October 21, 2022 • 41 mins
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.
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Hundreds of years ago, when thesettlers arrived to Bowen Island, the Squamish
nation were hunting, fishing, andcamping on Nucliloqua. Cycles of logging,
farming, brickworks from a rare blueclay deposit, and a dynamite plant,
followed by tourism and housing development havedefined the year since. Some of the
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themes that arose during pre election conversationssuggest we're on the cusp of yet another
evolution in our identity. This podcastseries seeks out perspectives from people who have
lived and worked on Bowen as afoundation for sparking conversations about who we are
and who we want to become asa community. If you do a search
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on LinkedIn for Peter Frinton, you'llfind him as a self proclaimed retired local
regional politician at Bowen Island. Peterhas lived on Bowen for about fifty years
and he served on the Bowen Councilfour times. I had an opportunity to
catch up with him recently to learnmore about the political history of Bowen,
how he got here and who helpedus along the way. So can you
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tell us a little bit about yourself? What brought you to Bowen And what
are you passionate about? Well,it's hard to know where to start.
But with regard to Bowen itself,I mean I came here as a ten
year old sea scout and came toa camporee at Cowan's Point. There was
a nice, big meadow. Iguess the Cowan's family kept cows or sheep
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or something or had done in thepast, and it was a perfect place
in some ways. It was moredeveloped than it is now. There was
a proper dog just beside the islandthere din quite well and came over in
a decent sized water TAXI sort dischargedeverybody. But I'd seen Bowen from as
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a sea scout. We had littlewhalers and they were actually whaling boats wooden
and which took eight people and eachhad an ar and you rode this or
it had a little gaffrid sale andthis was sort of the centerpiece. And
where because we kept them at EagleHarbor, where we headed to was to
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out and around Bowen Island, andso I was very aware of Bowen from
that time as a child. Anyway, I had lots of fun at that
camparee and explored a bit, andit left an impression. A couple of
years later, I was going toschool with Ron Chromy, whose father was
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Dawn Chromy, who was the publisherof the Vancouver Son, and he held
the Carrier camps over in Dunstall Bay, and so Ron said, yeah,
you can come over, even thoughI wasn't a carrier. He said,
you can come over, you justhave to camp out. And so I
went a couple of times and rodemy bicycle across the island with you know,
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it was still a dirt road comingacross the island, and hung out
with these kids and had a lotof fun. Again, so I associated
Bowen with two things, with gettingaway from the world and having a whole
lot of fun. Of course,Don Cromi ended up closing down the camp
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and developed Punchtall Bay and he marketedthat starting and I think it was nineteen
sixty four and the moniker was soclose but so far your dream home on
Bowen Island and you know, anabsolute perfect moniker and something that definitely did
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apply to me. So some yearslater I was just finishing up university.
I guess this was late nineteen seventyone or around early seventy two, which
was a very tough winter, alot of snow and quite cold. And
I'd been volunteering for with an alternativeschool in Vancouver called Total Ed, which
is now a part of eric Hamberand very much under the fall of the
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school board, but back then itwas a fairly independent school. And I've
been involved here and I was teachingmath and chemistry to kids who really and
truly did not want to or couldnot comprehend these things. They were not
mostly not very academically inclined, andthe school recognizes. And so an item
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came up at a staff meeting saying, Gee, there's this place on Bowen.
It's an old homestead and the tenantsthere have abandoned it because they call
it Heartbreak Hill, because it wason the north slope and there was too
much snow and they couldn't get upand down. And those that family ended
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up turned out to be the WiseMillers, who are of course still on
the island. But they wanted somebodyto go have a look and see whether
it was something the school might beinterested in, to help round out what
the kids' education was by having thembe in a non formal set up.
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And so I jumped at the chanceand came over to look at it.
The tie in among the people thatwas a small consortium of owners, and
it was Jim and Ross Carter whowere longtime Bowen Islanders. Jim Carter went
on to be Deputy Minister of Educationfrom BC and Ross was a regent of
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Vancouver Community College and got onto thefirst council here on Bowen, so they
were close ties with Bowen with that. And I trudged over, came over
and walked up from the cove,not quite knowing where to go, but
making my way along Gardener Road andup the hill from what is now the
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gas station and the recycle and cameinto this opening of stark fruit trees against
the snow which was up to mythighs, and I went, oh,
my god, I want a placewas it was just it was wondrous And
as I said, I was tryingto get away from the world, and
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there it was. It wasn't veryfar away at all. It was perfect.
So it was love at first sight. And I went back to the
school said yes, not only shouldwe rent it, but I would be
pleased to be the sort of thecoordinator of the farm. So that's how
I ended up on Bowen Island,and I haven't moved since. Well,
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we've moved fifty feet because after tenyears the old house was pretty much falling
down, and we built a newone beside it, recycling a lot of
the wood from the old one.So we still live in the old house.
Actually, you know, the backdropfrom my room here is paneling from
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the old house, so that's howit got here. But what I was
passionate about wasn't even very clear tome. I mean, there was obviously
a tension between wanting to get away, not wanting to have adult responsibilities,
and on the other hand, Iwanted engagement. I wanted a community,
and I found sort of both onBowen very quickly and got involved in things.
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Well, it took a while beforeI really got involved deeply in the
seventies. Actually, I was attendingpolitical meetings in the eighties, I was
participating in them, and I endedup being Ross Carter's the right hand man
at GVRD or what's now Metro Vancouver. I was the alternate director and got
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involved in the very first Livable Regionplan and started thinking in terms of the
region, and Bowen had not evenliterally been on the map we were part
of Metro Vancouver map ended at HorseeshBay, and so my first thing was
to say, well, actually weare part of it as well. And
I discovered over time and others havediscovered that actually we punch above our weight
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in Metro Vancouver. We are veryable and dynamic member under Murray's skills.
When they had the referendum on whichwas courtesy of mister Falcon on transit,
it failed everywhere except in Vancouver andon Bowen Island. So Bowen is very
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progressive. We weren't benefiting very directlyfrom expanded transit, but we voted in
favor of it, and we're oneof two jurisdictions that did. So Bowen
is a special place and I neverregret having moved here. In fact,
I worry about you know, willthey just carry me off or will they
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throw me off the dock? Idon't know. So what would you say
to some new to the island orto somebody that wanted to move here.
Well, you know, if oneperson out of every hundred that comes and
visits bo when actually moved here,we'd be pretty overrun. There are,
So I'll take it that this isa newcomer who actually intends to move here.
