Eight years of operation and the impending retirement of one of the movers and shakers of the Elk Falls Suspension Bridge project prompted a small get together at the popular Campbell River attraction recently.
While disbelief was expressed that the iconic bridge was already eight years old – it opened in May 2015 – there was agreement that it came about because everybody involved did what had to be done to make the project a reality. And one person in particular, BC Parks’ area supervisor Brent Blackmun, was being recognized for the crucial role he played in bringing the bridge from a concept drawing to a popular attraction that has drawn 1.4 million visitors since opening.
Rotarian Lorrie Bewza, who was one of the originators of the idea to build the bridge, and BC Hydro’s Stephen Watson, who represented the power utility that funded and facilitated a lot of the project, cited Blackmun’s key role in making it happen.
Watson said BC Hydro and BC Parks have had many occasions to interact over the years because the John Hart hydroelectric facility is located beside Elk Falls Provincial Park. With the Canyon View Trail operations, water release for flood risk management and the $1 billion John Hart Generating Station replacement project, BC Hydro worked closely with BC Parks and particularly Blackmun.
“You know, he’s a good person, he’s trying to find solutions. He’s asking hard questions. He’s protecting the park. And yet, the biggest thing is collaboration,” Watson said. “He’s open to discussion and finding good solutions for the park or BC Hydro and making our system safe and reliable.”
The benefit out of that relationship is the “amazing community asset” that is the Elk Falls Suspension Bridge. Watson said he just wanted to mark Blackmun’s retirement, which conveniently coincides with the bridge’s eighth anniversary, and “thank him for just going that extra mile all these years to have a really nice benefit for the community.”
Projects like the bridge involve many people in all of the organizations involved, Watson said, “but as a point person, he was always great to work with.”
Bewza said he never tires of visiting the bridge and seeing what was accomplished. He said he learned a lot during the process, a time he termed “a very interesting period.”
“I learned an awful lot, especially from Brent, from Stephen, on all the nuances, all the little details that have to be considered – the impact on the environment and the people, the stakeholders,” he said. “Working with Brent and Stephen, it was a joy because there was three people that wanted to make this happen. And any problems you ran into, we figured out a solution.”
Blackmun said the bridge has been a “career project” that seems like it started a long time ago. The construction happens fast, he said, but “all the preparation takes forever.”
These types of projects don’t happen without community effort, the partnership between groups like Rotary which has been active in the park for decades, plus the support, financial and otherwise, from BC Hydro. BC Parks and BC Hydro’s interface in Elk Falls Park has been “so intimate,” Blackmun said.
He added that it’s easy to focus on the suspension bridge but there are so many other benefits that are connected to that project that benefit the park in other ways. A new and better parking lot to access the falls is an offshoot of the bridge. That has taken the pressure off the grove of old growth in the park where the main parking lot used to be. The bridge project also allowed for the augmentation of salmon in the river by providing a place where a spawning gravel delivery system could be put in.
“So, there’s a lot more to the project than meets the eye, in terms of the public recreation,” Blackmun said.
Watson acknowledged that the suspension bridge is a unique project both in the actual bridge – it’s the only suspension bridge within a BC Park – but also the community collaboration that brought it about and that was embodied by the legacy of the work done by Blackmun.
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