Peter Frinton - Fifty Years on (Part 2)

Peter Frinton has lived on Bowen with his partner Carol since 1972. He became active politically in the early 90s as a GVRD alternate and then as chair of the APC. He served on Bowen Council for 4 terms and was also an Islands Trust trustee, Metro Vancouver Director, the Mayors' Council delegate to Translink, and he served on the Treaty Advisory Commission. In this episode, he shares some stories with us about life on Bowen, his observations over the years, and how our five levels of government work.
This is part two of our conversation about life and politics on a small island.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back to the Boone Island Podcast. My name is Don Schaeffer and this
is part two of our conversation withPeter Frinton. If you recall from our
earlier conversation, we were talking aboutthe different levels of government and local service
areas and the differences between government andgovernance. Peter has lived on Bowhen with
his partner Carrol, since nineteen seventytwo. He became active politically in the

(00:23):
early nineties as a GVRD alternate andthen as chair of the APC. He
served on Bowen Council for four termsand was also an Islands Trust Trustee,
Metro Vancouver Director, the Mayor's Councildelegate. To translate, Andy served on
the Treaty Advisory Commission. So Iwant to focus on what kind of an
island we want to become. Solet's talk about democracy. Well, you

(00:46):
know again a Pulley side one ohone, I mean we live in There
are all kinds of democracies. Greecehad a direct democracy, although it was
restricted to adult males who'd served theirmilitary service. We slowly extended our vote
and included women, and the Americansallowed previous slaves to vote. But we

(01:12):
have become a representative democracy, soinstead of dealing with each issue, we
essentially on a basis of trust oron the basis of what we believed to
be the lies that we have beentold. We elect people and we leave
it to them. Because everybody's busyand has other things that they're doing,

(01:33):
and governance is very complex. Thereare a lot of awful lot of issues
that come before your plate, regardlessof what level of government you're talking about.
So on, Bowen. You know, we have this representational democracy,
but there are all kinds of thingsthat we could do to make it better.
And I think that we have backslidquite a lot and we are less

(02:00):
connected and less engaged in democracy thanwe used to be. Okay, so
can you unpack that of it.I mean, we have a very elaborate
committee structure, so you know,council takes advice from but doesn't necessarily have
to follow the advice of what theircommittees tell them. The only mandated ones

(02:23):
are actually you have to have aboarder variants. It's a requirement of province.
And you have to have an advisoryPlanning Commission. So this is a
commission. There used to be arequirement for a recreation commission. I'm not
sure that that. I think itstill exists. I'm not quite sure about

(02:43):
that. So we have these committeeswhich are very formal, and they operate
actually as extensions of municipal government,and people are appointed to that, usually
by declaring self interest, but theyare approved by the municipal council, so
they can be stacked with people thatthe particular council likes or dislikes, and

(03:05):
their sole purview is to make recommendationswhich go to council. So we've had
a proliferation of committees. I mean, there were over twenty committees, and
that is as crazy as having thirteenlocal trust committees with the island's trust.
So North Pender and South Pender eachhave their own trust committee, you know,

(03:27):
and you go, I think wecan make this a bit more efficient,
and it also tends to be youknow, if not ossified, at
least they become quite entrenched. Thepeople who are on those committees feel it's
proprietary, that it's their area andit's not. So that's one formal thing.
The other formal thing is making appealsor depositions before council, writing letters,

(03:53):
all that kind of stuff, andagain there's no feedback mechanism, so
you can do that. You canand talk at a hearing for a rezoning
or for a temporary use permit ora variance or whatever it happens to be,
and it's just your turn at themic. You say your thing and

(04:14):
you walk off, and unless thecouncil says could you elaborate or what do
you actually mean by that? Orda da da da da, it's next
please, and on it goes,and then they make up their mind,
and sometimes they make up their mindimmediately following the common period, and that
is a disservice to the process ofdemocracy. You can make it so much

(04:35):
better. One thing that used tohappen quite a lot was town hall meetings,
and they were tended to be bitchfests. You know, you basically
came and pointed fingers at your frusteeor your Metro Vancouver director or your counselors

(04:56):
whoever, and said, we don'tlike what you're doing. Then you can
have moderated town hall sessions or informationsessions, and so that happened during the
National Park where they would be moderatedby people like Chris Corrigan or Bert Painter.
Who are professionals, and they doa very good job of essentially bringing

(05:18):
the temperature down and allowing for betterdiscourse. And they usually have breakout groups
and then they come together and saythings, and it's structured. It's much
more friendly. It tends to buildconsensus. So another thing that you can
do and which has never been doneon Bowen, but it is done easily

