Work resumes on Kelowna walkway after year-long delay to identify artifact

It was May 2020 when the City of Kelowna halted work on a long-awaited pathway connecting Strathcona Park, near Kelowna General Hospital, to a beach on Okanagan Lake at the end of Royal Avenue.

The delay was because an artifact was found by workers. That work has restarted.

"It takes awhile to get the approvals and they (senior government) have a consultation process through the First Nations so there’s a time period for that, and there’s the time to do the archeology field work and report back,” Andrew Gibbs, the City’s senior project manager told iNFOnews.ca.

READ MORE: Unknown archeological find shuts down work on a Kelowna lakefront walkway

The artifact was a “lithic fragment.”

Gibbs understands that to be a by-product of making a stone tool but he had no further details, other than to the say the archeologist who investigated determined it was a legitimate artifact.

The pathway was actually going to a berm that was designed to not only protect the lakeshore from erosion but to also lower the risk of flooding of houses in the area.

While the City isn’t yet ready to follow in Kamloops’s footsteps by hiring its own archeologist, it’s got people at city hall thinking.

READ MORE: Why Kamloops is considering hiring a staff archeologist

“The City’s in the process of figuring what what’s the best way forward to reduce any delays and identify (archeological) sites early on,” Gibbs said. “That’s our learning from this.”

There are lots of areas along the lakeshore and creek mouths used by First Nations, Gibbs noted.

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