Island Tides Regional Newspaper
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Strait of Georgia Attractions & Accommodation Vancouver Island & Every Second Thursday & Online ‘24/7’ at islandtides.com The Gulf Islands, Page 12 Canadian Publications Mail Product Volume 16 Number 18 Your Coastal Community Newspaper September 23–October 6, 2004 Sales Agreement Nº 40020421 Tide tables 2 US politics 2 Saturna notes 3 Letters 4 What’s on? 5 Bulletin board 11 Port Wash wharfhead stays The Southern Gulf Islands Harbour Commission decided, at their September 14 meeting, to retain and repair the Port Washington wharfhead on North Pender Island. It was a reversal of the Commission’s earlier decision to eliminate the wharfhead, make the dock smaller and provide an additional float for boat moorage. Photos: Brian Haller (inset) and Rick Tipple Al Cannon, Ports Manager of the The Islands’ building boom is not restricted to new homes. Community projects like the Miners Bay Park bandstand Harbour Commission, says that this (inset) and the Saturna Recreation Centre are underway.. decision was made in response to letters from Pender Islanders and the various companies that use the wharfhead. 17 Delegations seek development Town Hall session on Repairs on the dock will begin in the spring of 2005, after engineering governance packs hall drawings are finished and when there moratorium at Trust Council are favourable tides to accommodate Patrick Brown Over 300 people packed the Pender Island repairs. In the meantime, the Community Hall on September 11 at the informal commission will restrict wharfhead Spurred by a flood of proposals for development, Conservancy, noted the Cape Roger Curtis Trust ‘Town Hall’ session organized by the Islands Trust. access to vehicles with a GVW of 10,000 delegations from Salt Spring, Bowen, and North Society had made an $8m offer to the Cape’s There was no standing room left when David Essig, Pender Islands have urged the Islands Trust to owners for parkland but it was turned down. She Chair of the Islands Trust Council, began the session lbs or less (i.e. no trucks and buses). immediately implement a Trust-wide temporary questioned the adequacy of public process on on governance, decision-making, and North Pender However, this may only be a moratorium on new development. The Bowen. Margaret Aldous, also speaking for the land use issues. temporary fix for the wharfhead. delegations were heard at a Trust Council Cape Roger Curtis Trust, complained of very Also in attendance were Linda Adams, Chief Cannon is concerned that in the long meeting on Bowen Island on Thursday, little public access to water’s edge on Bowen. A Administrative Officer of the Islands Trust, and term the commission will be unable to September 16. The meeting was attended by ‘really strong’ environmental protection bylaw Robert Kojima, Trust Planner for North Pender. maintain the wharf due to budget many interested Islanders from across the was needed, she said. Essig’s Introduction constraints. i Islands. Lisa, a director of Bowen Island Eco-alliance, Essig began by stating the meeting was intended to The issues raised were many and varied, but spoke of an ‘erosion of environmental and social help heal the rift in the community, not to discuss the CPAWS organizes all felt that existing Official Community Plans, values ... We became a municipality so we could merits of a specific bylaw. He announced the North Land Use Bylaws, and approval procedures were have better control of development,’ she said, Pender Trustee by-election will be held on November boat tours and inadequate to deal with the changes presently ‘but it hasn’t worked very well; we need a more 13 and that the details will be advertised. taking place on the Islands. Both Islands’ visible presence of the Islands Trust on Bowen. He also mentioned that the Trust’s governance photo contest Trustees and Trust staff, they agreed, were Many people on Bowen are unaware that Bowen system is a representative democracy but not a The Canadian Parks and Wilderness overwhelmed. is still in the Trust.’ She also noted that there referendum, so that Trustees are required to listen to Society (CPAWS) is hosting an Ocean Bowen Island were two mining claims already in the their constituents but do not have to follow their advice. Odyssey boat tour and sub-tidal video On Bowen, Samantha Sanderson, representing watershed, and that water was already in short Legislative Contexts for Local display in the Southern Gulf Islands on supply on the Island. October 2 and 3 to promote awareness ‘a group of Bowen residents from all over’, spoke Govn’t of the ‘galloping pace of change,’ building Summing up for Bowen, Kathy Dunster said of the marine environment in the Essig first covered legislative contexts for Islands’ local projects for ‘hundreds of new houses’ and that that mining should not happen in the Trust southern Strait of Georgia and generate government. The Islands Trust must abide by ‘commercial interests alone should not drive Area; but ‘half of Bowen Island has subsurface support for the proposed National different pieces of legislation, including the new growth’. A letter from Doug Cooper stated that rights registered on title.’ She warned that Marine Conservation Area (NMCA). Community Charter, the Local Government Act and the current rate of growth would lead to Islands on the Nanaimo formation should be The Parks Canada feasibility study the Islands Trust Act (the latter available at unwelcome changes in the social and economic aware that there may be mining claims for process for the Southern Strait of www.islandstrust.ca). A Local Trust Committee has structure of the Island. coalbed methane. Georgia National Marine Conservation authority that is equal to that of a regional district Sue Ellen Best, chair of the Bowen MORATORIUM, please turn to page 9 Area is set to begin public consultations when making land use planning decisions. this fall. According to Essig, Local Trustees must make their Participants on each tour (leaving Restoration tour on Galiano offers land use decisions with the following in mind: existing from Sidney, Pender Island and Galiano policies (this includes a provision that land use bylaws Island) will include: representatives global perspective ~ Keith Erickson TOWN HALL, please turn to page 2 CPAWS, please turn to page 7 Over 700 delegates—scientists, educators, than 500-year-old giant, with deeply furled bark community organizers, and land managers— and massive trunk-like branches. from all five inhabited continents came to Delegates talked about the importance of Victoria in late August to the annual world such trees in shaping forest ecosystems conference of the Society for Ecological whether living or as standing snags, or even as Restoration (SER). The week-long event served large woody debris rotting on the forest floor. SER’s mission of promoting ecological They also saw many different ages and species restoration as a means of sustaining the diversity of trees as well as large gaps in the forest of life on Earth and re-establishing a healthy canopy and a diversity of plants covering the relationship between nature and culture. forest floor. Tour guides explained how this Galiano Island was the venue of one of the diversity provides habitat for countless species restoration sites field trips, which supplemented of animals from the great horned owl to three days of presentations at UVic. Twenty microscopic soil organisms. delegates representing South Africa, Ukraine, The group quickly became aware of the Netherlands, China, Australia, Argentina, the change in ecology as it crossed from the lush, United States and Canada visited the Galiano mature forest into a barren Douglas-fir Conservancy Association’s forest restoration plantation. Clearly evident was the project in a Coastal Douglas-fir plantation. simplification and uniformity of the 26-year- Most of the delegates who boarded the old replanted clearcut. Mayne Queen had never explored this part of Restoration Treatment the world before. On Galiano, the group stopped Another abrupt transition was seen upon for a quick lunch then headed up-Island to the Photo: Brian Haller entering an area where restoration treatments Enthusiastic cooks at Mayne Island Lions’ Salmon BBQ on Sunday, September Pebble Beach Reserve (322-acre protected area), had been applied. Woody debris and associated a very rare example of mature Douglas-fir forest. 5 . Singer/songwriter Raffi performed for the crowd. Jaws dropped as the group looked at a more TOUR, please turn to page 5 Page 2, ISLAND TIDES, Sept 23, 2004 Special US Election Report ~ Mike Logan The Politics of Terror and the Climate of Fear Part I: Fearing Fear Itself on citizens, indefinite imprisonment without access to counsel, AT FULFORD HARBOUR ‘They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little and information control are all very real under the current temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ Benjamin administration. Basic Constitutional rights are being regularly SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER Franklin, one of the historical founding fathers of the United ground under the twin heels of national security and war. Day Time Ht./ft. Ht./m. Day Time Ht./ft. Ht./m. States of America, and an early champion of a political system America lives under a cloud of fear. What passes for news completely ignores the real world dangers of global warming, 0330 2.0 0.6 0520 9.5 2.9 founded on the principles of freedom uttered those words. 230 1235 10.2 3.1 1055 5.2 1.6 years later, it is easy to imagine Mr Franklin’s horror at the pollution, universal poverty, hunger, oppression and injustice, 21TU 1625 9.5 2.9 29WE 1720 10.5 3.2 and instead inundates the public with hysterical warnings of MA 1945 9.8 3.0 ME 2340 4.3 1.3 indolence of American citizens who seem unwilling to question their governmental system so long as the illusion of protection terrorist plots being surreptitiously hatched under their very 0435 2.0 0.6 0620 9.5 2.9 noses.