8 October 2026 — The North Coast Transmission Line has started its construction and it has started mapping out the place where it will be building the High Voltage Transmission Lines as well as construction sites for them.
One of the sites is the Atlantis Summer Camp located at the edge of Thornhill. BC Hydro met with the property owner to discuss the sale of his property last week. I, also, met with the property owner, Cody Atlantis Skog and asked him about it.
How much of your property would BC Hydro take?
“Pretty much the whole property”.
How did it feel when BC Hydro approached you for your property?
“Kind of dropped. I was like, I thought maybe they would just, need to top some trees. But when they were like, no, we would pretty much take it all down, like everything”.
“Anyway, it was a little bit emotional for sure, because I’ve been building this forever and it’s just getting to a place where I’m getting close to where I want it to be”.
“With the cabins and summer camp here, I’ve got some plans to build a big gazebo here for weddings. That’s going to have a plexiglass floor with the creek running underneath it. I also got a wedding booked for the summer”.
Cody went to say how much effort he put into developing the property.
“I started as a young guy. Built that whole cabin pretty much by myself with rocks and wheelbarrow and cement. And, like, so much work. And, like, those posts are big. It was a little bit of a machinery, but so much manual labor, lifting big beams way, way up, you know, it’s like 14 feet high walls plus the height of the ceiling”.
BC Hydro can take alternative routes which would prevent Cody’s property, the Golf Course and Terrace Rod and Gun Club’s shooting range from getting taken over by BC Hydro.
But from communication between BC Hydro and Cody, it would be too expensive for them to build around his property.
In an email over asking how much it would cost to build around the property, BC Hydro said “The writ period for the provincial election is now underway. BC Hydro is a Crown corporation. And as part of our obligation to remain impartial during this time, we are not able to comment to media requests beyond pointing you to publicly available data or information”.
Cody has started a petition to garner community support. And plans on speaking with the MLA to discuss this further.
The location for the power lines is not finalized and Cody and BC Hydro are still in the talking stage.
Why not sell the property and move to somewhere and start anew?
“If I have to sell, because that might be what it comes down to, then it would be quite a bit higher than what it’s valued at right now. And I’ve had people from fishing lodges, come to me and just explain to me basically how valuable this piece is. And there’s no real water frontage properties around Terrace. And, there’s the eco-tourism and there’s the fishing. And, I think it would be worth quite a bit, especially for the cabins”.
He also communicated that he put his heart and soul into building this property.
“100%. Yeah, this is definitely. This property is me, you know? So, it’s more than just a piece of property and a house on it”.