Demolition of unsanctioned bike park in South Cariboo causes community upset

Corrie Benard's teenage sons spent almost every day after school flying off jumps at a local bike park in their small B.C.  community until last week, when they were gutted to discover the jumps were gone.

"There is not much for our kids to do in this town and that was an outlet for a lot of the teens," said Benard. "What are they supposed to do now?"

Benard and her boys live in 100 Mile House, a district municipality with fewer than 2,000 residents in the Southern Cariboo region of B.C. 

And the disappearance of the park was not the work of weather or vandals, but the district itself.

Known as the Slope Line Bike Park, it was built several years ago on municipal land by local riders and featured multiple jumps and trails.

Despite not being a sanctioned district project, local leadership agreed the rogue park could remain as long as it didn't get any bigger and the user group that built it secured liability insurance.

According to the district's current mayor, those conditions were not being met.

"We knew it would be a big point of contention and it was a very large decision and that's why we tried to work with the group literally from 2018 on to last week where we finally had the contractors go in," Mayor Maureen Pinkney said speaking on CBC's Daybreak Kamloops.

"We did try to get the group multiple times to the table and they would never even respond to us," the mayor added.

She said taxpayers should not be on the financial hook if someone gets hurt at the park, and that while it is sad to lose a recreational facility enjoyed by youth, there is already a "really, really good" park just minutes away in 99 Mile House.

Not only was there no insurance for the 100 Mile House park, Pinkney said local firefighters had to respond to several fires at the site and the jumps continued to get bigger.

Before the decision was made to raze Slope Line, the district had the jumps assessed for safety.

"We hauled in a specialist to look at them and see what state the jumps were in and if they could stay, if they were safe enough, and basically he said absolutely not." 

At that point, they had no option but to remove them, Pinkney said.

"We work on behalf of all the taxpayers, not just a few." 

Mitchell Wilden, one of the original park builders and users, said it was a shame to see it disappear and the district is missing out on a revenue opportunity.

He said there were two bike jam competitions held there every year that attracted people to the small community. 

"It just doesn't make sense," said Wilden. "It would have been nice to have a discussion about it before so it wasn't just a bomb dropped on us — you know we go up there and it's just flattened."

The space also held a lot of nostalgia for Wilden, who started building jumps and riding them there a decade ago when he was just 13 years old. 

"Everyday after school or throughout the summer, that's where I was. I didn't spend any time anywhere else. But, at this point, it is what it is, nothing we can do, they didn't give us a fighting chance," he said.

But Benard says she is not going down without a fight, whether that means going to council meetings or circulating a petition.

"Maybe we need to come to a better solution for these kids rather than just taking it away," she said.

"Having it taken away is showing that there is nothing for them."