Re: MetroVancouver Parks Proposal for Bowen Island and Rezoning Application

Dear Editor,

I sent this letter below to Council on March 3 and wish to send the same message to island residents Please continue to engage with Metro Vancouver Parks (MVP) as you wish, filling out surveys, attending open houses etc But it is not MVP that makes the final decision – it is the BIM Council who has to give approval to a park and camping at Cape Roger Curtis So please let your Council know your views, not just Metro Vancouver Parks

My message to Council:

As a former BIM councillor and one who was very much involved with the failed National Park initiative for our island – I am asking you all to go slow and to communicate to Metro Vancouver that our island needs time to hear all the information and to consider all the effects on our island before making a quick decision.

Personally, I am in favour of protecting a major part of Cape Roger Curtis, but not in favour of giving Metro

Vancouver Parks a green light without a lot more information. At this time, I think Metro Vancouver Parks needs to take a step back, a deep breath, and start to engage with the community in a meaningful way – which to me means being prepared to answer questions about ferry overloads, traffic on Bowen roads, traffic through Whitesails, passenger ferries, shuttle buses, environmental studies on the rare ecosystem at the Cape and how welcoming the lower mainland public to this area will affect this ecosystem

Please do not give first reading to a bylaw or OCP amendment It is too soon. Consultation first on what MVP plans, with answers to questions noted above, and then, when this is complete, consider a zoning application and OCP amendment

Thank you,

” young warrior” - a fitting description of who we are as a community Our noble community was truly well born, with the warrior spirit that is needed to always fight the good fight

Sadly, in the troubled, perilous and dysfunctional world in which we live, one of those dysfunctions has been to succumb to cynicism and to give up But, in my experience, that has never been the noble path of a true Bowen Islander Beyond all of our human failings and the stumbles they may cause, we are indeed a nobly born community that belongs to the future through its vision of building that better world in the new earth that Eckhart Tolle foresees.

“Come, my friends,

‘T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die”

(From the poem “Ulysses” , by Alfred Lord Tennyson)

- John Sbragia

references Indigenous peoples, but nowhere does it mention impact on the community of people who live in the area of a proposed park.

I urge you to take the many concerns you have heard very seriously and make them an integral part of your plan to save an ecosystem at the Cape, because while most of us are not Indigenous, we are part of that ecosystem. Under your current plan, our way of life, our livelihoods and possibly even our lives are at stake

Bowen Island’s ecosystem includes humans

Sincerely,

- Marian Bantjes

- Nerys Poole