Being a guest on the sea

Yesterday paddleboarding in Tunstall Bay, I headed out towards Cape Roger Curtis past the absolutely MAMMOTH mansion being built on the bay.  There was a little wind, but in the first 15 minutes it died away and the water became glassy.  One seal in the cove at Pebbly Beach and then I headed out around the Cape.  Exiting Howe Sound on a paddleboard is an awesome experience.  Come around the corner and the sky open up and the Strait of Georgia trails away to Orcas Island in the south and Texada and Lasqueti to the north.  I sat out there for a while on the flat glas and then drifted back past the Cape.  In the cove right at the lighthouse a sea lion was hanging out.  It spotted me and came right towards my board stopping a paddle length away and just looking at me.  Then it slipped under the water and headed out into the Strait.

Awesome experience...I am become friends with the sea, but still feel like a guest out there.

Welcome FOXGLOVE!

Oh Hooray!

Kristen Denger has launched a new magazine about life on Bowen called FOXGLOVE.  It looks like an antidote to everything that ails our public conversation.

The tenor of our times

An image that captures something of the feeling of the community these days.  Juneuary has set in.  Fog and soft rain and cooler weather.  Garden loves it, salmonberries are ripe and everything is drinking.

Deer proof?

People ask all the time...will the deer eat this plant or that plant?

The answer is yes. Sometimes mitgated by no.

So far the only plants that grow free around our place that the deer wont eat are bamboo, lavender, lemon balm, campion, oregano, rosemary and foxglove.  I believe deer have nibbled on everything else at one time or another.  Even if certain plants are deer proof, they may still sample young shoots thus killing the plant or step on it, which happens a lot.

So simple answer.

Now do people eat deer?  No.  Not n Bowen anyway, hence we have a lot of deer and no maple saplings anywhere.  I dare you to find a maple sapling.  When our current generation of maples dies, they will not be replaced.  Basically deer - rose fed and maple sweetened - have been protected by humans on Bowen, and now we complain when they eat our gardens.

This is called "being out of touch with nature!"

Just part of life on a little rock.

Rain showers on a May afternoon

Spring in full flight in Howe Sound. Blossoms and sun and birdsong and light and a warm shower or two on a grey afternoon.

The citizens present some options

A group of citizens led by the wonderful Melissa Harrison presented some options for Council today regarding what the municipality may be able to do to stop the dock construction at the Cape.  It seems there are things that can be done and it also seems like something weird is happening in the legal realm.  If we are to read into the comments from the Councillors, it seems as if there is very dicey legal brinksmanship going on in secret.  Things work differently at the Cape.  The owners are not land owners like you and I.  Our Council meets in secret quite often to deliberate actions to take with the owners, and the result has been that the Municipality has been unable to enforce covenants about construction of fences and hedges in designated setbacks, or even to exercise their responsibility to issue building permits for the docks.  It seems the current legal advice - which flies in the face of everything you would expect - is that Council does not have the power to issue a building permit for these docks.  If this is true, does it mean that anyone can just build something on Bowen without regard for proper planning and permitting regulations?  And if not, what makes these docks different?  What makes the Cape different?  I wonder if we will ever know.

I want to commend Melissa and her team for a well researched and constructive presentation and for standing in complete calm against Wolfgang Duntz's initially patronizing behaviour and his unilateral conditions under which he would listen, even accusing the totally unflappable Melissa of "militancy."  I liked the part where Melissa asked if she could drink from his cup.  It immediately invited him back to a civil frame of mind and gave him a chance to be gracious.

And mostly Melissa deserves kudos for standing up to our Mayor Jack Adelaar's repeated jabs at the previous Council, including at one point inviting Nerys Pooole to speak instead of "pulling the strings."  It's just completely uncivil behaviour from the Mayor, who has shown in the past that he can't temper his contempt, and Melissa met him with dignity and not a little fierceness.  Since his sudden appearance on the political scene in the 2011 election campaign in which he tarred a group of sitting Councillors as the "gang of four," Jack Adelaar has shown unprecedented contempt to the former Council and to members of the public that he associates with them.  Watch and learn how to be a spectacularly ineffective leader.  He says the Cape is dead (not even in the Strategic Business Plan!) and later we learn that it is not dea at all and is consuming meeting after meeting of Council's time and tons of legal advice.  It's not dead Jack, clearly.  Not a single Councillor defends his accusations and snide remarks and most of them distance themselves from him in one way or another.  Cro Lucas and Andrew Stone are commended for sharing their perspectives as well as they could given the cloud of confidentiality that seems to have fallen around all things Cape Roger Curtis.  Even Wolfgang, once he calmed down, was able to share some information.  And that is good.  Information is all we want, no matter how hard it is to get a hold of.

Council would do well to remember that the citizens sit between them and the door.  It is a proper and symbolic arrangement for a chamber of democratic deliberation.  Elected officials must never forget that the community lies between them and their next hot meal.

The wind casts it's vote.

Yesterday we had a glorious spring northwesterly, gusting down the strait and pummelling the west side of the island, a it does.  Over at Cape Roger Curtis, there is some construction going on of some MAMMOTH docks that no one on the island wants to see.  The northwesterlies, which at times gusted to 60km/h managed to rip out at least one of the moulds being used to pour the concrete to extend jetties out over 100 of rock, mussel beds and intertidal habitat.

Building these docks is so ill advised for so many reasons, not the least of which is that they are being built on exposed shoreline that gets hit by these winds on a regular basis.  They are not being built in sheltered bays or coves.    No one wants these docks except for the new owners on the Cape, and they want them so badly that they even went against the wishes of their friends on Council who tried to persuade them not to build the structures.  Somehow, DFO and the BC Government saw nothing wrong with the docks and they are going ahead.  I should run a pool on how long it will take for these docks to wash up on the beach.  I reckon we'll have a "detachment event" within five years.  Not to mention a complete change in the nature of the foreshore: that goes without saying.  

What is happening at the Cape, from these docks to the road building to the contemptuous privacy hedges on the "sea walk" (currently a "cedar walk") trail is breaking hearts.  Yes it is private property.  Yes the owners can do whatever they want within the terms of the their development permits.  Yes, the whole things has gone very badly over the past ten years.  Yes, it all just sucks.  You'd be hard pressed to find an islander anywhere who wou be able to express complete delight at the outcome.  And everyone has someone else to blame.

Me, I have no idea.  I'm so confused by what happened down there, and what continues to happen.  I don't know who is doing what, what is happening or who is letting it happen nor stopping it from happening.  Whatever.  It's largely over I think.

The one redeeming feature is that the Cape itself is a powerful place.  Even with all the building and blasting and moulding and logging and surveying.  You can go down there and stand on the shore and still FEEL it.  It will never be the same as it was 10 years ago, but no matter what happens there, it will be hard to rob it of it's pure power.  To experience that you can simply go down there and sit still and listen to the waves pounding the shore.  You might even hear the sounds of dock footing being pulled up by the one force that can arbitrarily decide what gets to stay - the wind and the sea.