Catching up on the Boom story

Oh the Perils of using ink and typeface in the era of instantaneous bytes of information. With a three day weekend and four day lag in the news cycle to deal with, the Daily News finally caught up to the Rupert is going to boom story from Saturday’s edition of the National Post.

With the story reported here, near and far in the digital world, from the Post’s own website to the folks at hackingthemainframe it made a quick round of the city, fodder for talk at Tim Horton’s, the star of the Top ten survey this weekend.

The Daily chose to cover the story from an angle of getting a quote or two from the locals, who offered up their thoughts on why we may be on the cusp of a boom.

Declaring that Rupert was named Canada’s next boom town, the Daily proclaimed that Rupert was named number one, which is its numerical order on the list, but not an indication that the other nine are schleppers in the boomtown sweeps. While it’s nice to be in the top ten, Rupert wasn’t exactly pegged as number the one spot to dump your cash and wait for the profits to roll in.

A careful reading of the top ten list, would show that the towns selected as about to boom, went from west to east, thus we were number one but only by way of geographical listing. Not trying to be a nay sayer here about any bounty of riches soon to come our way, just trying to be factual by pointing out the way the folks at the Post compiled their list.

For the record here’s the Daily News’ version of the Boom she be a comin’.

RUPERT NAMED CANADA’S NEXT ‘BOOM TOWN’
The Daily News
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Page One

Out of all the towns across Canada, Prince Rupert was named number one on a list of top10 future boom towns in the National Post on Saturday.

The list was put together by the Financial Post’s Emily Mathieu and intended to give entrepreneurs a heads up on communities where they can get in on the ground floor.

“To me, it’s just one more affirmation of what we have all been talking about and working on for a number of years,” said Prince Rupert Mayor Herb Pond.

“For us to become the port community we are talking about, we are going to see a significant amount of growth.”

The list pointed to the Fairview Container Terminal as one of the economic drivers, with the Prince Rupert Port Authority moving to overtake the Port of Vancouver by 2010 through the construction of two container terminals.

“Everything that we do at the port authority has a big and very profound impact on the community,” said its president, Don Krusel in the Post.

Terminal One will have room for 250 jobs on site. Phase Two of the terminal, scheduled for completion by 2010, will add an additional 600 to 700 jobs. Canadian National Railway Co. will also be building a new line to transport goods from the new terminals, which will add $193 million to the economy. There is also the Prince Rupert cruise ship terminal, which brought a total of $10 million into the local economy last year.

Listed second on the list of future boom towns was Prince George, with the mountain pine beetle and mining driving that future economy. The government has given locals the go ahead to cut down and sell the blue wood before it rots. Mining, specifically copper, gold and coal, as well as technology companies dedicating their services to the mining and resource sector, are also bringing people to the area.