Back in 1978, the building you now know as the library was slated for demolition. A devoted group of Bowen Islanders managed to save and restore the building, and this re-enforced the importance of our community’s built heritage, and paved the way for the partial preservation of the historic Davies Orchard cottages. Nearly three decades later, the struggle continues.
When, in 1983 the GVRD paid $1.7 million (half the assessed value) for the 600 acres which we now know as Crippen Park, the plan was to repair and maintain the Old General Store as a heritage site, but GVRD priorities left only $50,000 for Crippen Park over the next five years.
In 1986, GVRD established the Bowen Island Special Committee to examine park problems, including the status of the remaining cottages rented out to provide a “minimum level of maintenance and patrol.” The Committee reported that eight cottages had been demolished as “inspection revealed repair was uneconomical.”
After “clean-up, painting and repairs,” the remaining 17 cottages met minimum safety standards, but, in keeping with the free-enterprise spirit of the time, the report recommended that the Davies Orchard instead become the site of a privately owned inn and restaurant.
Local developer Don Cromie agreed, writing that “[t]he pretty flowers around an old low rent cottage are a poor excuse for opposing the further tidying of squalid Snug Cove at Vancouver’s west doorstep.”
In contrast, Doug Berry, another Bowen developer, wrote that it was “absurd” to deny the remaining cottages’ heritage value, adding: “If the Bowen Island of the future is to be anything more than a nicely forested dormitory to Vancouver, it must retain its individual character of which its unique history is possibly the most important aspect.”
Patrick Frey, Assistant Director of Historic Programmes, BC Ministry of Tourism, Recreation and Culture, wrote to the Senior Planner for GVRD Parks that the “remaining elements of the old Union Steamship resort contribute positively to a unique cultural landscape at Snug Cove / Deep Bay,” and that the orchard cottages were “clearly a component of this cultural landscape.” Considered separately, the cottages were “simply modest undistinguished resort structures.” Collectively, however, they were “the only surviving cluster of cabins that continue to visually convey their original function and historical association with the Union Steamship Resort.” As “arguably the most prominent beach resort on the coast,” the Union Steamship property was “reflective of a particular phase in the growth of social forces influencing recreation and tourism activity in the province.”
Finally, Frey suggested, GVRD should “consider possibilities for the preservation and rehabilitation of the Orchard Cabins,” funded largely by rental options that incorporated “private sector investment and/or continuing revenue potential.”
However, when a tenant moved out that fall, GVRD elected to board up the cottage, leaving it, in the words of local resident, John Sbragia, “to deteriorate, unheated, over the winter.” Sbragia asked if the GVRD had made up their minds “long ago, behind closed doors and without the consensus of Bowen Islanders, to bulldoze these historic cottages to erect a hotel?”
The inn and restaurant idea was dropped as uneconomical, but in 1988 the GVRD Parks Committee announced that five of the cottages would be demolished due to septic system failures. One argument for construction of the controversial 20,000 gallon-per-day primary-treatment sewage outfall system in the park had been that the cottages would be served by it, but the Parks Committee now claimed that connecting them would require secondary treatment at a prohibitive cost of $100,000.
In the spring of 1990, two “deteriorated” cottages were demolished resulting in a mock requiem attended by 175 people. The Chair of GVRD Parks claimed that he was simply following the recommendations of the region’s health committee. A local resident responded that islanders had offered to provide free labour “to bring the cottages up to snuff but the GVRD gave a flat-out ‘no.’”
Unfortunately, the only major step taken in the next several years to keep the cottages was the establishment in 1993 of a community-based cottage management agreement with the Bowen Island Heritage Association. With the restored Old General Store and the recently refurbished causeway, the cottages were referred to by the GVRD as the “historical precinct at the gateway to the Island.” Although several were repaired, others were left to deteriorate. In 2000, Metro Parks estimated the cost for revitalizing the Davies Orchard: restoration of 10 cottages ($422,000), construction of 3 new ones ($78,750 each), totalling $1,242,507. Investment depended upon the sale of surplus lands which finally took place in 2005 when the municipality of Bowen Island paid $2 million for 40 hectares. However, rather than directing money towards heritage preservation, Metro Parks transferred the Old General Store to the municipality, and allowed the remaining cottages to deteriorate to the sad state that they are in today.
