Chilliwack is generally a pastoral community. West of the city, the multi-coloured Tulip Festival brings hundreds of people to the event.
We in Chilliwack could use something similar, or more dramatic, for all seasons throughout the year.
Thanks to commercial enterprises and local First Nations, Chilliwack has incubated a wide-ranging attraction-distraction. Vedder Road north of Promontory is an array of billboards. This display on both sides of the road could be the pattern for the future City of Chilliwack.
City of Billboards.
Chilliwack could encourage everyone to participate. Not just on reserve lands, but everywhere. Just imagine a huge farmer’s field, acres and acres of billboards. Gorgeous, lighted billboards blocking out the mundane corn fields and mountains.
Vedder Road, from Promontory to Cultus Lake, one continuous view of billboards, making Chilliwack the billboard capital of Canada. Tourists flocking here to take their selfie of our unique visual explosion of billboard after billboard, one after another, tightly spaced, blocking out the boredom of greenery.
Residential billboards can take their example from the home at the corner of Chilliwack River Road and Promontory. This residence knows how to do the billboard thing.
What a display!
Drivers could be even more distracted if the boards had flashing lights. Great background for a selfie.
No corn mazes in Chilliwack. Why not a vast billboard maze? Tourists would have something to photograph and show their envious friends. A new family outing, necks craned to read every word of advertising. Children learning early the benefits of commercial vending. A memory exercise for all participants. Recall 20 billboards and receive a free billboard for your own property.
I am sure the First Nations people, who we must consult, would approve of a vast array of policies, permitting billboards to enhance Mother Earth.
In this new age, people drive, text, smoke pot and read billboards all at the same time.
How talented is that?
A B.C. billionaire would probably go the extra mile to see that Chilliwack becomes the billboard capital of Canada. A tourist destination for hundreds of billboard enthusiasts.
One can’t find such displays in Point Grey or West Vancouver.
Tourists, tired of the green scene, fields and mountains, would flock to Chilliwack. Drive along Vedder Road to Cultus Lake to see the city of billboards, well on its way.
Royce Condie