When The City Tried To Evict North Shore Search & Rescue
“There are no mountains in the City”
The City Manager pointed out this obvious fact when the first draft of the plan for the new City Operations centre did not include space for North Shore Search and Rescue. A bit shocking considering the history of NSSR and its importance to the community, but not really surprising considering the way City Hall functions and accountants think (speaking as one myself).
First a little history of NSSR
It was started as a civil defence unit created in the early ‘60s. Dave Brewer joined the unit in 1965 and was the main driver of its conversion to backcountry and wilderness rescue organization. The Cold War threat abated and the North Shore mountains became more attractive to explorers with widely varying skill levels so it was the right way to go.
Dave was joined by his brother Gerry Brewer and Karl Winter, a German-trained mountaineer and the group's first Team Leader. Gerry was a City employee and later a highly regarded City Manager. His connections and the fact the City works yard was closest to the geographic centre of the North Shore made it a convenient place to store the growing pile of specialized equipment and later become a full fledged headquarters for training and dispatching as well.
In the early days of North Vancouver’s two local governments, especially when Gerry Brewer was City Manager, there was a practical “just get it done” approach to dealing with North Vancouver-wide problems. He figured residents should not have to suffer just because politicians could not fix a mess left by early developers.
That changed when Ken Tollstam became City Manager, or Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), a title he preferred. Being an accountant, not sharing Gerry’s broader background and interest in government or in the community, it was all about the numbers.
While NSSR had gradually grown its presence in the old operations facility, continuing to host the organization would require significant capital investment and, as he pointed out, “there are no mountains in the City”.
I was on City Council at the time. I was not an accountant yet but I admit that I had some sympathy for the CAO’s point of view. There were no votes coming up right away but I remembe the Mayor saying I was going to get a call from Tim Jones, the NSSR Team Leader at the time whom I had not met.
Tim called the next day and invited me to come down to the existing NSSR headquarters at the old works yard that evening, after I finished work at the bank where I worked, and he finished his regular shift with the BC Ambulance Service. He explained the history of the NSSR and showed me how the organization had acquired all the gear and mobile equipment and how they had made the jury-rigged the space in the aging City facility work for the past 30 years.
Before parting company that evening, he asked me to meet him the next evening up near Cleveland Dam, at a location–now called the Arnold Wallner SAR base–that NSSR uses to load and unload helicopters and dispatch teams to the Grouse Grind which was a source of frequent call outs. NSSR did an end of day sweep of the Grind in those days, I’m not sure if they still do.
So I met him again the next evening. I was really enjoying this attention from the legendary NSSR Team Leader. Every explanation for how the team did its work seemed to have a story. Some of them are captured in a wonderful video library that is tucked away in a corner of NSSR’s website.
Tim never said a word about the City’s plans for the new works yard. What little I knew of him was that he could be very blunt, and people referred to interactions with Tim a ‘shredding’.
I didn’t experience anything even close to that. At the end of our second meeting he suggested another meeting on Seymour Mountain at a location I knew very well from ehnn worked for the BC Parks Branch for two summers and winters when I was in university.
“I get it, Tim” I said. “You’re not going to tell me what to do about the City’s budget, but you are going to make sure I know enough to do the right thing.” The City’s budget for the new works yard was increased to accommodate a new headquarters of NSSR. There are still no mountains in the City.
North Vancouver’s municipal administrative and accounting silos have lots of victims that cannot advocate for themselves as well as NSSR..
My commitment to public safety is straightforward:
- Unconditional Support for North Shore Rescue: Ensure NSR has long-term, secure access to operational facilities and municipal logistics support within North Vancouver.
- First Responder Operational Integration: Break down barriers between City and District emergency services, optimizing dispatch, response times, and shared resources.
- Infrastructure for Safety: Ensure all future density and street design choices directly accommodate fast, unobstructed emergency vehicle access.
Safety is not a local political bargaining chip. It's time for a Council that puts public protection first.