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First thing I would ask is,well, do you want to move
here because it's an islander. Despitethe fact that it's an island, most
people wouldn't even understand what that metricis. But you realize after you've been
here a while that islands are notonly limited and there's a hard edge to
them, and they're they're constrained,but they also are poor in the sense
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of you don't have abundant water supplies, you don't have you know, you
have to run a cable for power, and there are difficulties associated with island
living. For most it comes downto while the ferry was later overloaded,
but there are other things that happenedand on Bone and specifically at twint Atkinson
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the wing can be blowing two knots, and at pam Rocks in how Sound
and the same at hood Point itwill be growing a hurricane with an outflow
wind as Farmer's outflow, and thathas happened and knocked power out for as
long as seventeen days. That happenedin nineteen ninety one. So there are
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cautions that people might be best tohear. The other thing is what the
nature of community is in a closedcommunity or you know, I'm saying it's
a limited small community, so it'sprobably the same in small town in Saskatuent.
But you know, I think RonWoodall captured it very well when he
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said Bowen Island is an argument surroundedby water that you are essentially in it
together. You know, you neverchoose your neighbors, but in a bigger
place your neighbors you don't necessarily interactwith them. On Bowen you often depend
on them. You do interact withthem, you share a driveway with them,
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you see them, they are youknow, you tend to have your
circle of friends are people who alsolive on Bowe Island because you're not going
out and not making it back onthe last ferry, so you know,
that would be the second question isto caution people about the nature of island
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living and what island communities are reallyabout. The third thing I would point
out what the real facts are interms of people's longevity here, that some
come and stay for generations. Theaverage is seven or eight years that people
stay here. But really the morelikely thing is is you have your children
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when and it's great when they're small, and then when they're teenagers. You'd
never see them because they're and you'redriving them into hockey on Saturday mornings,
into town. And so you moveoff the island because it's don't work for
you. And the interesting thing isis that those that stick it out,
or even some that move, endup coming back, or their kids move
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off the island to get their educationand get established in their careers, and
then they move back and have kids. So there is a continuity there which
is quite remarkable. And I knowfrom having been an island trustee and traveling
through a bunch of the other islands, that the feeling is quite similar elsewhere.
So that would be what I wouldask people is do you know what
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you're getting into? And so thatthey have their eyes open as they move
here, because you've been here forfifty years. How's the community changed?
You know, it's it's a questionI asked somebody many years ago, and
he was an old logger who endedup when logging became, you know,
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not a very good occupation. OnBowen, he learned TV television repair and
I asked him, you know,what's the biggest change you've seen on Bowen?
And I expected him to say itwas the coming of the car ferry,
which happened around nineteen fifty eight,and he said, oh, no,
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it was much more fundamental than that. It was the coming of the
rural route, he said. AndI said, what do you mean the
rural route and he said, well, they started delivering mail to mailboxes and
he said that was the end ofcommunity as far as I was concerned.
Said before that, we always wentdown to the beau mart and had coffee,
and we knew everything that was goingon. And we had arrived at
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ten o'clock and by ten fifteen wewere up to date. And of course
you waited around at the post officeas maybe you came earlier when it was
open at nine o'clock to get thesame information. So you know, sometimes
it's surprising what people think has changedthe mouth. And of course everybody has
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their own benchmark, and it usuallyis the beginning of when they arrived,
so you know, we can imaginewhat things were like. And if you
read the book by Irene Howard BowenIsland eighteen seventy two to nineteen seventy two,
it just happenstance that I came innineteen seventy two, so maybe I
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should write the sequel to that asto what's happened in the last half century,
and I doubt I'd make it forthe next fifty. But one thing
that hasn't changed is polarity. Thatbone remains highly polarized. That you can
have an election with may or withtwo very very different people and get separated
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by two votes, or in theelection before in twenty fourteen that you had
three candidates and they were separated byunder fifty votes. Another anecdote, very
early when I moved, there wasan election and Larry Reid was running against
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Patrick Thomas for the GVRD director andthere was a meeting at Collins Hall,
which was of course the doc CommunityCenter back then, and there was an
artist on Bowen named Tommy Johnson,who was big, tall American with long
hair, and he made a signin the form of a heart, and
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on one side it said hippies forLarry Reid and the other side it said
hippies for Patrick Thomas. And sothe poor candidates were up in front,
staring out at this audience which hadquite a lot of the hippies in it,
and not why team their support atall, wanting to appeal to in
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fact the mainstream and they would see, you know, hippies for Larry Reid.
So Patrick Thomas would be very pleased. That's that that at least,
you know, he was not identifiedwith that. But then of course once
his turn came to talk, itgot flipped around and then he ended up
just sort of flipping it back andforth and back and forth, and everybody
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broke out in laughter of course.So you know that has not changed all
that, that polarity, It justtakes different forms. So it used to
be pro development, anti development.There was a you know, the Bowen
Island Improvement Association and the conservancy types, you know. And the difference now
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I think is more along the politicalspectrum or continuum of public interest versus private
interests or private property rights. Andwe tend to be, you know,
on the public interest side of things. But in every council we have seen
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people who really strongly espouse they wantless government, They don't like the island's
trust, they don't want to betold what to do, they just want
to be left alone. So Iwould say we're a much more complex community,
we have far more facilities. It'sreally interesting what the diversity actually is
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on the Island, even though itis fairly limited racially, and it is
people self select and it is undoubtedlya privileged place to be. Not most
people just simply couldn't live here becauseof their obligations and work. But I
think that, you know, everybodywho lives here actually cares for the community
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one way or another. It usedto be much simpler. There were what
I would call the settlers, thefamilies that came and homesteaded and logged and
you know, eked out a living, and then who worked for the Union
Steamship Company the term of the twentiethcentury. And then there were the rich
families who were mostly down at theSouth End and Hood Point, and those
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are dynasties, you know, andit's icons of Canadian business. Or the
Malkins and the Molsons and the Sawdersand you know, the Rogers, Rogers,
sugar families like that, who they'vebeen there since like the eighteen seventies,
eighteen eighties, and they staked outterritories and they are very much entrenched.
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What happened with the settlers and thepeople was that their descendants mostly ended
up being so workers or construction orthey're the ones that operated the equipment on
the island, so you know they'rethe ones if you look around and there's
Dormant Road and Davies Orchard and alot of those Smith Road those are named
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after families that are still you know, Twin Island Excavation is still owned by
a Davis and they were and remainpart of that community. So there were
the rich people that came, andthen there were the descendants of settlers,
and on top of that then camethe weekenders. And so I guess that
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you know, started with the Unionsteamship, but later on in the sixties
when you started getting these developments.So whether it was Davies down in Melmour
and Leonora or Tunstall Bay or ErnieNod doing Blue Water, they attracted people
who mostly came for the weekends ifyou stayed. And then the final layer
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were the largely younger renters. Therewere lots of rental cabins. When I
arrived, you could get a placefor eighty two one hundred dollars a month
in one of the old Union seamshipcabins and it had an oil stove and
you fixed it up and there area bunch of people, including Judy getty
you know who moved here and livedin places like that. Connie Wright lived
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in one of those places, andthey still stick around and they've definitely,
you know, their circumstances have changed. So there was that and now you
have there were six you know,the first faery in the morning left at
six forty five and there were halfa dozen cars on it, and now
we have overloads. So those arethe major changes. So where do you
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think we're headed as a community whenyou say we punch above our weight?
