It has been an eventful year on the West Shore.
Langford purchased an aquatic centre for $35 million, West Shore RCMP busted drug dealers and drunk drivers and locals raised the alarm on a "toxic bubble bath" polluting a much-loved West Shore Lake.
But it was ongoing development and its impact on the surrounding community which captured the attention of most residents.
As we count down the days to 2025, here are the top seven stories that generated the most interest with goldstreamgazette.com readers in 2024:
1 – ‘Concerned for our safety’: Langford residents fear new housing development (Jan. 8, 2024)
At the start of the year, Greystone Avenue residents in Langford were concerned their narrow street was set to become a safety hazard thanks to a new development.
“We are not against development and know it is something that needs to happen, but no one is taking our safety concerns seriously,” said Erin Alieen, who lives on the road. “We are concerned for our safety.”
Langford approved the development in April 2023, which included a plan to extend the road through Greystone Avenue and install a roundabout.
Still, the street was not able to fit recycling trucks down it, let alone another 100 cars, which would be the outcome if the development goes ahead, said Aileen.
Pierre Levesque, another resident of Greystone Avenue, said the development needed to consider what people living in the area wanted.
“We have already put up with a lot of blasting in the area. Now we feel like our concerns about the increased traffic on this street are not being heard,” he said.
The development, he said, was to install over 60 townhouses and had been earmarked as affordable housing, but each unit is selling for between $850,000 and $1 million.
The Klahanie development has made the roads narrower and, at times, two cars will struggle to fit down this road, said Levesque. And, if a fire truck or an emergency vehicle was coming up, there would be nowhere to pull over.
“I’m sure you could squeeze by somehow two cars. Yeah. But I want someone to come up here and put a fire truck on the road and tell me if they can fit,” he said.
2 – Expect to be turned around as Langford roundabout construction begins (Sept. 19, 2024)
Construction of a new roundabout at the intersection of Peatt Road and Hockley Road had heads spinning in the fall.
Work began in late September and was expected to finish in mid-December.
During this time, motorists faced delays as roads in the construction zone were reduced to a single lane, with a crew on-site to direct traffic and pedestrians.
The City of Langford encouraged residents to support local businesses in the area affected by the construction.
3 – Police say driver kept drinking his beer during Colwood traffic stop (Aug. 26, 2024)
A man allegedly drinking from an open beer can, despite already being pulled over in his truck by police, was one of several traffic violations West Shore RCMP responded to over one weekend in August.
The beer-drinking incident occurred when an officer pulled over a Nissan Frontier pickup truck along Ocean Boulevard just minutes before midnight on Sunday, Aug. 25.
The 41-year-old driver had an open can of beer in his truck and he "attempted to take one last sip before exiting his vehicle" to talk to the responding officer, West Shore RCMP said.
The man then failed a roadside impairment test, which indicated his blood alcohol level was above the legal limit, police said. The man was issued a 90-day driving prohibition and had his truck impounded for 30 days.
The Colwood incident capped a weekend where police responded to a total of 17 traffic offences on the West Shore.
4 – Langford locals demand action as 'toxic bubble bath' pollutes beloved lake (Nov. 13, 2024)
It’s considered by some to be the jewel in the crown of Langford's beauty spots, but fears were growing for Langford Lake in November, which locals said had been polluted by waste running into the watercourse from a nearby construction site.
Since October 2023, residents have noticed a pale-yellow sediment accumulating on the lake bed in the bay near Panda Place, which they said is killing aquatic plants and having a knock-on effect on the dependent ecosystem.
“So now it's basically dead, weeds won't even grow through it,” said Clayton Leachman, who has been lobbying the City of Langford to take action. “It’s such a heavy sediment.”
The strange sediment had been entering the lake via a stream, fed by a culvert located upstream at the end of Wenger Terrace, next to Highway 1. At the culvert the collection of sediment often creates a brown-beige foam, which Leachman describes as a “toxic bubble-bath.”
“If this is how we're treating our ‘jewel’, people need to make a stand,” he said.
In response to the concerns, the City of Langford retained the services of Corvidae Environmental Consulting in November 2023 to investigate the sediment.
According to the report, the accumulated sediment is a potential by-product of rock and mineral stripping in an upland area under development, which has recently undergone activities involving drilling, blasting, rock crushing and excavating.
While the environmental consultants say no action is required to remove the sediment, their report suggests detention ponds in the nearby development area could be built to "avoid future increases in dissolved metals concentrations in the watercourse."
