Rothenburger — Ajax firmly stitched into the fabric of everyday life in Kamloops

COLUMN — The extent to which Ajax now permeates life in the Tournament Capital came into focus this week.

There wasn’t a day when it wasn’t in the news, for a range of reasons. It began Monday with a story broken right here in the Armchair Mayor News that Coun. Donovan Cavers was putting together a motion asking the B.C. Environmental Assessment office to hold a new public comment period because of KGHM’s changes to the Ajax site plan.

Tuesday’s council meeting was remarkable for the fact that council members didn’t hide their impatience with the process overseen by the EA, and their unanimity in demanding that something be done about it.

Cavers, who wasn’t highly optimistic going into the meeting that his motion would even pass, found himself supported by every council member around the table, including the mayor. This, despite the fact EA project leader Scott Bailey put it in writing that he preferred quite another, slower approach to updating the public on the process and on the status of the project.

As if this wasn’t enough grist for the Ajax mill, Wednesday and Thursday were dominated by media stories about a not-so-silent protest by accomplished runner Ryan Day who pulled out of the Kamloops Marathon based on the fact KGHM is a sponsor of the event.

A precursor to Day’s boycott was that he had received an email telling him TRU — the event’s organizer — didn’t want to see a repeat of last year when he wore an anti-Ajax shirt on the winner’s podium.

When he spoke with A.M. News, TRU vice president advancement Christopher Seguin made it pretty clear the situation was an embarrassment for the university and that the email should never have been sent.

“It was an over-protective staff member who was trying to protect a valued sponsor,” Seguin said. He said there are no rules around what runners wear or what they say. “We don’t dictate what people wear.”

The university apologized to Day even before the story hit the media, he said. Day, however, stuck to his guns. As for KGHM, it said it made no complaint about Day’s T-shirt protest and didn’t ask TRU to ban political statements.

“KGHM has been gracious,” said Seguin.

All of which brought up what has been a quietly simmering issue about the support being distributed by KGHM International to community projects and charities.

The company took the opportunity to say it sponsored a little under $200,000 worth of community causes last year. Based on that figure it gets good value for its investment.

Besides the marathon, KGHM International’s logo has appeared as a sponsor at last weekend’s Music in the Park Hijacked, the Relay for Life, B.C. Lions training camp, and the Seniors Symposium — and those are but a few of its sponsorships in the last month and a half.

Some, like Day, see this as a double-edged sword.

While community groups benefit financially, where’s the line between sincere philanthropy and what Day calls “buying social licence”? When Dr. Brian Moench, the founder and president of Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment, and Cherise Udell, founder and president of Utah Moms for Clean Air, spoke in Kamloops in March, they identified donations to community causes as a strategy used by big mining companies to gain support for their projects.

Whether it’s true or even matters is very much open for debate, but as of this week the extent to which KGHM’s name comes up in connection with sponsorships will be a matter of curiosity.

KGHM also had a presence at a Thompson-Nicola Regional District meeting, where company reps provided the board with a status report on the project.

Friday, we ran a story by reporter Mike Youds on what he saw and heard during a tour of the minesite hosted by KGHM.

Today, we’re filing a story in the A.M. News about the route being taken by Kinder Morgan’s pipeline to skirt the mine’s tailings pond. You might say it’s the media and not the public that pays Ajax so much attention but I would beg to differ. I can tell you that since Ajax came to town some three years ago, stories about it have been among the most read. People want to know.

The events of the past few days didn’t make Ajax the biggest single story of the week — there were wildfires galore to dominate the headlines — but it seems firmly stitched into the fabric of everyday life in Kamloops.

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