(05:40):
elsewhere and could be implemented. It'ssomething I've barked about for quite a long
time, and that is there areapps and there are actual hardware which are
instant response or audience response voting devices. Today we're talking about we should be
building a swimming pool. How manywant a swimming pool? And eighty nine

(06:00):
percent with people in the room orwho are attending by zoom just go yes
and they vote for that, andyou go, wow, everybody wants it.
Okay, how much is it goingto cost? And it's going to
double our taxes? And suddenly it'stwelve percent are doing it, and you
go, well, okay, wewant something we can't afford. What's the

(06:21):
answer to that? And how aboutif we didn't do the dream facility?
But we did started on it.We built you know, a basic pool,
And how about if it was outdoornot indoor? How about and what
you do each time you do that, you iterate the process and you vote
on it, and you find outyou know that instead of going up and

(06:45):
down, it slowly rises up ifyou ask the right questions, and it
reaches an asymptote, and you knowit's as good as it's going to get
with this group, and you haveactually gleaned an incredible amount of information.
You know that sixty percent of peopleactually are willing to pay a certain amount
to have a pool, and it'sgenerally something that people want. So on

(07:06):
the basis of that, you cango ahead, or you can go If
it's fifty one percent, you go, no, this is too divisive,
we shouldn't do that. If it'stwenty percent, then you absolutely know it's
a bad idea and you don't doit. So why we don't undertake that?
And we can buy the devices forabout thirty thousand dollars, You can

(07:28):
buy the software for probably fifteen hundredor two thousand dollars, or you can
just use a survey monkey and askthe right questions and you get an awful
lot more participatory democracy. And Ireally would like to see our democracy here
bloom, because Boone is a greatplace for that. Because we are closed

(07:51):
to our issues, we have tonsof people that actually show interest in political
things, and we could be topartners in our own governments. I am
curious why we haven't done some ofthose things, and I guess the answers
will become apparent with what the newconsole does the same or does differently.

(08:13):
So where are we headed? Orwhat's the question? I haven't asked that
I should? We could talk aboutspeculation Where are we headed? And I
already said that you know you're headedwhere you're going unless you change direction.
But the corollery to that is thateven changing direction by a little bit,
it makes a big difference over time. And if you slow the freight train

(08:35):
down, you don't get hit ashard. You know. I think that
left alone, that what happens isbig parcels of land get divided up into
small parcels of land. A landgets created where it doesn't really exist.
If you look at Rivendale Estates acrossfrom Rivendale that was all filled in blast
and filled the community. Was thatthe effect of the blasting for two years.

(09:00):
While that went on for the poorpeople down below on Prometheus Lane and
Artisan Square. They were hearing jackammeringand blasting for you know, all that
time, and then the construction,and now people have moved in, and
you know, people are getting toknow each other and tensions are are abating.

(09:24):
But it was a very intrusive kindof thing, you know, an
interesting thing. Mike Caricello, whowas accosting me because he runs the Mike's
Bins, and he said, Ican't do business unless I can get on
and off the island at least twicea day. And he said, I
have to wait for fairies, orthe fairies are late, or you know,

(09:45):
something's broken down. And he said, I'm at risk of losing my
business because I can't get on andoff of them. Bone is getting too
big. And I laughed, andI said, but you rely on turnover
and people, you know, throwingstuff out. He said that bothers me
even more. He said, everybodywho moves on, who buys a house
from somebody else, is generally wealthierthan the person they're displacing, and the

(10:11):
stuff they throw out is a goodmeasure of that. And they throw out
rolls of copper wire or you know, stuff that obviously has residual value.
And so I think that there isa trend whowards you know, becoming a
more affluent community that it becomes anexurb. We already are a suburb,

(10:33):
but it's sort of like a privilegedsuburb. People move here who do move
here with their eyes open. It'snot just the greenery and the trails and
all the things that they liked aboutin the sense of community and the smallness.
They like that there are really reallygood educational opportunities on the island.

