We arrived at the office Tuesday morning to find a petition on the front counter. It asked if you wanted an artificial turf playing field on Bowen Island which required the removal of thirteen trees from the Community School playground. Twelve people didn’t want it while one person did. I can’t decide whether this is a clash of cultures or just an example of people signing petitions without doing their homework. Before I get into that, here is an overview of the project and how it came about.
The field will run from the area just below where the school buses park to the edge of the existing field. The basketball court will be moved closer to the school and 12 or 13 trees will be removed. 14 trees will remain and a retaining wall will be built to hold up the bus parking area. The field will be 30 metres by 40 metres (93 ft. x 124 ft.) and will be fenced. The end fences will be 10 feet high. There will not be any lighting because the budget will not permit it at this time. The turf will be very, very similar to grass as far as playing on it goes and will last for 12 to 15 years. The budget is $500,000. 25% will be provided by a federal grant. The other 75% will come from the municipality. Apparently there has been a capital fund for a playing field for years. The field will be on West Vancouver School Board property but it will be operated by the municipality.
Should we forget the whole thing if it means cutting down 13 trees? Considering that we all live in wooden houses and more trees than anybody can count are cut down in this province every day, I don’t think that too many people will hang their hat on this argument for very long. Was the public process flawed? Not really, a small group of people have been working on this for a very long time. They haven’t tried to keep it secret. In fact, they’ve been telling anybody who would listen. The truth is that none of us actually thought that they would pull it off so we ignored them. Should we be spending our money on something more worthy? There is always something more worthy but, recreation is a big part of the services that municipalities provide and playing fields are a big part of community recreation. Will enough people use it? I was surprised to learn that our local football (soccer) club has 178 members. When it started up the West Van association lost about 60 members. Part of the attraction of a synthetic grass field is that it greatly reduces the wear and tear on the natural grass field, leaving it in much better shape for other recreational uses. Isn’t $500,000 an awful lot of money to spend on something that I’ll never use? Of course it is but the average property taxpayer only kicked $250 into this deal. Isn’t a 12,000 sq. ft plastic playing field an environmental nightmare? It’s not much when compared with how much CO2 your car spews into the air every year.
So why are so many people against this idea? Because it is one more slice in our death of a thousand cuts. We see grass as rural and plastic as urban. At one time a commuter returning home felt that he had left the city when he reached the ferry terminal. Then they built a monstrosity that covered a mile of hillside and you couldn’t really relax until you got off the boat. Then we put in double lane offloading and you couldn’t really feel that you had left the madding crowd behind until you headed up the hill to the school. Now you’re going to have to get past the school before you can feel that you’ve left the city behind. We all feel suburbia sneaking up on us and so we fight it in any way we can. We scream about cutting down a few trees, we wail about the toxicity of getting plastic in a skinned knee and we lament the death of our planet because of the scourge of plastic. But in our heart we know that what we really fear is a loss of our rural lifestyle. And we yell a little too loud because we’re angry with ourselves for not paying attention to the project in the first place.
The suburbanites have moved in and they’re slowly suburbanizing our island and we’ll fight with whatever arguments we can muster. And that’s why we’ll lose. If you’re against the plastic playing field because it offends your aesthetic senses, argue against it on those grounds. Grass was good enough for me, it was good enough for my kids, and, if you don’t like it, go back to white bread condo-ville where you came from. Arguments like that will convince your new neighbours that they have wandered into Appalachia and they’ll get the hell out of here. (editors note- this last paragraph was a joke. People haven’t been getting my jokes lately so I thought that I should throw this in.)
Should the field go ahead? Of course it should. Whether we like it or not Bowen is slowly growing and improving recreational opportunities is one of the positive aspects of that growth. We can’t afford a swimming pool or a skating rink. The least we can do is improve the school grounds.
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