I know we've got an incredibly talentedbrain trust on the island, with big
players in just about every sector.We don't seem to be policy leaders in
the region, province or country.So how come well, I wouldn't say
that we aren't policy We may beinformally we're not policy leaders, but there
are by example we lead. Youknow. One of these, and I
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keep swinging back to political stuff isour first past the post alteration for having
double direct voting, and we dothat for the island's trust, and that
is unique. It is an extralayer of government that we have here.
But the way that we exercise choicein elections is actually could be used as
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a leadership model, but why thatdoesn't get translated into bigger picture stuff.
We're just a small player, andI would actually argue that sometimes we we
are the tail that swings swings thecow. So can you explain how the
cow became a municipality and how itinteracts with the Island's Trust. The Islands
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Trust was enacted in seventy three seventyfour, so it was one of the
things that the NDP did. Theother was creating the Agricultural Land Reserve,
which have actually endured despite there beingconsiderable opposition. And previous to that,
of course, you know, regionaldistricts were established I think in the early
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sixties maybe yeah, it was inthe sixties. Before that, it was
just sort of unincorporated areas and theydidn't have the regional district. So GVRD
was present on Bowen for all thetime that I have been here, and
you know, I was active withit from the early nineties, but certainly
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Ross Carter before that, and GaaleTaylor was a regional director. George Hellanius
nineteen eighty two was a regional directorand he basically was the one who talked
Crippen into selling his land, whichwas the remnants of the Union Steamship Lands,
so that was all under the aegisof GVRD. But GVRD also provided
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services on the island. They providedthe recreation, They oversaw the sewer in
the Cove after it was built.They basically handled the Cove Bay water curiously,
they didn't handle the other local servicearea water systems, but because Cove
was so much bigger than the otherones, they thought it not good enough
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to have it run by amateurs.So we had that impact from there from
that level of government going back quitea long waist. So the Islands Trust
when it came in, it wasquite a different beast than it became,
and it was always to do withthe same mandate preserve and protect, which
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arose actually not under the NDP butunder the Social Credit before that. And
one of the ministers, i thinkit was Ralph Lofmark was had a place
over on Pender Island and suddenly announcedwas Magic Lake Estates, which was twelve
hundred lots or fourteen hundred lots,something unbelievable, and it happened. It
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just got subdivided and there was noregard for having, you know, whether
you could have proper setbacks or septicor anything those things, and it was
actually the biggest subdivision that had everbeen undertaken at one go, and laf
Mark said, this is ridiculous,and they imposed the ten acre freeze,
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which then led to the Island's Trust. And then the Island's Trust kind of
tried on different hats, for itwas restructured and it was always a creature
of the provincial government the Island TrustAct, and they will port directly to
the Minister of Municipal Affairs, sothey are a different order of government,
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or in fact a higher order ofgovernment than regional districts or municipalities. And
they started gaining more authorities, andparticularly when they set up the local Trust
committees, they were authorized to administerall land use decision making. You know,
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Metro Vancouver didn't do any of thatbefore. It was all provincial government.
You know, the sub division wasthe approving officer, who was a
provincial appointee, and it usually actuallywas the head of highways in your area
who was the approving officer, andthey were mostly concerned about, you know,
what your driveway looked like it cameonto the road. So the honest
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trust was Zanubie on the block,no question about it. You know,
remarkably, it's been around now forfifty years. I remember a Minister of
Municipal Affairs saying that he'd like tosquash the trust like a bug. People
either love it or don't like it. People often like the idea and don't
like the way it works. Andnow it's being reviewed and the external review
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basically pointed out a number of shortcomingsand I do truly hope that, you
know, the way it operates isupdated. So how do we become a
municipality under the Islands Trust? Therewas always that option that you could incorporate,
and Bowen took a crack at itand in the early nineties and it
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was turned down. But bards themid nineties, a couple of things change.
A you know, there were alot of people you know, had
moved to Bowen. Bowen was operatedunder as an electoral area and Metro just
got sick and tired of dealing withour small problems and having to eye up
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both you know, committees and alsothe General Assembly to deal with how are
we going to handle this or thatsmall question on Bowen and one way of
dealing with it was to impose asurcharge, so when they did their rec
programming, they charged us. Andit was a union shop, it was
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fairly high priced help to begin with, so they ran that and then they
tacked on twenty seven percent as anadmin fee. We were wanting to have
a community center back then. Imean actually that started in the eighties,
but the early nineties, Don Nicholsondrew up wonderful plans for a community center
to be located right now where theback of bike park is, near the
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snake field, beside the big school. And it was going to be like
four point eight million dollars, andit was like, oh, that's way
too big, but we did thinkthat a smaller, just a hall,
would be a good start, andthat was to be located on what was
called the Library lot, which washyped off by Wolfgang and developing Kate's Hill,
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so that it's across from the Children'sCenter right at the beginning of Carter
wrote, and it still is anempty lot. So the idea was there
was a referendum to pass to buildthat, and it was for seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars and it failednarrowly, largely because there was no entity
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other than if you set up anonprofit society to administer the hall, and
people were leery about that because theywere worried about ownership. It would be
pewtedully owned by GVRD, and itwas turned down because they said, well,
we don't want them to be runningthat. And so people had this
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idea they wanted more local control.So people will tell you all kinds of
things that was to get out ofthe trust, or that wasn't true.
It was because we were an unwanted, orphaned child of Metro Vancouver and they
were making it difficult for us tocontinue the way we were. So we
had a vote and it was sixtyforty. You know, a lot of
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it was a pack of lies thatwe were sold a bill of goods.
