DEAR EDITOR:
While we’re all distracted by heat domes and summer activities, council is amending bylaws. However, there are so many things in the omnibus bylaws 537 and 538 that are inhumane, bureaucratic, and culturally deadly that I urge council to take a pause and reach out for community consensus.
Let’s start with the camping prohibition. I understand the intention to address the unfortunate issue of an intransigent “camper.” However, this bylaw draws a much larger net around all economically marginal members of our community. The bylaw ensnares those we look to when we need help moving, landscaping, hauling, or stacking firewood. They’re the folks who provide labour for our service industry during the summer, and the interns we hire for our public museums, galleries and visitor services. These bylaws create more problems than they solve in this regard. We need to revision our ideas about housing to encompass temporary housing whether it be trailers, tents, backyard “bunkies”’ or other creative forms of non-standard shelter. Quoting the compassionate words of lifelong resident Emily van Lithe de Jeude, “These people are part of our community, and we need to find ways to hold them up instead of sweeping them aside.”
While the sentiment of “the omnibus list” of prohibitions is plausible, it undermines the vitality and energy of our community. Gatherings, structures, invasive species removal, colourful fliers on power poles, enigmatic signs on roadsides, Mummers, impromptu concerts on the pier are all part of what sets Bowen Island apart from a sterile anytown. There are few citizens who chose to live here because life is colourless and boring. The municipality, who is the singular exemption from this section, has rarely exhibited the creativity and energy to replicate the memorable events of the community.
By severely limiting activities in public areas without a permit, the bylaw restricts the imaginative and unique economic culture of Bowen. There are many citizens who operate tiny businesses that provide sustainable services and products in the realms of wellness, education, the arts, food security and other services. These creative entrepreneurs are the heart of Bowen’s unique culture – our heart and soul. They connect, inform and teach. Most earn little if any revenue from their contributions but the proposed bylaw presents a gargantuan hurdle to their continuation.
And here is the nub of this noxious document. Staff, who council repeatedly acknowledges are overworked, will now receive applications, collect fees and upon receiving valid liability insurance documentation will possibly issue a permit for the activities that have served as the backbone for Bowen Island’s lively community for its entire history. While the municipal bureaucracy will need to swell, the character and uniqueness of the community will drown under the wet blanket of bureaucratic mediocracy. Think about it. Because of informal local initiatives we have…Light Up Bowen, spring daffodils on the roadsides, Yoga on the Pier, poignant red dresses, quirky posters layering our power poles – how else would we really know what’s going on? And if we run afoul of this odious collection of rules”? “a penalty not less than two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) and not exceeding fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) for each offence and the costs of prosecution.”
Is this a bylaw we citizens endorse?
Betty Morton
