The last couple of months have flown by as we experienced a warmer than normal October leading to an early snowfall in November. Mother nature really doesn’t know what she wants.

As we move through the warmer fall and into winter, we have been continuing our work on our advocacy efforts, completing our annual insurance renewal change over, preparing for the launch of our grant intake #1 (Nov 1-Dec 15^th) and completing a very informative and productive planning session with the ATVBC board of directors at the annual Face-2-Face (F2F) meeting in Kamloops in mid-October.

I spent some time reviewing the results of our recent club survey and will be going over these results at the next club presidents meeting. Many great ideas were shared and many clubs identified similar challenges. We used the results of the survey during the F2F mtg with the board to assist us in the planning of programs/services for membership moving forward.

I am now building a member survey to launch this winter to help us further gather important details about you, our members, so we can better understand your needs and further align our services to fit the expectations of our members. I encourage you to participate in this next survey as it will be a key resource we will use moving forward as a voice of our members to assist us in the strategic direction of the organization.

The search continues for the next amazing community to host our 2023 ATVBC events. A new application form has been created for clubs to complete when interested in hosting an ATVBC event. Deadline for applications for the coming year is Nov 30^th. The application can be found here.

If your club is interested in hosting, or has any questions regarding what it all entails, please contact us for more information!

Buy an ATVBC 50/50  Ticket soon! #SupportYourSport

Call for club events. We are asking all clubs to send us their scheduled events to add to our calendar for 2023. This would allow us to promote your events on our platforms but also plan for our directors/staff (when available) to attend and or support them in some way. This also allows us to know when other big events are happening so we don’t double book in any specific area. Send your events to [email protected]

A new ATVBC Events Best Practice guide is coming. We want to hear from you about the events and programs that are working well for your club. Together we can help build a stronger network of clubs by sharing our knowledge, our mistakes, and event planning successes to develop the first ever “ATVBC Best Practices events Guide” What works for you can work for others! Send your submissions to [email protected]

Our insurance renewal and change over to Capri is now complete. Clubs will be receiving a package in the mail shortly with a copy of the club insurance handbook, FAQ’s and some important marketing materials to share with your local dealers and insurance reps.  We hope these tools will assist you in understanding your coverage and provide opportunities to promote membership and encourage local relationships with your clubs.

We want to thank all the clubs who have submitted all their paperwork to date. We know it was a lot of information to provide this year and we thank you for being patient with us as we collect this important information as it will help us to deliver better service to you in the future.

Land issues and advocacy remained a key focus for Oct/Nov as we worked to get a better understanding of the issues raised by clubs and other partners.

Work proceeded to advocate for motorized sport involvement in the Bridal Falls Gondola project. The letter of response sent to FrontCounter in Sept was received by the project proponent and they reached out to set up a meeting with our group to present their project and answer questions/concerns that we expressed in our letter. The meeting was held on Oct 18^th with representatives from lower mainland clubs, ATVBC, BCorma, BCSF and 4wdabc. Ideas for changes to the project were shared to allow for a reduced impact on the motorized trails. The proponent will take these suggestions back to their planning dept for feedback. Suggestion was made to create a “leader group” discussion to bring reps for all parties together to brainstorm ideas and work together for better communication and potential compromise. Next meeting will be in mid-December.

During the meeting with the proponent for the Bridal Falls Gondola project, we met with an indigenous representative for the Cheam First Nations and were asked if we would work with them in the current Gill Road recreation space. We have since shared with them our letter of request to be included in this project and hope this new connection will allow our voices at the table for this important recreational space.

We have started our list of current RSTBC trail agreements. We currently hold 9 locations around the province with RSTBC trail agreements. As we continue to receive copies of these agreements we will be able to better report on the impact of the clubs work around the province and plan to assist clubs in the process of renewing contracts as they come due. If your club has a current agreement and hasn’t submitted a copy to ATVBC please send this to [email protected] . These RSTBC agreements are between the province and the club locally. As such, we (ATVBC) do not have access to this information unless it is shared with us by the club or given permission to be shared through RSTBC. Thank you to those clubs who have shared your info to date, we are excited to see all the different projects around the province.

In addition to the RSTBC trail agreements, we are looking to hear from clubs on any private agreements you may have. This information helps us better understand the impacts of the volunteers’ efforts around the province.

ORV Grants will open again in mid-January. To align with this intake, the ATVBC grants committee has changed our intake for our Trails & Maintenance grants to be Nov 1-Dec 15^th.  INTAKE #1 is NOW OPEN.

Club Promotions Grants have received 2 applications to date. I encourage clubs to apply for this grant to support your efforts to promote your clubs. Click here for more info