We were told, you know,we might have twelve full time employees after
five years, and we had alot more than that, and now twenty
years later we have close to fiftyfull time employees. You know, it's
become a much bigger enterprise. Ithink that's you know, part of the
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illness of governance is that bureaucracies grow. But that is why we incorporated and
the psychological underpinnings with that was tobe masters of our own house. That
really and truly was was what drovethat. And if you think what is
currently going on at Cape Roger Curtiswith Metro Vancouver, the resistance is largely
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because it's taking local control away andimposing a higher level of government. And
so when the National Park came on, it was like, oh, we're
going to have to learn French,or we'll have to pay to get in
our park, or we won't beall get on the ferry in the afternoon,
or you know, whatever ideas thatpeople had which were actually unfounded,
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but what was genuinely true was thatthey didn't want to lose sovereignty. They
didn't want to lose local control.And curiously, Crippen Park, which of
course is used mostly by locals asare you know, the municipal parks that
we've developed, is viewed as ourpark and we just happened to, let
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you know, the other people comeand enjoy it as well, even though
it is a Metro Vancouver park.So that's why we incorporated, and that's
sort of you know, maybe thatisn't even relevant are important now, but
there are calls to well we should, we should unincorporate, and you go,
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okay, and so what would youdo? Then it's a difficult question
because it's hard to go back.The egg is cracked, and the similar
argument about what we should just getout of the trust actually has the same
problems. The Trust is interwoven intoBowen governance. It owns land on the
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island, It administers covenants on theisland. So if the Trust were to
leave Bowen Island, we would haveto buy fairry Fen back and they would
insist on selling it at market price, so we would never want to or
be able to afford some of that. There are programs like NAPTAP, there
are the covenants, there are thelegacies that the Islands Trust, through its
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conservancy arm, administers, and itwould be extremely difficult to disentangle from those.
So that leads me right into mynext question, which was, you
know, how do Bowen's and mediafree levels of government, municipality, Islands
Trust and Metro all fit together.Well, they all have different functions.
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So you know, in a senseMetro has receded because they no longer provide
services as many services on the island. You know, we get, by
the way, a great deal fromMetro. I mean in terms of value
value equation, we have this fourhundred acre park and the new addition at
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Dorman Point, which was just atconsiderable expense, and you know we're getting
two and a half million people topay for it, and we get the
primary benefit. We are part ofTranslink, which isn't you know, officially
part of Metro, but it is, and we send somebody to the Translink
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Board, to the Mayor's Council andwe make decisions. You know, we
share in the decision making. Ivoted for the Evergreen Line and Neil Boyd
was the was the swing vote thatvoted for the Canada Line. You know,
Bowen had a huge role in that. So you know you can invert
that and think, oh, wecontribute to in Metro Vancouver. We are
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viewed as sort of the escape valve, the green area, the recreation area,
and we are outside of the urbancontainment boundary, even though that isn't
legally binding because it is in factthe Islands Trust determines whether we can or
cannot do things. So Metro Vancouver, I don't know whether there's anything left
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out of that. We do getnine to one one services. We get
other things. We're not part ofsewer or water, and deliberately so.
The Island Struss actually in the policystatement has a clause that says no pipeline
shall ever be built to connect anisland to an adjacent community. So the
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two that would be most likely atrisk from that would be Gabriela Island and
Denman Island, both of whom areright now in the middle of a drought,
an unprecedented drought. They're almost virtuallyout of water and they are bringing
tanker loads of water onto the island. But the island's trusts recognize that,
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gee, if you allow water lines, suddenly you make it possible. It's
a limiting it's a bottleneck, it'sa limiting factor. It's a big limiting
factory at Cape Ronchi Curtis because that'sthe dry side of the island. So
we're not part of sewer and waterfor Metro Vancouver, but we do.
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We are part of some of theseother Front Islands trust. As I said,
that is an overlay, and ittoo has sort of receded into the
background because you know, Bowen isleft to its own devices, just like
the other local trust committees are leftto their own devices. In terms of
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doing making planning decision, what thelitmus test is is that it not be
at variance through the policy statements ofthe Islands Trust, and that whatever you're
doing also meshes with your official communityplan. In reality, what that comes
through is that one of the seniorplanners goes down a checklists and literally checks
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off boxes and you get a reportback from Islands Trust saying no, this
is not at variance. No,this is not at variance. Oh okay,
I guess that's good enough. Andit's only when something really is sticky
and if somebody brings it up,and it's usually you know, somebody sniping
from the sidelines like myself, thatthey go, oh, doesn't say anything
(36:20):
about apartments. So no, youcan't build an apartment unless you change your
community plan and create a definition forit. So the Islands Trust does not
have the same impact on day today functioning of the municipality, but it
does literally approve or disapprove of changesto the community plan. There is an
(36:44):
escape valve again, where you know, an aggrieved council that has been stopped
and their tracks can appeal to theprovincial government and say, well, we
think this is unfair. In twentyyears, that's never happened. So those
mechanisms are there. But the Trustdoes have those certain powers and as I'm
(37:04):
saying, they are interwoven, andI think that they are an underutilized resource
as well that we don't and Ithink Bob Turner touched on this quite a
lot when he spoke about it,that you know, they have remarkable mapping
capabilities, they have specialists in ecosystemmanagement, and we could be asking them
(37:28):
for how we could be using themto drive and develop our bylaws. It's
part of the feed that we payand getting to that, I think it's
a ridiculous question that has been includedas a referendum question. Should we be
revisiting how our contributions are made tothe Island's trust. You know what the
(37:51):
answer is is, of course wedon't want to pay or we want to
pay less, but it's done onan equitable basis. It's done on an
ad valorrean system. And unless youwanted a parcel tax and we all pay
the same amount on every parcel,so you take the total budget, divide,
but throw number of parcels within thetrust area and that is what you
(38:15):
pay, well, we would be. We wouldn't like that either, because
then we'd be paying for things thatwe don't for services we don't receive.
So we pay three hundred thousand dollarsout of a nine million dollar budget,
so we pay three percent, butwe actually represent about ten percent of the
(38:36):
value the ad valorum and actually morethan ten percent of the population of the
island's trust. So actually it isdone fairly and credit has to go to
Alison Morris who did that work withthe trust staff of winnuing out what were
trust wide services and which were localarea services. And so we don't pay
(39:01):
for any of the local planning servicesthat the other islands pay for. We
have our own planning staff. Sothat's what delineates those three levels. You
know, of course we've got provincialand federal above that, so we have
five levels of government, which youknow, for people who are on the
(39:22):
end of the spectrum that they wantmore freedom or they want less governmance,
you know, that might must stickin their throat. And then on top
of that those five levels, you'vegot things like, you know, your
local service areas, so you mightbe in a sewer district or if you're
in a strata like bell Terra,and there are other stratus on the island.
(39:43):
You know, you're also having topay those fees and be under the
thumb of a local strata that mayhave very art gained rules, and as
we know under the Condominium Act thereare they can do all kinds of things.
