Walter Bobicki Interview – Negotiations

Walter Bobicki, whose family was displaced from their land four miles south of Revelstoke, discusses the negotiation process with BC Hydro.

Title Screen: Circular logo on a black backdrop. Logo is an image of four waves turning into wheat on the left end. The title “Stories Beneath the Surface” is circled around the image in capital letters.

Interview with Walter Bobicki: Walter Bobicki is a white man with grey hair and a black collared, short sleeve shirt. He is sitting in the Stories Beneath the Surface exhibit room in front of the kitchen set. There is cherry wallpaper behind him.

Revelstoke Museum and Archives logo in the bottom right hand corner.

Transcript of Narration:
And one day we started hearing rumors that they’re going to flood the place. They’re building a dam.

This was going on for a few years and then all of a sudden, some guy come up and, some guy in a suit, saying he wanted to take a look at the place and, and you know, then they were sending out surveyors and checking the land and this and that.

And so there then the reality sets in that we are getting bought out.

We got to talking about, um, exchanging land in the Okanagan or somewhere. It was pretty poor land. There was no comparison.

So that fell through so dad finally said, ‘well we’ll just sell’.

Well, when you sell to Hydro you don’t sell at a-a good dollar it’s what they give you.

There were some neighbors who were quite adamant about, um, not moving.

But they they um they actually did find lawyers and and did fight, but it never went to amount to much.

They knew they had to do a job and they come in and say ‘well this is what you’re offered and goodbye’.

I mean that’s all. There was nothing, nothing that you could say or do about it. It wasn’t, well let’s negotiate. (Laughs)

No such thing as negotiating at that time. You were expendable.

You’re off the land because we’re flooding it and that’s, that was their attitude and that’s the way it went.

There was no getting away from. ‘Well I’m not moving’, because they’re going to flood you out anyway.

There was a-a very rich valley here with the logging and farming.

All the communities from here to the states basically were destroyed.

I don’t think that’s right but, how do you stop progress that’s the thing.

Do you get compensated for it or just accept?

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