A crowd of about 100 was growing steadily when a sudden snow squall blew through downtown Creston at 11 am Friday morning.
With toddlers to people in their 80s lining Canyon Street at 16th Avenue, in front of the former school board office that is the proposed new home for HomeLinks and Wildflower programs, anger was a common theme.
A number of protesters expressed their frustration with comments by School District No 8 (Kootenay Lake) chair Lenora Trenamen on CBC Radio earlier in the morning.
Trenamen claimed the District will save $1 million annually by closing the CEC, which no one who spoke to the Advance thought was possible. Several people said they felt insulted by Trenamen’s comments that the resistance to CEC closing is the result of not wanting to see a change to the status quo.
“I think the School District is trying to crowd Creston schools because the Ministry of Education won’t fund new schools if a district’s existing facilities aren’t 90 percent full,” said Doug Kunzelman, president of the Creston Valley School Teachers’ Association. He added that the District’s top priority for a new school is in Nelson.
“Lenora should be supporting us—she’s from a small community and she knows that Nelson students have more options than anywhere else in the District.”
Volunteers at the rally were inviting participants to sign a petition against the CEC closure, which is due to take effect at the end of June.
Meanwhile, a flurry of closed-door meetings involving Town of Creston and RDCK representatives and other stakeholders continues.
The protest received community support from Save On Foods, Pealow’s Your Independent Grocer, Tim Hortons, Your Dollar Store and the Creston Valley Farmers’ Market in the form of tents, music, snacks, and poster supplies
(This story has been edited to remove the quotes from Herman Koehoorn which he disavows.)