You know, if they don't likethe color of your lawn, they
can step in. So that's thedelineation. Remember that's government and that's a
(40:08):
structure. Really what drives governance arethe people and the process, and you
know, maybe that's something we cantalk about as well. Later on,
we've been talking with Peter Fritten,who is a retired local and regional politician
on Bowen Island. In this episode, he's been sharing his stories of life
on Bowen, offering his perspective ofhow he got here, and explaining our
(40:31):
five levels of government. If youenjoy this episode, please share it,
and if you know someone with astory to share, please have them contact
us on social media or at theConversation Lab dot ca. The Boone Island
podcast should be available monthly on yourfavorite podcasting platform. To learn when the
next episode is please join or subscribewherever you listen to your podcast. This
(40:52):
podcast was cobbled together in a littlecabin in the woods near Bowen Bay.
Our gratitude to the cosalius nations ofthe Squamish Musk, I'm slay with tooth
on whose traditional territories were able todo this work. Thanks for listening.
I'm down Shafer
Hundreds of years ago, when thesettlers arrived to Bowen Island, the Squamish
nation were hunting, fishing, andcamping on Nucliloqua. Cycles of logging,
farming, brickworks from a rare blueclay deposit, and a dynamite plant,
followed by tourism and housing development havedefined the year since. Some of the
(00:20):
themes that arose during pre election conversationssuggest we're on the cusp of yet another
evolution in our identity. This podcastseries seeks out perspectives from people who have
lived and worked on Bowen as afoundation for sparking conversations about who we are
and who we want to become asa community. If you do a search
(00:41):
on LinkedIn for Peter Frinton, you'llfind him as a self proclaimed retired local
regional politician at Bowen Island. Peterhas lived on Bowen for about fifty years
and he served on the Bowen Councilfour times. I had an opportunity to
catch up with him recently to learnmore about the political history of Bowen,
how he got here and who helpedus along the way. So can you
(01:03):
tell us a little bit about yourself? What brought you to Bowen And what
are you passionate about? Well,it's hard to know where to start.
But with regard to Bowen itself,I mean I came here as a ten
year old sea scout and came toa camporee at Cowan's Point. There was
a nice, big meadow. Iguess the Cowan's family kept cows or sheep
(01:26):
or something or had done in thepast, and it was a perfect place
in some ways. It was moredeveloped than it is now. There was
a proper dog just beside the islandthere din quite well and came over in
a decent sized water TAXI sort dischargedeverybody. But I'd seen Bowen from as
(01:48):
a sea scout. We had littlewhalers and they were actually whaling boats wooden
and which took eight people and eachhad an ar and you rode this or
it had a little gaffrid sale andthis was sort of the centerpiece. And
where because we kept them at EagleHarbor, where we headed to was to
(02:09):
out and around Bowen Island, andso I was very aware of Bowen from
that time as a child. Anyway, I had lots of fun at that
camparee and explored a bit, andit left an impression. A couple of
years later, I was going toschool with Ron Chromy, whose father was
(02:31):
Dawn Chromy, who was the publisherof the Vancouver Son, and he held
the Carrier camps over in Dunstall Bay, and so Ron said, yeah,
you can come over, even thoughI wasn't a carrier. He said,
you can come over, you justhave to camp out. And so I
went a couple of times and rodemy bicycle across the island with you know,
(02:54):
it was still a dirt road comingacross the island, and hung out
with these kids and had a lotof fun. Again, so I associated
Bowen with two things, with gettingaway from the world and having a whole
lot of fun. Of course,Don Cromi ended up closing down the camp
(03:15):
and developed Punchtall Bay and he marketedthat starting and I think it was nineteen
sixty four and the moniker was soclose but so far your dream home on
Bowen Island and you know, anabsolute perfect moniker and something that definitely did
(03:35):
apply to me. So some yearslater I was just finishing up university.
I guess this was late nineteen seventyone or around early seventy two, which
was a very tough winter, alot of snow and quite cold. And
I'd been volunteering for with an alternativeschool in Vancouver called Total Ed, which
is now a part of eric Hamberand very much under the fall of the
(04:01):
school board, but back then itwas a fairly independent school. And I've
been involved here and I was teachingmath and chemistry to kids who really and
truly did not want to or couldnot comprehend these things. They were not
mostly not very academically inclined, andthe school recognizes. And so an item
(04:23):
came up at a staff meeting saying, Gee, there's this place on Bowen.
It's an old homestead and the tenantsthere have abandoned it because they call
it Heartbreak Hill, because it wason the north slope and there was too
much snow and they couldn't get upand down. And those that family ended
(04:44):
up turned out to be the WiseMillers, who are of course still on
the island. But they wanted somebodyto go have a look and see whether
it was something the school might beinterested in, to help round out what
the kids' education was by having thembe in a non formal set up.
(05:04):
And so I jumped at the chanceand came over to look at it.
The tie in among the people thatwas a small consortium of owners, and
it was Jim and Ross Carter whowere longtime Bowen Islanders. Jim Carter went
on to be Deputy Minister of Educationfrom BC and Ross was a regent of
(05:31):
Vancouver Community College and got onto thefirst council here on Bowen, so they
were close ties with Bowen with that. And I trudged over, came over
and walked up from the cove,not quite knowing where to go, but
making my way along Gardener Road andup the hill from what is now the
(05:53):
gas station and the recycle and cameinto this opening of stark fruit trees against
the snow which was up to mythighs, and I went, oh,
my god, I want a placewas it was just it was wondrous And
as I said, I was tryingto get away from the world, and
(06:14):
there it was. It wasn't veryfar away at all. It was perfect.
So it was love at first sight. And I went back to the
school said yes, not only shouldwe rent it, but I would be
pleased to be the sort of thecoordinator of the farm. So that's how
I ended up on Bowen Island,and I haven't moved since. Well,
(06:36):
we've moved fifty feet because after tenyears the old house was pretty much falling
down, and we built a newone beside it, recycling a lot of
the wood from the old one.So we still live in the old house.
Actually, you know, the backdropfrom my room here is paneling from
(06:58):
the old house, so that's howit got here. But what I was
passionate about wasn't even very clear tome. I mean, there was obviously
a tension between wanting to get away, not wanting to have adult responsibilities,
and on the other hand, Iwanted engagement. I wanted a community,
and I found sort of both onBowen very quickly and got involved in things.
(07:24):
Well, it took a while beforeI really got involved deeply in the
seventies. Actually, I was attendingpolitical meetings in the eighties, I was
participating in them, and I endedup being Ross Carter's the right hand man
at GVRD or what's now Metro Vancouver. I was the alternate director and got
(07:46):
involved in the very first Livable Regionplan and started thinking in terms of the
region, and Bowen had not evenliterally been on the map we were part
of Metro Vancouver map ended at HorseeshBay, and so my first thing was
to say, well, actually weare part of it as well. And
I discovered over time and others havediscovered that actually we punch above our weight
(08:13):
in Metro Vancouver. We are veryable and dynamic member under Murray's skills.
