Bowen Bulletin

In a world where communities are fighting to restore their foreshores our Municipal Council is inexplicably working to destroy ours. Bowen has very little wild, publicly accessible seashore. But the tidal area at the Cape Roger Curtis lighthouse is a gem. It’s hard to believe that soon an enormous private sundeck and wharf will desecrate this iconic landscape. And another oversized dock will stretch out in front of the Pebble Beach to the north.

This is my take on why and how our Council weaseled there way out of stopping this giveaway of our public foreshore. Continue reading ›

If ever we had a conundrum that requires the wisdom of Solomon our Community Centre project is it. And the task force that we have assigned to sort it out consists of our Mayor and Councillors Jennings, Lucas and Rhodes. I don’t envy them.

We don’t have a Community Centre or even a community hall or gymnasium outside the elementary school or a performing arts centre. For years various groups and committees have tried to put together a plan Continue reading ›

The problem with really loving something is how upset you get when harm befalls it and how angry you can get when those entrusted with protecting it shirk their duties. I’m speaking of the waterfront at Cape Roger Curtis (CRC), from the Pebble Beach to the Lighthouse. There used to be an old road that meandered through the trees just behind the bluffs. You could hear the ocean and get glimmers through the trees until you emerged from time to time onto the moss covered rock to take in the entire vista.

When the property got subdivided and developed the old road was replaced with a gravel path, which if you’d never been there before, served the same purpose quite nicely. There were scars from clearing and levelling but in the fullness of time you could see how it would heal.

A couple of weeks ago I was perplexed to see that a series of eight-foot high posts had been set into the ground in concrete. Continue reading ›

Council has taken the bull by the horns and is actually going to reconfigure Government Road this year to improve ferry marshalling. Yep, they’re going to fritter away another $50,000 or so of tax money on consultant’s fees and at the end of the day nothing will change. Getting cynical about ferry marshalling is almost a rite of passage on Bowen. When you first move here you notice things like everybody double-parking when they get coffee or pop into shops in the lower cove and quite an array of other quaint customs surrounding the ferry line-up. It’s all quite pleasant until the first time you try to drop somebody off for the 7:30 boat one rainy November morning and you wonder how it is that nobody gets run over. Soon you attend a meeting dedicated to the New Snug Cove Plan and every year or two thereafter you get to review a newer, better plan. After about 10 or 15 years the very mention of yet another new Cove Revitalization Plan can make you physically ill. Continue reading ›

Our saga takes place on a one-acre triangle of waterfront hillside, just past the golf course. The property used to be owned by Bowen Island Properties (BIP) before the Municipality acquired it a number of years ago. It was probably the most pathetic excuse for a waterfront park you could find. It was scarred by an access road to what looked like a gravel pit and the stream running through it was causing the hillside to slowly slough into the ocean taking the odd Alder tree with it. But the beach below looking out to the city was peaceful, secluded and quite special to many people. Continue reading ›