Additional testing and reporting is still underway, confirmed a spokesperson for the City of Langford in an emailed statement to the Goldstream Gazette.
But for Leachman, time is running out, and he wants the city to take action now.
"We gotta fix it now, it's the lake, it only has one life,” he said.
5 – Sink or swim: Langford faces $35M price tag to save failing aquatics centre (Nov. 5, 2024)
The City of Langford announced in November it was considering the potential purchase of the Westhills YW/YMCA Langford Aquatic Centre building and its parking lot, for the price of $35 million.
Consultants hired by the city told councillors purchasing the building could save $10.2 million over the next 17 years, the remainder of the YW/YMCA’s service agreement, by eliminating annual subsidies paid by the council helping keep the business afloat.
The offer of purchase by owners of the building, Westhills, was made as the YW/YMCA is expected to be unable to cover an estimated $14.8 million for "lifecycle costs" over the next 17 years.
As the YW/YMCA’s "financial guarantor”, the city would be liable for the $14.8 million, if the organization fails to pay.
The news received a mixed reaction from local residents.
“I don't think as a taxpayer of Langford, we should have to be paying for all of it,” said Wendy Hobbs, who explained she had previously suggested the city partner with West Shore Parks and Recreation to run the centre. “To me, that's the most fiscally responsible thing.”
“There are some people that will never use that facility in their life, they're gonna be paying for it.”
Despite multiple calls for a referendum on the decision in the weeks that followed, councillors voted unanimously on Dec. 16 to purchase the building and its parking lot.
Langford will take possession of the building and parking lot on April 1, 2025, subject to a due diligence period.
6 – West Shore RCMP raid Langford motorcycle club in drug trafficking probe (Jan. 31, 2024)
Police executed several search warrants in January in a multi-jurisdictional drug trafficking investigation, including a high-profile clubhouse in Langford.
The raids were part of a multi-jurisdictional month-long investigation led by the West Shore RCMP Drugs and Organized Crime Unit with assistance from CFSEU-BC and local RCMP said media relations officer Cpl. Nancy Saggar.
One search warrant was executed at the Savages clubhouse, previously identified by police as affiliated with the Hells Angels.
“The fence was taken down before the emergency response team gained entry to this location. And our officers have since secured the scene,” Saggar said.
The raid was connected with suspected drug trafficking around the West Shore and Greater Victoria, but because of the ongoing investigation, Saggar would not provide more details.
The RCMP had worked with the neighbouring condominium complex and Ruth King Elementary to keep the surrounding neighbourhood safe and secure before conducting the raid.
The investigation and subsequent raids by RCMP focused on a large-scale drug operation, said Saggar.
“We are not looking at amounts for personal use. We are looking at large-scale amounts for selling and operating a business.”
7– Bittersweet symphony: Langford homeowners left in shadow of developments (Oct. 24, 2024)
“It’s called ‘Symphony’, and we hope to create some harmony in the neighbourhood with our project,” said Alan Lowe, the architect behind plans to construct a new six-storey apartment building in Langford. But unfortunately for the team behind the proposed project, ‘Symphony' hit a bum note with the owners of a neighbouring property.
With one six-storey building already built next to their duplex property on Bray Avenue, the Symphony building, offering 77 residential units, will leave neighbours Keegan MacKinnon and Stan Schinners and their families, sandwiched in the middle.
At a October council meeting, MacKinnon, who bought the property in May 2020 with his wife, told members of the Sustainable Development Advisory Committee, he felt “forgotten” by the city and “blindsided” by the speed of construction on the street.
The project has been given the initial thumbs up by the City of Langford, and will now move to its first three readings, despite some councillors citing ‘strong concerns’ about the ‘orphaned’ lot stuck in the middle, including Coun. Kimberley Guiry, chair of the city’s Sustainable Development Advisory Committee.
But at a meeting later in October, Guiry appeared to have a change of heart.
“ … I’ve come to this place after reviewing my thoughts after the meeting that I'm ready to support the project,” said Guiry.
“I feel for the building in the middle,” said Mayor Scott Goodmanson, who also acknowledged the development reflects the high-density housing required by the province.
“ … but the problem is we don't have anything specifically in our bylaws to avoid that,” he continued. “So this is just one of those unfortunate circumstances. I really do feel for the homeowners.”
Councillors unanimously voted in favour of receiving the application.
“I was kind of expecting it,” said MacKinnon. “Not a single person was opposed. When you make it sound like you're trying to appeal to the emotions of the owners and then you go and have a unanimous ‘yes’ vote, are you really trying to listen to the public?”