When they had the referendum on whichwas courtesy of mister Falcon on transit,
it failed everywhere except in Vancouver andon Bowen Island. So Bowen is very
(08:33):
progressive. We weren't benefiting very directlyfrom expanded transit, but we voted in
favor of it, and we're oneof two jurisdictions that did. So Bowen
is a special place and I neverregret having moved here. In fact,
I worry about you know, willthey just carry me off or will they
(08:56):
throw me off the dock? Idon't know. So what would you say
to some new to the island orto somebody that wanted to move here.
Well, you know, if oneperson out of every hundred that comes and
visits bo when actually moved here,we'd be pretty overrun. There are,
So I'll take it that this isa newcomer who actually intends to move here.
(09:20):
First thing I would ask is,well, do you want to move
here because it's an islander. Despitethe fact that it's an island, most
people wouldn't even understand what that metricis. But you realize after you've been
here a while that islands are notonly limited and there's a hard edge to
them, and they're they're constrained,but they also are poor in the sense
(09:46):
of you don't have abundant water supplies, you don't have you know, you
have to run a cable for power, and there are difficulties associated with island
living. For most it comes downto while the ferry was later overloaded,
but there are other things that happenedand on Bone and specifically at twint Atkinson
(10:09):
the wing can be blowing two knots, and at pam Rocks in how Sound
and the same at hood Point itwill be growing a hurricane with an outflow
wind as Farmer's outflow, and thathas happened and knocked power out for as
long as seventeen days. That happenedin nineteen ninety one. So there are
(10:30):
cautions that people might be best tohear. The other thing is what the
nature of community is in a closedcommunity or you know, I'm saying it's
a limited small community, so it'sprobably the same in small town in Saskatuent.
But you know, I think RonWoodall captured it very well when he
(10:54):
said Bowen Island is an argument surroundedby water that you are essentially in it
together. You know, you neverchoose your neighbors, but in a bigger
place your neighbors you don't necessarily interactwith them. On Bowen you often depend
on them. You do interact withthem, you share a driveway with them,
(11:16):
you see them, they are youknow, you tend to have your
circle of friends are people who alsolive on Bowe Island because you're not going
out and not making it back onthe last ferry, so you know,
that would be the second question isto caution people about the nature of island
(11:39):
living and what island communities are reallyabout. The third thing I would point
out what the real facts are interms of people's longevity here, that some
come and stay for generations. Theaverage is seven or eight years that people
stay here. But really the morelikely thing is is you have your children
(12:00):
when and it's great when they're small, and then when they're teenagers. You'd
never see them because they're and you'redriving them into hockey on Saturday mornings,
into town. And so you moveoff the island because it's don't work for
you. And the interesting thing isis that those that stick it out,
or even some that move, endup coming back, or their kids move
(12:22):
off the island to get their educationand get established in their careers, and
then they move back and have kids. So there is a continuity there which
is quite remarkable. And I knowfrom having been an island trustee and traveling
through a bunch of the other islands, that the feeling is quite similar elsewhere.
So that would be what I wouldask people is do you know what
(12:46):
you're getting into? And so thatthey have their eyes open as they move
here, because you've been here forfifty years. How's the community changed?
You know, it's it's a questionI asked somebody many years ago, and
he was an old logger who endedup when logging became, you know,
(13:07):
not a very good occupation. OnBowen, he learned TV television repair and
I asked him, you know,what's the biggest change you've seen on Bowen?
And I expected him to say itwas the coming of the car ferry,
which happened around nineteen fifty eight,and he said, oh, no,
(13:30):
it was much more fundamental than that. It was the coming of the
rural route, he said. AndI said, what do you mean the
rural route and he said, well, they started delivering mail to mailboxes and
he said that was the end ofcommunity as far as I was concerned.
Said before that, we always wentdown to the beau mart and had coffee,
and we knew everything that was goingon. And we had arrived at
(13:52):
ten o'clock and by ten fifteen wewere up to date. And of course
you waited around at the post officeas maybe you came earlier when it was
open at nine o'clock to get thesame information. So you know, sometimes
it's surprising what people think has changedthe mouth. And of course everybody has
(14:13):
their own benchmark, and it usuallyis the beginning of when they arrived,
so you know, we can imaginewhat things were like. And if you
read the book by Irene Howard BowenIsland eighteen seventy two to nineteen seventy two,
it just happenstance that I came innineteen seventy two, so maybe I
(14:35):
should write the sequel to that asto what's happened in the last half century,
and I doubt I'd make it forthe next fifty. But one thing
that hasn't changed is polarity. Thatbone remains highly polarized. That you can
have an election with may or withtwo very very different people and get separated
(14:58):
by two votes, or in theelection before in twenty fourteen that you had
three candidates and they were separated byunder fifty votes. Another anecdote, very
early when I moved, there wasan election and Larry Reid was running against
(15:18):
Patrick Thomas for the GVRD director andthere was a meeting at Collins Hall,
which was of course the doc CommunityCenter back then, and there was an
artist on Bowen named Tommy Johnson,who was big, tall American with long
hair, and he made a signin the form of a heart, and
(15:43):
on one side it said hippies forLarry Reid and the other side it said
hippies for Patrick Thomas. And sothe poor candidates were up in front,
staring out at this audience which hadquite a lot of the hippies in it,
and not why team their support atall, wanting to appeal to in
(16:03):
fact the mainstream and they would see, you know, hippies for Larry Reid.
So Patrick Thomas would be very pleased. That's that that at least,
you know, he was not identifiedwith that. But then of course once
his turn came to talk, itgot flipped around and then he ended up
just sort of flipping it back andforth and back and forth, and everybody
(16:27):
broke out in laughter of course.So you know that has not changed all
that, that polarity, It justtakes different forms. So it used to
be pro development, anti development.There was a you know, the Bowen
Island Improvement Association and the conservancy types, you know. And the difference now
(16:52):
I think is more along the politicalspectrum or continuum of public interest versus private
interests or private property rights. Andwe tend to be, you know,
on the public interest side of things. But in every council we have seen
(17:15):
people who really strongly espouse they wantless government, They don't like the island's
trust, they don't want to betold what to do, they just want
to be left alone. So Iwould say we're a much more complex community,
we have far more facilities. It'sreally interesting what the diversity actually is
(17:38):
on the Island, even though itis fairly limited racially, and it is
people self select and it is undoubtedlya privileged place to be. Not most
people just simply couldn't live here becauseof their obligations and work. But I
think that, you know, everybodywho lives here actually cares for the community
(18:03):
one way or another. It usedto be much simpler. There were what
I would call the settlers, thefamilies that came and homesteaded and logged and
you know, eked out a living, and then who worked for the Union
Steamship Company the term of the twentiethcentury. And then there were the rich
families who were mostly down at theSouth End and Hood Point, and those
(18:30):
are dynasties, you know, andit's icons of Canadian business. Or the
Malkins and the Molsons and the Sawdersand you know, the Rogers, Rogers,
sugar families like that, who they'vebeen there since like the eighteen seventies,
eighteen eighties, and they staked outterritories and they are very much entrenched.
