Canada is the best country in the world, Vancouver is the best city in Canada and Bowen Island is the best part of Metro Vancouver. It’s fun making statements like that because most people in any rapidly growing area have arrived there by choice. They want to believe that it’s the best possible place and they feel very reassured when somebody confirms it for them. (But in our case it just happens to be true.) I know what you’re thinking. Continue reading ›
It’s time to update the Cape Roger Curtis (CRC) saga. For those of you who don’t follow these things too closely, CRC is 630 acres on the southwest corner of Bowen Island. In 2004 a development company purchased it. Between then and now a ridiculous amount of time, money and human capital have been expended trying to determine just how the property should be subdivided. Continue reading ›
Tagged Cape Roger CurtisWhat Does it Mean to be “Green” on Bowen?
In the spring of 2008 fourteen islanders, selected by Council, sat around tables in Municipal Hall and began to answer this question. They came from a variety of backgrounds, with expertise in climate change solutions, social justice, green buildings, affordability, waste reduction and ecosystem protection – approaches that have been shown to make pretty great communities even better. Continue reading ›
Tagged Municipal Politics, Snug Cove, True GreenA Brief History of Bowen Island – In the spirit of brevity I will start in the 1970’s. At that time the local Highways Department foreman approved subdivisions and you could purchase your Gulf Island summer get-away lot at a booth at the PNE. Then the provincial NDP party replaced the Social Credit party and things changed. It was realized that the islands Continue reading ›
Tagged Eco Alliance, Improvement Association, Island Life, Islands Trust, OCPAs Murray told us in the last edition of the Bulletin, there is a new “green” group on Bowen calling themselves True Green. They are proposing “solutions” for Bowen based on the idea that by increasing our density and population, we can become more sustainable, support more amenities and reduce our carbon footprint (the idea being that more amenities means reduced off-island travel). But the group’s logic seems flawed to me in some fundamental ways. Continue reading ›
Tagged Eco Alliance, True GreenI find it amusing how we live in two different worlds on Bowen. There is the theoretical world of what we could or should be doing with our community and, on that level we fight like cats and dogs. Then there is the day-to-day practical level where luckily we seem to get along quite well. The problem that we are now facing is that these two worlds are starting to bump into each other a little too often. The most recent example was the debate over the appropriateness of the all-weather playing field at the school. Continue reading ›
Tagged Eco Alliance, Improvement Association, Island Life, True Green, TurfThe committee that’s working on updating our Official Community Plan (OCP) asked all of the various groups on the island to submit ideas for a forum that they held a couple of weeks ago. More than twenty submissions have been posted on the bowenocpupdate website. Taken as a whole, they provide an excellent insight into the collective psyche of the island. Continue reading ›
Tagged Municipal Politics, OCPElinor Ostrom just won the Nobel Prize for economics. If this momentous occasion slipped by without you taking much notice, I’m sure that you weren’t alone. But Elinor is a radical. She has rocked the world of economic theory by showing how people are not just units of consumption, taking as much as they can and giving back as little as possible. She studied groups from the herdsmen of Mongolia to the farmers of Spain to see how small groups successfully managed common resources, whether the resource was grassland or irrigation water. The work she did produced insights that apply very directly to each of us on Bowen. Continue reading ›
Tagged Elinor Ostrom, Municipal Politics, waste managementRarely, sitting down to write a column do I find that there is too much to write about. But I’ve just returned from holidays and find that there are a myriad of interesting things happening. This isn’t going to be a column per se but more a collection of random thoughts and a preview of things to come.
Tagged Cape Roger Curtis, CO2 Emissions, Ferry, green collar jobs, Island Life, Municipal Politics, new parkAs we move along with the updating of our Official Community Plan (OCP) it is probably worthwhile to look back on how well the plan has served us to date and what we might to do to make it more usable in the future. The first thing that we have to acknowledge is that there were two very definite sides in the last debate. Continue reading ›
Tagged Housing, Municipal Politics, OCP, Snug Cove