Way back in the design stage, long, long ago, someone had made the statement that when the project was completed, the Creston and District Community Complex would be the hub of the community. That can mean a lot of things — there are many organizations and groups in the community that form their own “hubs”, whether it is art or music or public speaking, but I know for sure that we are the hub of the community as far as BC Transit is concerned. It kind of reminded me of Miracle on 34th Street. where the U.S. post office accepted mail for Santa Claus, which subsequently made him genuine. The community complex is now the start and end of all the bus routes and where you make the connections.
In my mind, this is a good thing — if you don’t want to sit outside on the bus bench (soon to come), you can come inside and take a wander around the building or sit in the lobby and relax in warm, quiet comfort. Looking down the road, as we further develop food and beverage services, maybe grab a cup of joe or a muffin and watch the action in the pool or on the ice before your bus comes. What the heck — bring your trunks and take a tub or a steam before you grab your groceries. As far as access — nice wide lanes for the bus to come in and circle around, as well as a defined, well lit drop off point.
On a technological note, we were just talking about the change in communication in a very short time period. Some of us started out writing letters (Dear Grandma: I am fine. How are you?), while conversely, it is not uncommon for some of today’s youth to have trouble reading handwriting. From that, we graduated to telephone calls — and with the cost of long distance back then, it was a big deal to call Grandma on special occasions. Even when we moved here 16 or 17 years ago, we initially had a party line but had the option to pay more for a single line. It’s still fun once in a while to put an old rotary dial phone out for the courtesy phone and watch the younger generation stare at it uncomprehendingly or poke their fingers in the holes wondering what to do.
With the advent of the interweb, we now had email, which is still the weapon of choice for most communications, as well as Skype, which allows you to do a video call over the Net and see what colour your kid’s hair is, as well as any new piercings they may have acquired. For personal contact, however, we have found our kids (and many adults that have way better thumb/eye coordination than I) simply text all the time to speed the process up even more. It will be interesting to see where we end up. I just heard that the fastest growing segment on Facebook is women 55 and older.
Local communications at the centre will have a new look over then next month or so as we finally got the software installed for the television displays that you see in the main lobby and by the fireplace. (And you thought we just hadn’t paid our cable bill.) This will be a closed circuit display, which will eventually have various pictures or videos from around the centre, as well as facility schedules, time, weather, bus schedules, news — the sky is the limit once we start the process and it should be entertaining and informative for our patrons.
Neil Ostafichuk is the recreation supervisor at the Creston and District Community Complex.