(18:52):
What happened with the settlers and thepeople was that their descendants mostly ended
up being so workers or construction orthey're the ones that operated the equipment on
the island, so you know they'rethe ones if you look around and there's
Dormant Road and Davies Orchard and alot of those Smith Road those are named
(19:18):
after families that are still you know, Twin Island Excavation is still owned by
a Davis and they were and remainpart of that community. So there were
the rich people that came, andthen there were the descendants of settlers,
and on top of that then camethe weekenders. And so I guess that
(19:41):
you know, started with the Unionsteamship, but later on in the sixties
when you started getting these developments.So whether it was Davies down in Melmour
and Leonora or Tunstall Bay or ErnieNod doing Blue Water, they attracted people
who mostly came for the weekends ifyou stayed. And then the final layer
(20:03):
were the largely younger renters. Therewere lots of rental cabins. When I
arrived, you could get a placefor eighty two one hundred dollars a month
in one of the old Union seamshipcabins and it had an oil stove and
you fixed it up and there area bunch of people, including Judy getty
you know who moved here and livedin places like that. Connie Wright lived
(20:29):
in one of those places, andthey still stick around and they've definitely,
you know, their circumstances have changed. So there was that and now you
have there were six you know,the first faery in the morning left at
six forty five and there were halfa dozen cars on it, and now
we have overloads. So those arethe major changes. So where do you
(20:56):
think we're headed as a community whenyou say we punch above our weight?
I know we've got an incredibly talentedbrain trust on the island, with big
players in just about every sector.We don't seem to be policy leaders in
the region, province or country.So how come well, I wouldn't say
that we aren't policy We may beinformally we're not policy leaders, but there
are by example we lead. Youknow. One of these, and I
(21:21):
keep swinging back to political stuff isour first past the post alteration for having
double direct voting, and we dothat for the island's trust, and that
is unique. It is an extralayer of government that we have here.
But the way that we exercise choicein elections is actually could be used as
(21:45):
a leadership model, but why thatdoesn't get translated into bigger picture stuff.
We're just a small player, andI would actually argue that sometimes we we
are the tail that swings swings thecow. So can you explain how the
cow became a municipality and how itinteracts with the Island's Trust. The Islands
(22:11):
Trust was enacted in seventy three seventyfour, so it was one of the
things that the NDP did. Theother was creating the Agricultural Land Reserve,
which have actually endured despite there beingconsiderable opposition. And previous to that,
of course, you know, regionaldistricts were established I think in the early
(22:36):
sixties maybe yeah, it was inthe sixties. Before that, it was
just sort of unincorporated areas and theydidn't have the regional district. So GVRD
was present on Bowen for all thetime that I have been here, and
you know, I was active withit from the early nineties, but certainly
(22:56):
Ross Carter before that, and GaaleTaylor was a regional director. George Hellanius
nineteen eighty two was a regional directorand he basically was the one who talked
Crippen into selling his land, whichwas the remnants of the Union Steamship Lands,
so that was all under the aegisof GVRD. But GVRD also provided
(23:22):
services on the island. They providedthe recreation, They oversaw the sewer in
the Cove after it was built.They basically handled the Cove Bay water curiously,
they didn't handle the other local servicearea water systems, but because Cove
was so much bigger than the otherones, they thought it not good enough
(23:45):
to have it run by amateurs.So we had that impact from there from
that level of government going back quitea long waist. So the Islands Trust
when it came in, it wasquite a different beast than it became,
and it was always to do withthe same mandate preserve and protect, which
(24:07):
arose actually not under the NDP butunder the Social Credit before that. And
one of the ministers, i thinkit was Ralph Lofmark was had a place
over on Pender Island and suddenly announcedwas Magic Lake Estates, which was twelve
hundred lots or fourteen hundred lots,something unbelievable, and it happened. It
(24:30):
just got subdivided and there was noregard for having, you know, whether
you could have proper setbacks or septicor anything those things, and it was
actually the biggest subdivision that had everbeen undertaken at one go, and laf
Mark said, this is ridiculous,and they imposed the ten acre freeze,
(24:52):
which then led to the Island's Trust. And then the Island's Trust kind of
tried on different hats, for itwas restructured and it was always a creature
of the provincial government the Island TrustAct, and they will port directly to
the Minister of Municipal Affairs, sothey are a different order of government,
(25:17):
or in fact a higher order ofgovernment than regional districts or municipalities. And
they started gaining more authorities, andparticularly when they set up the local Trust
committees, they were authorized to administerall land use decision making. You know,
(25:37):
Metro Vancouver didn't do any of thatbefore. It was all provincial government.
You know, the sub division wasthe approving officer, who was a
provincial appointee, and it usually actuallywas the head of highways in your area
who was the approving officer, andthey were mostly concerned about, you know,
what your driveway looked like it cameonto the road. So the honest
(26:03):
trust was Zanubie on the block,no question about it. You know,
remarkably, it's been around now forfifty years. I remember a Minister of
Municipal Affairs saying that he'd like tosquash the trust like a bug. People
either love it or don't like it. People often like the idea and don't
like the way it works. Andnow it's being reviewed and the external review
(26:29):
basically pointed out a number of shortcomingsand I do truly hope that, you
know, the way it operates isupdated. So how do we become a
municipality under the Islands Trust? Therewas always that option that you could incorporate,
and Bowen took a crack at itand in the early nineties and it
(26:52):
was turned down. But bards themid nineties, a couple of things change.
