Tracks and Treads - Finning Canada

ARock
and a
Wet
Place
Story by Jim Stirling
photography by john Mcdougall
In the dusty confines of a busy
Okanagan Lake highway project,
a B.C. construction company
is making it work
Imagine for a moment you’re a hawk,
wings motionless as you ride the thermals.
Beneath you winds a busy two-lane ribbon
of highway, dotted with cars, RVs and
trucks, some of them towing speedboats.
Framing the highway on one side is a wall of rock.
On the other, the land drops abruptly to the sparkling
waters of Okanagan Lake below.
The raptor’s eye view of this section of Okanagan
Valley shows some of the physical challenges facing
a construction project underway on Highway
97, north of Summerland in the scenic valley of
southern British Columbia.
Arthon Contractors Inc., based in the Okanagan
Mission area of Kelowna, has a $38.5-million,
two-year contract from the provincial Ministry of
Transportation and Highways to twin an approximately
seven-kilometre section of the highway. It’s
a major construction job, one that’s stuck between
a rock and a wet place.
www.finning.ca Fall 2008 • tracks & treads 15