ROTHENBURGER – Fifty years ago, a brand new City of Kamloops was forged

FIFTY YEARS AGO, Kamloops was in trouble, unable to get its act together. If you think it has problems now, you should have been around back then.

The only answer was to start over. This month marks a half century since the provincial government completed a mission to do just that. I was there.

The problem was growth. The place was booming, here, there and everywhere — up the hillsides of Aberdeen, on the flatlands of Brocklehurst, up the North Thompson, east through Valleyview and all the way to Dallas.

Farmland was turning into housing and commercial development. There seemed little order to it. Municipalities were springing up in all corners. Brocklehurst, Valleyview and Dufferin were already incorporated, and Westsyde was having a robust discussion about it.

Kamloops and North Kamloops, of course, had already been joined a few years earlier.

The whole place was a hodgepodge in need of a plan.

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Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.