the mills themselves with the added bonus for the mills in having the skilled trades still in town when they ramp up operations at a later date.

Possibly CNC could be involved and the cheep housing could benefit other people from small towns that need to take trades classes, but can't afford the big city cost of living... and CNC could cover the regular overhead costs for the co-op (equipment capital costs and building) with a costing formula worked out for outside work or equipment usage.

Is it possible for a town like Mackenzie to become a city with its foundation built on a versatile and flexible service base for the fabrication and machining needs of the surrounding resource industries... spinning off into trades education and training diversification of the economy? I think it has the infrastructure (other than tooling and shop space) and the central location for that, but then how would one get it started and then how would one market this new reality? How many kids out there can't afford to go to Burnaby for 10-weeks a year of trades training, but they could afford to go to Mackenzie? How many wold stay when they were done and possibly start their own business closer to the action?

Lots of hypotheticals and lots of questions....