FRIDAY FEBRUARY 20 2015 VOL. 42, NO. 07
75¢
including GST
Watch for more online at: WWW.BOWENISLANDUNDERCURRENT.COM
Sandy Beach
Beer cans and diesel slicks
Meet your municipal planner
Cari St. Pierre talks sustainability, docks and more
Sun Run fun
Checking in on an aspiring runner
Ideas fly for Parks and Trails Masterplan MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
From left: Sam Knowles, Oscar Knowles-Dekker, Rex Heath and Dan Dekker. Meribeth Deen, photo
A Valentines Day gift to Bowen’s roadsides MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
On Saturday, a group of Bowen Islanders spent their day picking up plastic, cigarette packages, candy wrappers, and empty beer cans (mostly Budweiser) from the shoulders and ditches of several of the islands main roads. Sam Knowles initiated the clean-up, she says, “because the rubbish was becoming so pervasive and really bugging me. I wanted to make it an island-wide exercise.” Her family, with the help of Karen Heath and her son Rex, started at their task at 9:30 a.m. from Adams Road travelling down Grafton and reaching Charlie’s Lane by 1 p.m. Knowles and her son
Milo continued picking up garbage along Mt. Gardner Road from BICS to the gas station, wrapping up at 5 p.m. Publicized on the Bowen Island Phorum and Facebook, a number of other islanders joined in the clean-up as well. Tom Carchrae and his family took on Adams Road and found, among other things, a pair of waterproof overalls with a bottle of wine in each leg. Brenda McLuhan also cleaned the ditches on Adams on both Saturday and Sunday. Sigurd Sabathil collected 50 lbs of debris from the ditch along the road from Charlie’s Lane down to the ferry line up. Knowles says that for her, the best part of her day was realizing that her husband Dan was totally accepting that his Saturday was being dedicated to picking up garbage. “That is love manifest,” she says.
FIRST CREDIT UNION R002974656 BI03
FIRST CU
Roughly 30 people from various groups considered to be active stakeholders in Bowen Island’s parks and trails gathered at the Municipal Hall on Tuesday in order to begin fleshing out the parameters of a new Parks and Trails Master Plan for the island. The last master plan for Bowen’s parks and trails was created in 1994. The 21 page report provides an inventory of park land (land not privately owned) on Bowen Island, and suggests strategies for the acquisition of more land. “A lot has changed since then,” says Jeremy Howe, the chair of the Bowen Island Parks, Trails and Greenways Committee. “We’ve seen Cowan Point develop, and Cape Roger Curtis. And since the mid1990s I would say there is a much greater awareness and interest in our island’s trails. This is something like creating an Official Community Plan - it will lay out our expectations when it comes to parks and trails.” As a beginning point to updating this plan, Municipal Planner Cari St. Pierre asked for feedback on Parks Master Plans from six other communities to review, and also asked participants to draw “maps” on four themes with veins symbolizing their concerns and priorities for Bowen’s parks. During the second part of the exercise, the four groups of participants took turns drawing maps on future priorities for Bowen parks (looking ahead 50 years), what’s happening now in Bowen’s parks and trails, what has happened since 1994, and connecting parks and trails to beaches and waterways. On this final subject, a seemingly endless flow of ideas poured onto the map. Concerns about accesibility led to an idea to implement a system ofbeach classification; a desire to prioritize viewscapes connected to concerns about ecological integrity; the protection of watersheds connected to storm water maagement, and so on. When each group had a chance to work on each map, all four were placed together on a wall. St. Pierre says that given an appropriate online tool, the mass of information will be redrawn in a single, coherent map that will connect the issues.