(10:54):
I mean, our community school isactually the flagship of the westmand School district.
I mean there is no other elementaryschool that has uh, you know,
an artificial turf field with them withlights, that has you know,
accessory washed rooms, has a fullsized field beside that you know, has

(11:15):
the gym which was a community amenityand paid for partly by the community.
And you have the homeschooling or youknow, it's actually run by poul River,
and we have ips for people whowant to there's access to Mulgrave and
to Collingwood in Westpam. So Bowenattracts young professionals who have families that want

(11:37):
them really well educated, and thosepeople tend to have a bunch of money
and they are desirable residents for going. They're really one level, very very
good for going. But that's thetrend. That's what we are trending to,
becoming a much more exclusive community.And at the candidates meeting, everybody
talked about pushing the fishing of diversityand the poorer people being pushed out,

(12:03):
you know people already now. Toget somebody who is a tradesperson is extremely
difficult, and I know for myself, I needed a waterline dog and I
ended up having to dig it myselfbecause I could not find anybody who would
do it except somebody who could barelylift the shovel that. You know,

(12:24):
obviously, housing is a big issuein associated with that. We are headed
in that direction inexorably. And theway to address that is to in a
sense, respect our community plan.So every time we revisit the community plan,
and we've done that, you know, in the seventies it was written,

(12:45):
it was revisited in the eighties andthen rewritten in the mid nineties,
and I was chair of the APCwhen that was done and recritique the entire
document and then it was done intwenty eleven and Sue ellen Fast was sitting
on the committee that shairing that committee, so there were you know, people

(13:05):
with an eye to the document.And the remarkable thing is every time it
got redone the same things were saidon a high level, this is what
we want in a community, andthose are reiterated by different people at different
stages because there are values to whichthe majority of us ascribed. So the

(13:28):
OCP was updated very successfully and alot of it, the land use component
of that was based on landscape analysisand carrying capacities, and it was also
driven by philosophy, and I thinkthat one of the major intes to that

(13:50):
was pattern language, which stated theideal community size is around seventy five hundred
people. It's small enough that youknow each other and it's enough that you
can afford the services that you want. Bone is growing sufficiently. We're actually
the fastest growing area within the region, which isn't hard when you've got a

(14:11):
small population, but we're growing fasterthan and more. We're growing faster than
Bell Cara or Lions Bay. Andit's because of the special nature of Bone
that it has very very appealing Sowe're growing faster, and we're going to
push that within the next half century, certainly within the next thirty years,

(14:31):
perhaps that we hit you know,seventy five hundred. But our OCP and
our land News by law essentially hadthat assumptope of population because it would be
that what's nominally called the buildout thatif you build on every folio, and
you build a primary residence on everyfolio, and you have two point four

(14:56):
people in each home, you knowwhat will the population be. So that
breaks down if you allow accessory buildings, it breaks down if you allow secondary
suites. Well, the secondary suitething was easily justifiable because we're trying to
attract those people and the kinds ofpeople who rent a basement don't want to

(15:16):
stay there forever. They might,but most of them, most of them
don't, And so that puts alid on stuff when you blow it open
without having density transfer, which isbuilt into the community plan. So the
transfer receiving areas are currently snut Cove, so you've got the nut Cove Village

(15:41):
plant and curiously Cowan's Point, whichcould become another wonderful little village and actually
have its own direct portal either toPorshe Bayer or even to Vancouver or to
snut Cove with a little shuttle.We basically if you leave it open and

(16:02):
then you have the unknowns like CrownLand, which you could get. It's
not just you know that they wantto log it or put motorized vehicles.
There's a whole tongue above Blue Waterwhich is dead flat, and you could
easily put one hundred houses up thereor three hundred houses. There's plenty of
room for that, and they wouldbe very very desirable southwest facing properties.

(16:26):
So if you abandon your community plan, or if you rejigg it or gerrymanderate,
you lose the control. So forthe people as saying we should be
revisiting our community plan, no,it should be updated continually. In fact,
that should be a continual process.But we've already articulated what our dreams

(16:49):
and aspirations are as Island community members. What we need to update is the
land's bylog, which hasn't been touchedsince two thousand and two, and it
has all kinds of anomalies in it, including what is an acceptable home occupation.
So we have these bizarre things likesomebody is running a commercial business fixing

(17:11):
vehicles and because they're only doing oneat a time, they can get away
with it. And the LEAs hadto put in a half million dollars with
their environmental safeguards in order for themto run their business. So, you
know, do you want to buildnuclear bombs in your backyard. There's really
nothing that tells you you can't dothat. So we need to address that.

(17:36):
And the way that was suggested wasit be done on the basis of
performance and impact and yeah, youknow, decibel meters and the number of
complaints all that kind of stuff arelegitimate feedback loops which will help inform whether
it's okay to do something or not. But we had never done that because

(17:59):
nobody Council wants to deal with thatand start telling people, well, okay,
you can do this, but no, we don't want anybody building nuclear
reactors in their backyard. So youknow, I'm being facetious only to a
point that, yes, we doneed to attend to our core documents.
We do need to create environmental bylawsand why we don't have a forest retention

