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Sea to Sky Trail still on-line despite TransCanada setback By Oona Woods With Prime Minister Chretien's recent announcement that the TransCanada Trail is now one of the national millennium projects, there were initially local hopes that the Sea to Sk

Sea to Sky Trail still on-line despite TransCanada setback By Oona Woods With Prime Minister Chretien's recent announcement that the TransCanada Trail is now one of the national millennium projects, there were initially local hopes that the Sea to Sky Trail Society could have become involved. However, the TransCanada trail will be coming into B.C. through the Fraser Valley and will not be near the planned Sea to Sky Trail route. The TransCanada Trail, when completed in June 2000, will be the longest and most varied shared use trail in the world. It will join communities from Victoria to St. John's, Newfoundland, with a second leg reaching north from Alberta to the Arctic Ocean at Tuktoyaktuk. In the end the trail will be nearly 15,000 km in length. Organizers are hoping the trail will be a benefit for future generations and remind them of the history and spirit of co-operation that helped to build the provinces and country. Meanwhile, the Sea to Sky Trail is growing in spurts along the corridors between Vancouver and D’Arcy. The task is monumental as trail society member Gord McKeever points out. "It's a huge project for a volunteer board to deal with. You're basically creating a park that's 150 kilometres long and three meters wide. And there are so many different interest groups involved. You've got private land, Crown land, B.C. Hydro and BC Rail. It's just an enormous project." Sea to Sky Trail Society spokesperson David Roberts says that it would have been helpful to have the millennium project weight behind them. "It's a big job. It would have been nice to have the TransCanada momentum on board. However, it is encouraging that we got a section done just north of here last year. That was in the Shadow Lake area. For that project we joined forces with the muni and B.C. Hydro." Roberts says the municipality is also on board with this year’s plans to blaze a trail in the Train Wreck area of Function Junction. "We are just quietly going about our business in the background," says Roberts. "We just need to get more of a link, develop a closer relationship between the interested parties. We just need to have good communication now with other groups in the corridor that are working in the same direction."