Dear Editor:
As the applicant, along with my spouse, for a dock at 1160 Ecclestone, we have observed an oppositional campaign develop, to a significant degree, through ongoing inaccurate information and villainizing.
A recurring narrative reflected in and informed by letters to the editor of the Undercurrent, evident from Nov 20, Apr 29, May 6, May 13 and May 27, goes something like this: “The public used to have access to the pocket beach at 1160 Ecclestone from the Ecclestone road allowance. Previous owners built structures to bar access. We, the public, want access back. We risk losing the beach to a dock. Deny this application!” If this were the truth, no wonder there would be a public outcry. Such outcry based on this narrative continues to come to the mayor and councillors even in recent letters.
However, the narrative is not accurate. Though realtors and assessments may have suggested otherwise, there has not been legal public land access to this pocket beach from the Ecclestone road allowance. All the nostalgic beach memories reported and sense of community ownership from “Friends” of the beach have been based on the premise that people have crossed through private property for access. An updated survey in January confirmed this. BIM staff confirmed this in the Undercurrent April 12 and in the June 14 council agenda. These sources also confirm that structures on this property are not blocking and have not blocked the public from accessing the foreshore at the end of the Ecclestone Road allowance adjacent 1160 Ecclestone. The impediment is, on the western edge of the road allowance, a cliff, and on the eastern edge, since the 1930s, the blockage of a boathouse belonging to 1153 Ecclestone, situated at the end of the Ecclestone Road allowance.
Our dock application has been labeled as “illegal” (Apr 29, 21) and yet Mannion Bay is zoned WG-1 and allows for docks. The variance in question is a request to relax setbacks to allow for the hardship of the terrain and to keep the dock away from the low grade pocket beach that neighbours (and we) value. The dock has been labeled as “benefiting one” and “tone deaf” to the neighbours’ desires to access the beach (May 13, 21), and yet, were our variance approved, a statutory right of way on offer would, for the first time ever, grant legal public land access through our property to the desired beach from the Ecclestone Road allowance. This low-grade pocket beach would be untouched and the greatest expanse of the foreshore undisturbed, with our new dock next to the neighbours’ existing dock. We have been labeled as “relentlessly exerting prolonged pressure” on the muni staff to block access and “downgrade the beach” to a coastal viewpoint at the end of the road allowance (Nov 19, 20). The reality is that the muni staff initiated contact with us in March of 2020, to indicate their desires to erect a new trailhead marker for the coastal viewpoint, recognizing the beach did not have legal public land access. We were “responding,” not “pressuring.”
Some people have expressed opposition to the dock proposal for ecological or aesthetic reasons. For such concerns, our dock contractor has sought to match the elevation profile to other docks on the shoreline of Mannion Bay, such as that of our neighbours, and to extend it beyond, only to the point of achieving an appropriate depth below the float. BIM staff would also require our contractor to use materials and to go about construction in an ecologically sensitive manner, steps that we value and affirm.
Whatever comes of our project, I thank the writers who have kept their oppositional comments relevant, accurate and respectful without conjecture on our motives or intentions. I would hope for this kind of atmosphere on Bowen where we can disagree in civil discourse but remain civil as neighbours at the end of the day.
Tim Klauke
