FRIDAY APRIL 24, 2015 VOL. 42, NO. 13
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Watch for more online at: WWW.BOWENISLANDUNDERCURRENT.COM
First Nations education
A sneak peak at recent activities at BICS and Island Discovery School
World War II memoire
70 years after the fact, an Islander remembers the war’s end
They did it!
Highlights from the Sun Run
Islander actively seeking kidney donor MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
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Monika Sabathil and her husband Sigurd outside their home on Bowen Island.
Meribeth Deen, photo
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Council adopts new Heron policy and construction of tourist gazebo moves ahead MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
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ear eighteen of heron nesting season in Snug Cove is underway, and as Senior Bylaw Officer Bonny Brokenshire told council last week, Bylaw Services has yet again received numerous inquiries about activities that may or may not contravene the municipality’s heron nesting policy. Pacific Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias fannini), are considered a species of “Special Concern” under the Species at Risk Act, and are protected under Federal, Provincial Law. Brokenshire outlined three particular activities that have come up as points of concern, and following her presentation, a fourth the planned construction of a tourist gazebo on the pier – was raised by members of council. The conversation that followed ended with two new municipal heron policy’s being passed, the second of which allowed the gazebo’s construction to move forward this past weekend. The activities of concern that Brokenshire raised in her presentation were the Green Man Festival, the mowing of the library lawn and a request to move the Rotary Stage for the Steamship Days Festival to the area of Crippen Park across the street from Tuscany Restaurant. On the first concern, Brokenshire said the Festival organizers decided to move the majority of their activities to the Union Steamship Lawn.
t 35 years of age, Bowen Islander Monika Sabathil was diagnosed with a kidney disease called Glomerulonephritis, a condition, she says, that she has probably had since she was a teenager and may not have ever been diagnosed in earlier times. Still, the diagnosis came as a shock for the mother of three small children. “The medication was very strong, and made me feel horrible,” she says. “But after a year, my prescription changed and my health stabilized. I was basically able to lead a normal, active life.” That relatively normal life would last nearly 30 years. Then, after several years of feeling constantly cold, Sabathil was told by her doctors that her kidneys (already functioning at one-third of a healthy person’s kidneys) were failing more. She faced the option of going on dialysis and a waiting list for a kidney transplant, or finding someone herself who would act as a donor, and avoiding dialysis altogether. “In September of 2014, my son made the very generous offer to give up one of his kidneys, and he is one of the healthiest people that I know,” says Sabathil. “So I chose the second option. But as it turns out, he has some kind of heart palpitation that eliminated him from being a candidate.” With one option eliminated, Sabathil and her husband Sigurd decided to ask for help. They told their story through a nation-wide United Church newsletter, and let their daughter tell the story yet again through Facebook. Through these two requests, they were contacted by five potential donors, each of whom had to withdraw their offers for various reasons. Sigurd Sabathil says his wife’s health, and her shot at getting a new kidney is his number one concern at all times. “There is no other priority for me,” he says. “I am very involved in all the tests and I read all of the literature that comes out on this procedure. I have met someone on Bowen Island who gave a kidney, and she told me it was the most rewarding thing she has done....”
On the second concern, Brokenshire says that Metro Vancouver has come up with a protocol to allow the library lawn to be mowed without disrupting the herons. On the third point of concern, Brokenshire said such a decision would be up to Metro Vancouver as the move would impact their land. Towards the end of her presentation, Brokenshire suggested that in order to move public understanding forward on this issue, the municipality might consider revising the Heron policy (written in 2001) or creating a Bowen Island “heron fact sheet” similar to the provincial one that already exists. Mayor Murray Skeels responded skeptically to this suggestion. “If you’re going to have herons in the middle of downtown, it doesn’t matter how much you write. People are going to say, this is crazy,” said Skeels. “And you’re going to say yes it is, welcome to Bowen Island. The last council went through a lot on this in trying to expand the library parking lot, but then nobody could park there during heron season. You can try it, is my perspective, if someone wants to take another shot but it is what it is. They rule us.” Councilor Alison Morse added that at the very least, the spelling mistakes should be fixed within the policy, which is poorly written and lacks clarity.
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Leash laws considered in order to address “dog aggression” incidents MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
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t 10:30 on Sunday evening, Áine Corrigan-Frost was walking to a friend’s house near the Bowen Island Legion when she saw a large, “fluffy” brown and black dog emerge from what appeared to be a shared driveway. “It was clearly not with anyone, and am generally kind of scared of dogs, so I crossed the street and tried to avoid it,” said Corrigan-Frost. “It crossed the road and started following close behind me, and I turned around to face it. When I did that, it lunged and snapped at me. I was looking it in the eye, and kept facing it as I walked backwards towards my friend’s house.” Corrigan-Frost said the dog never bit or touched her, but she was forced to encounter it a second time when she walked home. She says that when she finally did get home, she was too shaken to do anything, but her mother called bylaw services on her behalf. Senior Bylaw Services Officer Bonny Brokenshire says that because they don’t know exactly who’s house the dog came from, and do not know who the owners are, there will be no action taken on this case. However, this incident will be added to the list of 21 “dog aggression” incidents that have occurred on Bowen Island since the beginning of 2014. Almost half of those incidents, according to a recent report written by Brokenshire for council, have resulted in serious injury to either humans or other animals. Brokenshire was asked to put the report together following a letter written to council by Iona Buchan on March 18. “My concern is that as a citizen of Bowen we have had a number of incidences lately with proper protocol for dog etiquette,” writes Buchan. “Do we (Bowen Municipality) have a better way of communicating with the GVRD? How do we enforce their bylaws? How many dogs can one person have under control at once? Should the Cove be a leash-only place? Should there be a limit to how many dogs can reside in one dwelling?”
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