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The death of a skatepark

Skateboard park, homes, dreams destroyed by locals Skateboarders have often had to fight for their right to skate, routinely getting escorted off properties by security guards and police. Through it all the skaters stuck it out.

Skateboard park, homes, dreams destroyed by locals

Skateboarders have often had to fight for their right to skate, routinely getting escorted off properties by security guards and police.

Through it all the skaters stuck it out. They learned their rights, lobbied municipal governments, and generally kept the pressure on until many cities and towns finally built designated skateboard parks.

But nothing could have braced skater Bubba Shaw for what has turned into the fight of all fights.

Returning to his home in Bralorne on June 26 from his summer construction job on Cortes Island, Shaw discovered that Castle Greyskull, the skatepark he had built in the community recreation centre, was completely destroyed.

"They went crazy, and just wrecked everything," said Shaw. His wooden ramps and obstacles, which he estimated would cost up to $10,000 to fix with parts and labour, had been chainsawed into little pieces and dumped behind the local recreation centre.

His home was also ransacked and he said $2,000 worth of tools were stolen from the centre.

Another small home, which was built by Pat Keller – the organizer of the three-day Kalediescope Music Festival in Bralorne – had a chain thrown around its footings and was pulled over the edge of a small cliff, with all his belongings in it. That happened about three weeks earlier, but Keller did not find out until Shaw came back to town.

The Lillooet RCMP were called the moment Shaw saw the damage. The police came to investigate the incident two days later and told Shaw there was nothing that could be done.

"The RCMP officers actually laughed," said Shaw. "The minute I got into town and saw what they had done, I called (the police) and said, ‘there’s $15,000 in wood lying around in pieces, as well as a year of my labour, and if you don’t get there soon, I was going to lose it.’

"It still took them two days."

Shaw did not have any insurance.

He believes he and Keller were unpopular among some of the older members of the small community of about 50 full-time resident. But most, he said, were supportive of their efforts to bring people to town.

Now Shaw is attempting to find out if any members of the Bralorne Bridge River Community Association approved the destruction of his skatepark, as some locals have claimed.

Although his lease to the centre may not have been approved, the ramps were still his property.

"Under the Landlord Tenant Act, the landlord can’t take a chainsaw to someone’s couch, even if you evict them," said Shaw.

" It’s still their personal property. I’d like for someone to read this and say, ‘Hey, those guys broke the law.’

" I don’t think I’ll get anything out of it, but I don’t want them to get away with it either."

The Bralorne locals believed to oppose the skatepark did not return the Pique’s calls or refused to comment on the issue.

Unlike a lot of skateboarders, Shaw is not above doing a lot of paperwork. He kept a detailed journal of his history in Bralorne and the growth of Castle Greyskull.

He kept records of when ramps were acquired, the events he hosted, his transactions with the Canadian Community Futures program, the regular run-ins he had with locals, and the various threats, thefts and intimidation he claims he experienced in getting the skatepark off the ground.

He also documented his efforts to reach members of the community, and the support he received. He said about 70 per cent of the town was on his side, although many of the locals, he claims, were too intimidated by the small minority that opposed the skatepark to speak out in his defence.

Just three weeks before the alleged attack the skatepark and Bralorne had been featured in the skate magazine Concrete Powder.

Shaw had planned to hold a youth skateboard camp for August, which he has had to cancel.

But he hopes to turn something negative into something positive. He is out drumming up support and plans to build a skatepark somewhere else picking up where he left off.

He knows the idea is a good one.

"The kid’s camp had 35 kids signed up for August, and I had just gotten a mailing out list of 2,000, so it’s just ridiculous to think that this wouldn’t have gone well," said Shaw.

There is only one summer skateboard camp in B.C. and it has a long waiting list because the returning kids take precedence.

"Eventually I’d like to have a kids skateboard camp off the ground, and I’ll obviously have to put together a business plan and go to the bank," he said.

"I won’t go to (Bralorne) again. Once burned twice shy. I couldn’t deal with that again."

"It wasn’t so much that they destroyed my park and broke into my house, but they had to wave it my face as well because there was nothing I could do."

To understand how all of this came about, you have to know a little something of Bralorne’s history. At the early 1900’s, when the gold mine was active, the town had a population of thousands.

The area still employed loggers and miners until the early 1990’s, when the population of the town dropped from around 100 people to less than 40. There is no elected town council, no local police force, and the society that had administered the town’s assets in the past, including the recreation centre, was not active, with regular public meetings, when Shaw moved to Bralorne in May of 2001.

Like others, he came to the town for the low real estate prices, the snowmobiling and the isolation.

The Bralorne Community Recreation Centre was closed at the time, and he said it hadn’t been used for about ten years.

In early 2002, Shaw secured a lease to operate the gymnasium for one year from the Bralorne Bridge River Community Association. He also collected a list of signatures from members of the community to support the lease.

Shaw moved the first ramp into the centre on Aug. 1, 2002, and cleaned out the gym and weight room so they could be used by other members of the community. His goal was to get the centre up and running again for all activities, in addition to the skatepark.

After some tools were allegedly stolen from the hall on the first day the centre was opened, Shaw started to keep the place locked up.

The first vandalism occurred two weeks later, claimed Shaw, when he found an axe buried in one of his ramps. He reported that to the Lillooet RCMP and began to collect the support signatures from members of the community.

A week later he said he received his first death threat.

The skatepark’s opponents in Bralorne contacted the local MLA’s and Community Futures, which had given Shaw a loan for his park, and attempted to have his funding cut off. They were unsuccessful.

Shaw then headed off the first "ramp destruction party" allegedly organized by four men who were opposed to the skatepark by offering two free beers to anyone who would attend a town meeting. He succeeded in getting the community’s support once again.

The alleged harassment continued into the fall, with opponents going as far as to call B.C. Hydro to turn the power off, claimed Shaw.

He was paying for the lease at this point and all the bills to operate the centre, and he convinced B.C. Hydro that the community wanted to keep the place open.

The official opening party for the skatepark and the recreation centre took place on Oct. 5, with more than 100 visitors.

Four days later someone took the power meter from the community hall, said Shaw, which was dangerous as the power was still on. It was replaced by B.C. Hydro later that day.

In November, Shaw began to host kids from the nearby town of Gold Bridge as part of their phys-ed program. They would skateboard, and play games like floor hockey and basketball.

"It’s such a spread out community (in and around Bralorne) that there was really nothing for these kids to do, they didn’t have a gym or anything," said Shaw. "Some of them have never had a gym class in their lives."

Shaw’s attempts to make the park legitimate fell flat, with unelected locals replacing the elected members of the Bralorne Bridge River Community Association. Shaw tried to find out how to become a member of the board, since the group refused to hold an annual general meeting, but was rebuffed.

He held another skateboard jam on May 24 of this year that was well attended, and although the threat that the skatepark would be dismantled was still being thrown around, Shaw felt it was okay to take work on Cortes Island for the summer. He returned to town a month later to find his work destroyed.

If he knew then what he knows now said Shaw he never would have attempted something like this in Bralorne, even though he still feels the area has huge potential. Before anything like this could be tried again a few of the hardcore locals who are opposed to tourism and change will have to have moved on.

"Despite all the bulls– that’s happened, I did meet some really good people and had some really good times," said Shaw.

" I had fun with all the kids and hope they had a good experience."

"I’m going to keep trying with the camps, and have some other projects going, so I’m just trying not to be too bitter about everything that happened.

"As bad as I feel for myself, I feel worse for the kids up there. They had nothing before (Castle Greyskull), and now they’ve really got nothing."