Matthew Paugh

I have driven the Sea to Sky Highway for 19 years as a commercial driver, tour guide and commuter, and Squamish has been my home for the past six. I am a Squamish Chamber member through Squamish Connector, where I am the operations manager, and a past president of the Canadian Tour Guide Association of BC. This nomination is for the work I do outside my job: making Highway 99 safer and making sure people get reliable information when it closes.

Most people in the corridor know me as the administrator of the Sea to Sky Road Conditions Facebook group. Its founder started it more than a decade ago and deserves the credit for starting something so useful. I was a frustrated member when I stepped up to help: the group had about 40,000 members and was starting to be overrun with spam and fake accounts. With other volunteers I modernized how it runs, with screening questions, keyword alerts, clear rules, and a single organized thread during major incidents. Today it has about 97,000 members and a team of volunteers. In a perfect world it would have zero posts, because zero posts would mean zero incidents. When incidents do happen, it is often the fastest source of information people have.

Running the group showed me the same problems repeating: long closures, slow official updates, and people stuck for hours without water, and supplies. In May 2023 I decided that complaining was not enough and started a petition, which now has more than 5,300 signatures. I have met with chambers, businesses and politicians at the municipal, provincial and federal levels to ask for lower-cost fixes: better signage at turnarounds, gates in median barriers, average-speed enforcement and clearer communication during closures (among others). I have also asked for a study of what highway shutdowns cost the local economy, which I believe has never been done. This year I ran a public survey, shared through the group and local media, that 1,143 people answered. Nine in ten said they use the group to check conditions.

Why should I receive this award? Highway 99 is the only highway in and out of Squamish. How it performs decides whether people get to work, catch a flight or make it home to their families, and whether customers and staff can reach local businesses. In tourism, a bad review pays long dividends. Ensuring our guests have safe and positive road experiences is ley to our long term viability. A safer, more reliable highway benefits every resident, whether they drive it daily or never at all. This is volunteer work, done on my own time, for everyone who depends on that road.

I would be honoured to receive this award, and would accept it on behalf of others too: the volunteer moderators. This recognition will only help spur the province to actio. The work is not finished, and I will keep showing up for it.