A lot of opportunity

With the pending removal of the Four Seasons Pool, the city of Prince George has the chance to add to its civic identity.

Note: I wrote this in January 2019 for my column in Thimbleberry Magazine. With the recent call from the PGSO for a permanent performance space downtown, I am republishing it here.

In 2017, voters in Prince George gave city council the green light to move forward with plans to decommission the Four Seasons Leisure Pool downtown and replace it with a new one across the street. When that happens, the city will be left with another question that, so far, has gone unanswered: what happens to the existing pool site, a large, publicly-owned space in a downtown that after several decades of decline seems to once again be on the upswing?

This question becomes more interesting when you consider the pool sits in a cluster of public projects constructed over the course of five decades, each reflecting a combination of the city’s ambitions and self-image.

First, the pool: it was the result of a private fundraising campaign held in 1969 which required citizens and businesses to come up with roughly half of the $780,000 price tag for what was considered a luxury item of limited use. By June 1970, the pool was open and the public was lining up two hours at a time to get in, despite an outdoor pool being readily available in the summer months. Soon there were complaints of overcrowding, and swimming lessons were a hot commodity for those wanting to take advantage of what the Prince George Citizen called “a jewel” whose opening meant “Prince George must out-status… the majority of other cities in the province.”

The Canada Games Plaza

As the pool was being approved, however, another proposal was being shelved: a mini-plaza in the same area, containing benches, shrubs, a clock tower and other amenities aimed at creating an outdoor space downtown. “Local bands could be encouraged to give performances… in the winter it would be a delightful area to have public skating,” wrote an excited councillor Lorne McCuish of the idea before it was voted down due to costs.

The groundwork to create this plaza came in 1981, with the opening of the multi-storey public library. Previously, the city’s “skills and resource centre” was housed in a building on Brunswick Street, but by the 1970s the need for a larger space had become clear. “The library will have to expand or grow or it will stagnate,” chief librarian (and future mayor) John Backhouse told the Citizen in 1977.

That same year, a referendum was held over whether voters preferred to expand the current location or take the costlier step of paying for a new building on the site of what was then being called the Cultural-Convention Centre Masterplan. Voters went with the masterplan and the current library came into being with “the cost per person… less than a package of cigarettes a month,” to borrow the words from an advertisement announcing its opening. Again, the city had decided it was the sort of place to build ambitious public facilities, not simply tape up existing ones.

The next step forward was the opening of the Prince George Civic and Conference Centre in 1994. The “conference” portion of the name is new, added in 2016 to better market the building to event organizers, but the goal has been the same since day one: to turn Prince George into a city that can host large-scale conferences, trade shows and other indoor events. Upon its opening, a multi-page supplement was sent out to subscribers of the Citizen touting the centre’s design, size, and potential. The front page of this supplement was an illustration of fireworks going off while two large spotlights illuminate the clocktower against the downtown skyline with the words, “The Time Has Come”. The message here was much the same as when the pool opened two decades prior: this is no longer a little northern town, this is a City worthy of respect.

That message was expanded on further in 2000 when the Two Rivers Art Gallery opened opposite the centre, acting as a repository of regional art while bringing in exhibits from painters, sculptors and more from across the country, a reflection of the city’s growing cultural ambitions. However, I’d argue McCuish’s vision was most fully realized in 2014 as Prince George prepared to host the 2015 Canada Winter Games.

Until then, the plaza was a largely unornamented cement lot: fine for organized events but not exactly the sort of place where one might go to sit and think on a summer day. But with hundreds of visitors coming to town, change came in the form of both style and function. Scattered seating was added, as were gardens and lights, creating a more welcoming environment day and night. The goal was to present Prince George as a Host City, one which can welcome hundreds of visitors and entertain them besides, which it did night after night during the tournament with free musical acts from across the country. It then repeated the trick in 2017 with a series of summer concerts, bringing in food trucks and presenting a vision for what the area could be: vibrant, welcoming and accessible to people from all walks of life.

The stylistic changes were no less important. Previously blank concrete columns were decorated with stories and archival photos from the city’s history, while others received artwork designed by fellow Thimbleberry contributor Jennifer Annaïs Pighin depicting the clans of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation. Elsewhere, Dakelh words run along the ground alongside French and English, and at the plaza’s centre sits a work titled The Legacy Prayer Drum which, along with a maple leaf representing Canada, incorporates several aspects of Lheidli symbology.

Again, this is a new version of how the city would present itself to residents and visitors alike. It clearly announces the Lheidli T’enneh existed on this land prior to European settlement which, when you think about it, is something of a revolutionary act considering how long it’s been denied. Whether this symbolic step has come with the tangible change needed to earn this presentation is open to debate, but that’s another column altogether.

For now, let’s go back to the site of the Four Seasons Pool. In the coming years, its possible replacements will likely be the subject of debate, just as every previous addition to this area has been. And in the lead up to that discussion, I’d encourage you to head over to this plaza, take a look around and ask: what should this city become next?