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Post by John Zeger on Aug 11, 2005 14:37:22 GMT -5
Holy Moly! The Capital News (Aug. 10, 2005) reports that in the Aug. 10 edition of Newsweek Japan, Kelowna was rated as the best city in the whole world to retire. We better brace ourselves for a retirement invasion not just from Canada or Japan but from everywhere. But the question is what kind of community will we have after this large wave of retirees comes to Kelowna. Do we want a city that is principally a retirement haven with one wave of retirees being replaced by another? As sense of community is created by having a stable population, won't this negatively impact our sense of community? We must implement population growth controls ASAP while providing housing for families not for retirees.
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Post by Rick Shea on Oct 7, 2005 19:39:00 GMT -5
The Friday, October 7th edition of the Capital News gives a brief history of the 100 year old Thomson farm (pages A3 and A4). It's telling that the Thomson's descendants point to the "most noticeable difference" in Kelowna this way: "Used to be, we knew everyone when we went to town. Now, we don't know anyone."
The community has become simply a place of cohabitation for strangers.
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Post by John Zeger on Jun 26, 2006 10:37:33 GMT -5
It saddens me to note the cancellation of the Kelowna Regatta for 2006 due to a lack of volunteers. It seems that our sense of community has been eroded by continued growth to the point that this tradition is no longer valued by enough people to keep it going. I hate to think of the type of community we will have after it grows by another 50,000 as projected. Will people then stop taking interest in community affairs altogether?
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Post by John Zeger on Jul 4, 2007 9:58:04 GMT -5
As reported in the Daily Courier (July 4, 2007) Kelowna's Snowfest has gone the way of other Kelowna festivals like the Regatta and has folded due to a lack of volunteers. The Fat Cat Children's Festival had a similar fate a couple of years ago but way successfully (temporarily?) revived.
As Kelowna grows rapidly any sense of community here is dissappearing. The city is becoming more impersonal, contact between residents for other than business purposes is reduced, and there is less and less interest in volunteering and civic involvement. But the priorities of Kelowna city council continue to be encouraging more growth rather than preserving our sense of community and other aspects of our quality of life.
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