Kingsman Resources operates in Golden, Barriere and Grand Forks, B.C. and tries to support the local communities by hiring local people to carry out our exploration. During the 1950-1980 I spent considerable time in the Polson Montana Flathead Lake region with my family. My father loved the area and built me a Hydro plane and named it Miss Polson as a thank you to the people of Polson for their friendship and hospitality over the years.
During my early years I associated with the kids of Polson every summer and still stay in contact with them some 50 years later. We stayed at the Polson Shoreline Court where my father and his many automotive dealer friends from the small towns of Alberta would fill the motel for a month. My father and his friends had a policy that any kid standing on the dock from the motel or Polson would be taught to water ski and the boats ran from early morning to late afternoon.
When I was about 12 we arrived in Polson to find the town in very bad shape as the plywood mill had shut down. The people of Polson were not going on holidays or anywhere else, they were just trying to put a meal on the table and not lose their houses or businesses. As a kid it was hard to understand why my Polson friends could not go to the movies or out to eat at the local ice cream stand at the end of the main street. The mill closure affected the town for many years and the strain could be seen in our many friends’ parents.
Throughout my travels as a pilot for Pacific Western, Canadian and Air Canada I learned that small towns are the same in all countries, they depend on Mining, Forestry and Manufacturing. If a small town does not have a tourist attraction, tourists do not come and any reduction in one of the three main industries is devastating to the local community.
The main concern of the people I talked to from small towns is where are the good paying jobs coming from if the mining and forestry is shut down as will happen with a park. If these jobs are lost will their kids leave town or will they stay and take minimum wage jobs i.e. hotels and restaurants that parks produce. Hawaii is a good example of what will happen when tourism is the only economic stimulus, where most people have two jobs, just to make ends meet. If the economic times turn down tourism is the first to be hit and as shown in 2008-2009 it does not rebound overnight.
Driving through Keremeos, B.C. from one end of town to the other I counted 57 signs stating parks are not wanted and from conversations with the local people in the areas Kingsman works, the same sentiment seems to exists.
One mine in operation produces the same revenue as the total created by the Olympics and it does it for sometimes 30-50 years, year in and year out.
Ted Drummond COO