British Columbia is renaming the Site C hydro dam after deceased premier John Horgan, a project he didn’t support but allowed it to go ahead as costs ballooned.
Premier David Eby announced the decision in Victoria surrounded by Horgan’s wife and family members.
Eby says it was a complicated decision to rename the dam after Horgan, and if he were alive today he wouldn’t have allowed anything to be renamed after him, joking that Horgan would have used much rougher language than dam.
Construction started on the dam in 2015 under the previous Liberal government, and when Horgan’s NDP took office two years later, he said the project was too far along to stop.
The dam on the Peace River became fully operational last year and cost $16 billion, nearly double the original estimate.
Eby says naming the John Horgan Dam and Generating Station reflects the nuance and the challenging decisions that confronted Horgan in his time, and is emblematic of Horgan’s willingness to consider the best interests of B.C. residents.