(18:26):
by law, which I've written ittwice and it gets turned down, But
we do have a wharf by lawthat tells you how big of a jug
of fuel you're allowed to stay andcarry on to the dog and pour into
your boat. You know, they'rethe incredible detail on some things and her
blindness to others. So you know, steep slope doesn't exist. We did

(18:51):
do a site alteration, but thesite alteration, you know, the parameters
are pretty liberal. It's a sortof a toothless wagon because it allows for
quite a lot of material, quitea lot of change to happen and still
fly under the radar. So wheredoes this take us? What do we
want to be when we grow up? I'll just finish up with one more

(19:12):
thing, and that is just thenature of our community, you know,
whether we want to be a residentialcommunity primarily or whether we want more.
And Metro Vancouver sees us as muchmore. They see us as a recreation
and area. Day visitors are themainstay of our tourist industry and they buy

(19:37):
ice cream, cones and maybe acoffee when they're on the island. But
the other big, big thing potentialas being developed are the institutions. So
you know, the orchard is hugelysuccessful and plays a very big beneficial role,
not just in the community obviously,but in the region, and we

(20:00):
the British Columbus having a wonderful placethat is close but far away and people
come to that. And Lorinda Strangand her husband then husband Gavin had an
amazing vision in thinking that this couldwork. And not only has hit work,
but so as Xenia, so isRivendale, so is a Nectar Yoga.

(20:22):
Neither are instant successive. And wereally can have people live here and
we can't accommodate anybody everybody anyway,or we can make it a better place
for people to come and stay andthen go home. And the people that
do live here, the privileged peoplethat live here, which includes a diversity

(20:45):
of population, those people get thebenefit as well. So you know,
I'd like to wrap up with thatthat that is what I would hope,
and hope is sort of a blindterm. I would say that we should
remain vigilant and we should have avision that we are actually working towards of

(21:07):
having that diverse you know, wecall it a diverse inclusive community when that's
being eroded and we work deliberately towardsthem. No, it's perfect. I
think you've given us lots to thinkabout. In terms of what kind of
community we are or what kind ofcommunity we want to become. I really
want to thank you for taking timeto hang out with us and share your

(21:30):
views and your experiences on Bowen Island. I always talk too much. That's
funny. No, seriously, it'sgreat. It was terrific. Hopefully it
helps all of us understand a littlebit better what's really going on. And
there's just so much to talk about, so much to learn. I mean,

(21:52):
I would like to talk about someof the very specific issues that are
facing Bone. And you know,I don't think that any of the candidates
who are running are unaware of whatall those issues are. They may have
different opinions about them. And certainly, if you look at the promises made
by the candidates in twenty eighteen andI went over and looked at those a

(22:17):
couple of days ago and see whatactually happened in the term, you realize
that there's always a dialectic that isan operation, and that's the real politic.
There are always things that come upwith the works. I think those
issues are fairly well understood. Iwould love to come back. I really

(22:41):
wish that there was more opportunity toactually work through some of the issues and
to be provided with enough information.So, okay, what are we going
to do to make sure that thesewer, that that whole debical is unraveled
and that we make good So thepeople who are like at Foxglove who are

(23:06):
now unable to build, or thestunt Co house unable to build even though
they put money into the pipe thatthey're told, well, the alternative is
we can build a bigger septic fieldand hook you up to that or something.
But those kinds of solutions are desperatelyneeded. And it's not just infrastructure,

(23:26):
it's a number now we need.We need more conversations on those things.
Yeah, and probably you know,maybe a round table or having you
know, a few people together onthat would be very helpful. Yeah,
you know, maybe maybe a councilof elders. Now we're out of politics,
we can just tell the politicians whatto do. I think it's important.

(23:47):
And you know, I'd like tosee this series, you know,
continue, maybe you know, notnot sixteen in a month, but maybe
one a month. I would bereally pleased to continue. Okay, Well,
I appreciate, thanks, Peter.That was fun. We've been talking
with Peter Frinton, who's a retiredlocal and regional politician on Bowen Island.
In this episode, he's been sharinghis stories about life on Bowen, offering

(24:11):
his perspective of how he got hereand explaining all our different levels of government.
If you enjoy this episode, pleaseshare it, and if you know
someone with a story to share,please have them contact us on social media.
The Boone Island podcast is hosted andproduced by me with a little help
from some friends. Sound designed byJohn Massacre and music by the amazing Jason

(24:32):
Shaw. You can find links toour guests and all of the podcasts on
your favorite podcasting platform. Our gratitudeto the co Salies Nations of the Squamish,
Musk, Whim and slavertooth On whosetraditional territories were able to do this
work. Our thanks to them andto you. Thanks for listening. I'm
Don Schaeffer. Attatatattattattattattattattattattattatt