Giant Billboards in Kitsilano

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This month’s issue of BC Business Magazine provides a little background on the Board Politics around the Squamish Nation’s plans to erect 13 massive billboards on reserve land adjacent to Vancouver’s busiest bridges. I’ve covered this topic a couple times (here and here) in the past year and it always elicits comments, so here we go again.


Thanks to: www.CustomSignGenerator.com

BC Business writer Daniel Wood makes it very clear that the proposed outdoor signs are a stalking horse meant to provoke authorities into expediting the Squamish Nation’s other, less contentious development plans. It turns out they’ve been waiting for approvals on a proposed $100 million Seymour Creek Mall in North Vancouver and a long-discussed Ambleside residential/commercial complex adjacent to Park Royal in West Vancouver.

I really can’t imagine the Squamish Nation going through with the Billboard threat considering the criticism they’ll most definitely receive for ignoring their own calls for environmental sensitivity.

Kudos to Jim Pattison for taking the highroad and keeping Pattison Outdoor Advertising out of the bidding on this project. I’m really not sure why All Vision Canada would want this piece of business in the first place. With the Citizens for Responsible Outdoor Advertising (CROA) promising a national boycott of one of the billboard advertisers, potential advertisers may shy away. Especially with the rumor floating around that people in Kitsilano have apparently began calculating the engineering logistics of catapults capable of launching paint filled condoms or cantaloupes toward the Burrard Street Bridge signs. Come on, who would do that?

Last modified: March 3, 2007

5 Responses to " Giant Billboards in Kitsilano "

  1. Er…me and you?

  2. Calgary Kits Fan says:

    We’ve got the same problem in Calgary. Giant billboards on Glenmore Trail. This used to be the outskirts of the city cnetre, but not anymore. The City should plant trees along the route and turn the tap off this lucrative but unsightly money grab.

  3. James says:

    I bet the advertisers will be relatively boycott-proof.. man-line and McDs and the like..

    Got to hand it to the native bands though, they have adapted the white man’s ways to their own ends like a champ!

  4. Darcy McGee says:

    > I really can\’t imagine the Squamish Nation going through with
    > the Billboard threat considering the criticism they\’ll most
    > definitely receive for ignoring their own calls for environmental
    > sensitivity.

    Read the Globe and Mail from Saturday. Native Canadians have been fairly consistently hypocritical on matters like this: that people fall for the “caring for the earth” argument continues to amaze me. Gullible. Gullible.

    it all comes down to the basic reality of the modern economy: it’s the money, honey!

    If they could charge for admission to the river to view the Brackendale Eagles they would.

    That Seymour mall is going to be an eyesore, meanwhile those billboards will move product.

  5. Jane says:

    Careful who you give Kudos to.

    I HEARD that Pattison HAD been involved with the sourcing/erecting of these billboards but had had difficulties dealing with the Chinese manufacturer. Pattison then sold the division of their company that was working on these billboards to All Vision Canada. It wasn’t that they took the “highroad” but rather just didn’t care to deal with the implementation issues they were facing.