This was among my prayers: a piece of ground not so very large, a garden and a spring of water; above these a small patch of woods.
Horace
THE first week of summer brought good and bad; fair weather and foul, garden-box crops booming with the rain, and distressed neighbours over the Rockies in Alberta. A good time to count our blessings.
It may be a good time for staycations this year too. Flights to Europe are costly and B.C. looks, well, homey: soon the Okanagan's bounty will pour forth, cherries right through to apples. The Sunshine Coast, the dry Interior, the big Island and the North all resound with opportunities for road trips, camping and fishing - for teaching our kids and visitors to B.C. what the good life here is all about.
We might remember these times not too long from now as golden days before the Donald Trumps and big energy corporatocracy boards got their hands on everything. Before the pipelines and coal trains, before the Peace River gas-fields and toxic fracking hit the red-line, before big fish farms and big mines and big forestry made their usual hash of the landscape and salt-chuck.
It was easier not to think of such things this past week. Along Burrard Inlet the annual Waterfront Walk drew happy crowds of families, children, parents and grandparents. Word of the event circulated widely. The new return trip by boat from Deep Cove to Cates Park dock on Oceanwatch II delighted more than 200 participants who hopped aboard. For 14 years, Maureen Bragg and the Save Our Shores community volunteers have made this a summer highlight outing. Yet one couldn't help notice the deplorable condition of several street-end beach access points leading down from Beachview - a problem local Deep Cove Stage director Mike Jarvis, out for the day with wife Caroline, agreed needs correcting soon lest seniors risk broken hips clambering down to the shoreline.
The boat offered a fine view of Dollarton's old McKenzie Barge shipyard. It's another familiar landmark likely to vanish now that Polygon Development proposes to rename it Noble Cove with a makeover residential plan for the site.
"It cleans up a big mess," Rob MacArthur from Polygon explained confidently at a local public meeting recently.
With district council grown big developer-friendly nowadays, no one expects real critical thinking from municipal hall anymore, but a serious contingent of the old guard brigade showed up at the meeting for the first time in a while - Seymour folks are growing restive with the pace of change in the area. Respected community elder Bill Tracy drew attention to the fact that the site's long-studied commercial/residential/ mixed use designation in the official community plan is completely ignored by the upscale residential proposal. There's not even a small coffee-shop for a site once envisioned as a vibrant mix of residential area, public marina, waterfront shops and sea-walk.
"That is not our business model" was the clipped Polygon reply.
"It doesn't meet the needs of our community," replied Tracy firmly.
With 80 condo units tentatively valued in the $650,000 to $850,000 range and 15 waterfront townhouses at $1.5 million per, there was more than a little shared suspicion that the proposal looks more like a gated community in all but name. The sudden love-in for "environmental concerns" and spawning tiddlers we heard plenty of seemed more about restricting public access to the shoreline out front of the new homes. This project needs better public-friendly vibes. Expect a public hearing this fall: plan on having your say. How about a marker commemorating when this was Sam Matsumoto's shipyard? He settled and built fine fishing vessels here after being interned in the Second World War. A plaque engraved with Earle Birney's Dollarton poem "Pacific Door" would be fitting homage to our national multicultural commitment and to Japanese-Canadians.
Two days previous, Leonard George led another Aboriginal Day Fire Ceremony on the beach at Whey-ah-Wichen/Cates Park beach nearby. His son Gabriel, Sacred Trustkeeper with the
Tsleil Waututh First Nation delighted a group of visiting youngsters and moms from Larsen Elementary with creation stories from the area - the story of the Killer Whale and the Salmon People, How the Wolf Clan got its name. Then the tribal men gathered and chanted the Chief Dan George Prayer with their drums. Aboriginal peoples around the region have adopted this as the Coast Salish hymn. Could we all learn it in the original Salishan: something inter-tribal to share at important events, like the Kiwi All-Blacks rugby squad and their haka ritual dance? Finally, everyone becomes native.
Looking across the inlet, big Reuben George noted the recent appearance of orcas and Pacific white-sided dolphins in Burrard Inlet - surely good medicine - compounded with the first sighting of a right whale in 60 years off B.C. waters. As the kids say, it's all good. At precisely the same moment B.C. is readying to plunge into new oil pipelines, expanded coal exports from Neptune Terminals and Roberts Bank, and a goldrush-frenzied exploitation of Peace River's gas-patch - all for shipping through the same marine channels. A message?
With federal minister and Calgary Southeast MP Jason Kenney assuring Albertans this past week that absolutely no connection exists between dreadful flooding there and massive tar-sands development a day's drive north, we can probably rest easy that massive Liquid Natural Gas fracking in B.C. will never be linked to local earthquakes, the way scientists suggest it is in the U.S. east and mid-west regions. The message?
Be sure your hot-water tank is strapped safely to the wall. Don't light a match when you turn on the kitchen tap.
Then there's the District of North
Vancouver's garbage policy. Metro Vancouver's zero waste initiative has a 70 per cent recycling and diversion target by 2015. Currently we run about 51 per cent. By 2025 the goal is 80 per cent - so fine-tuning disposal and pick-up systems will be necessary. Our North Shore "three-sort" recycling program (garbage/blue-box/green waste) already works well, so we're getting things right.
The guys on the trucks will tell you that illegal dumping is an ongoing problem though, requiring municipal time and labour to clean up. And thanks to recycling we're putting out less garbage. Since those big green mini-dumpsters on wheels are often half-empty on garbage day, lazy residents slip in illegal waste - car batteries, drywall, paint - and auto or semi-automated dumping misses that.
Smart method? Bring back the old standard-sized cans: they're easy to handle and manual dumping is best in screening toxic waste from our landfills. Common sense keeps them bear-proof. Engineers love machinery though, so Metro Vancouver is seeing greater use of fully-automated dumping. In the district, this could run $4.4 million with taxpayer utility bills taking the hit for new household wheeled-bins to keep expensive new auto-dumpers busy. We don't need 'em.
West Vancouver is considering bi-weekly pickups; will the District of North Vancouver follow to trim costs by about eight per cent? Long-term environmental costs negate that. District staff, workers and council-watchers have examined the unsexy garbage issue in three meetings. With only one meeting left until mayor and council have to make decisions, they need to hear your good ideas. Residents are welcome to email their comments to [email protected] [email protected]