A you know, there were alot of people you know, had
moved to Bowen. Bowen was operatedunder as an electoral area and Metro just
got sick and tired of dealing withour small problems and having to eye up
(27:15):
both you know, committees and alsothe General Assembly to deal with how are
we going to handle this or thatsmall question on Bowen and one way of
dealing with it was to impose asurcharge, so when they did their rec
programming, they charged us. Andit was a union shop, it was
(27:37):
fairly high priced help to begin with, so they ran that and then they
tacked on twenty seven percent as anadmin fee. We were wanting to have
a community center back then. Imean actually that started in the eighties,
but the early nineties, Don Nicholsondrew up wonderful plans for a community center
to be located right now where theback of bike park is, near the
(28:03):
snake field, beside the big school. And it was going to be like
four point eight million dollars, andit was like, oh, that's way
too big, but we did thinkthat a smaller, just a hall,
would be a good start, andthat was to be located on what was
called the Library lot, which washyped off by Wolfgang and developing Kate's Hill,
(28:26):
so that it's across from the Children'sCenter right at the beginning of Carter
wrote, and it still is anempty lot. So the idea was there
was a referendum to pass to buildthat, and it was for seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars and it failednarrowly, largely because there was no entity
(28:47):
other than if you set up anonprofit society to administer the hall, and
people were leery about that because theywere worried about ownership. It would be
pewtedully owned by GVRD, and itwas turned down because they said, well,
we don't want them to be runningthat. And so people had this
(29:10):
idea they wanted more local control.So people will tell you all kinds of
things that was to get out ofthe trust, or that wasn't true.
It was because we were an unwanted, orphaned child of Metro Vancouver and they
were making it difficult for us tocontinue the way we were. So we
had a vote and it was sixtyforty. You know, a lot of
(29:30):
it was a pack of lies thatwe were sold a bill of goods.
We were told, you know,we might have twelve full time employees after
five years, and we had alot more than that, and now twenty
years later we have close to fiftyfull time employees. You know, it's
become a much bigger enterprise. Ithink that's you know, part of the
(29:52):
illness of governance is that bureaucracies grow. But that is why we incorporated and
the psychological underpinnings with that was tobe masters of our own house. That
really and truly was was what drovethat. And if you think what is
currently going on at Cape Roger Curtiswith Metro Vancouver, the resistance is largely
(30:18):
because it's taking local control away andimposing a higher level of government. And
so when the National Park came on, it was like, oh, we're
going to have to learn French,or we'll have to pay to get in
our park, or we won't beall get on the ferry in the afternoon,
or you know, whatever ideas thatpeople had which were actually unfounded,
(30:41):
but what was genuinely true was thatthey didn't want to lose sovereignty. They
didn't want to lose local control.And curiously, Crippen Park, which of
course is used mostly by locals asare you know, the municipal parks that
we've developed, is viewed as ourpark and we just happened to, let
(31:03):
you know, the other people comeand enjoy it as well, even though
it is a Metro Vancouver park.So that's why we incorporated, and that's
sort of you know, maybe thatisn't even relevant are important now, but
there are calls to well we should, we should unincorporate, and you go,
(31:26):
okay, and so what would youdo? Then it's a difficult question
because it's hard to go back.The egg is cracked, and the similar
argument about what we should just getout of the trust actually has the same
problems. The Trust is interwoven intoBowen governance. It owns land on the
(31:48):
island, It administers covenants on theisland. So if the Trust were to
leave Bowen Island, we would haveto buy fairry Fen back and they would
insist on selling it at market price, so we would never want to or
be able to afford some of that. There are programs like NAPTAP, there
are the covenants, there are thelegacies that the Islands Trust, through its
(32:13):
conservancy arm, administers, and itwould be extremely difficult to disentangle from those.
So that leads me right into mynext question, which was, you
know, how do Bowen's and mediafree levels of government, municipality, Islands
Trust and Metro all fit together.Well, they all have different functions.
(32:36):
So you know, in a senseMetro has receded because they no longer provide
services as many services on the island. You know, we get, by
the way, a great deal fromMetro. I mean in terms of value
value equation, we have this fourhundred acre park and the new addition at
(32:58):
Dorman Point, which was just atconsiderable expense, and you know we're getting
two and a half million people topay for it, and we get the
primary benefit. We are part ofTranslink, which isn't you know, officially
part of Metro, but it is, and we send somebody to the Translink
(33:19):
Board, to the Mayor's Council andwe make decisions. You know, we
share in the decision making. Ivoted for the Evergreen Line and Neil Boyd
was the was the swing vote thatvoted for the Canada Line. You know,
Bowen had a huge role in that. So you know you can invert
that and think, oh, wecontribute to in Metro Vancouver. We are
(33:44):
viewed as sort of the escape valve, the green area, the recreation area,
and we are outside of the urbancontainment boundary, even though that isn't
legally binding because it is in factthe Islands Trust determines whether we can or
cannot do things. So Metro Vancouver, I don't know whether there's anything left
(34:07):
out of that. We do getnine to one one services. We get
other things. We're not part ofsewer or water, and deliberately so.
The Island Struss actually in the policystatement has a clause that says no pipeline
shall ever be built to connect anisland to an adjacent community. So the
(34:28):
two that would be most likely atrisk from that would be Gabriela Island and
Denman Island, both of whom areright now in the middle of a drought,
an unprecedented drought. They're almost virtuallyout of water and they are bringing
tanker loads of water onto the island. But the island's trusts recognize that,
(34:52):
gee, if you allow water lines, suddenly you make it possible. It's
a limiting it's a bottleneck, it'sa limiting factor. It's a big limiting
factory at Cape Ronchi Curtis because that'sthe dry side of the island. So
we're not part of sewer and waterfor Metro Vancouver, but we do.
(35:13):
We are part of some of theseother Front Islands trust. As I said,
that is an overlay, and ittoo has sort of receded into the
background because you know, Bowen isleft to its own devices, just like
the other local trust committees are leftto their own devices. In terms of
(35:34):
doing making planning decision, what thelitmus test is is that it not be
at variance through the policy statements ofthe Islands Trust, and that whatever you're
doing also meshes with your official communityplan. In reality, what that comes
through is that one of the seniorplanners goes down a checklists and literally checks
(35:57):
off boxes and you get a reportback from Islands Trust saying no, this
is not at variance. No,this is not at variance. Oh okay,
I guess that's good enough. Andit's only when something really is sticky
and if somebody brings it up,and it's usually you know, somebody sniping
from the sidelines like myself, thatthey go, oh, doesn't say anything
(36:20):
about apartments. So no, youcan't build an apartment unless you change your
community plan and create a definition forit. So the Islands Trust does not
have the same impact on day today functioning of the municipality, but it
does literally approve or disapprove of changesto the community plan. There is an
(36:44):
escape valve again, where you know, an aggrieved council that has been stopped
and their tracks can appeal to theprovincial government and say, well, we
think this is unfair. In twentyyears, that's never happened. So those
mechanisms are there. But the Trustdoes have those certain powers and as I'm
(37:04):
saying, they are interwoven, andI think that they are an underutilized resource
as well that we don't and Ithink Bob Turner touched on this quite a
lot when he spoke about it,that you know, they have remarkable mapping
capabilities, they have specialists in ecosystemmanagement, and we could be asking them
(37:28):
for how we could be using themto drive and develop our bylaws. It's
part of the feed that we payand getting to that, I think it's
a ridiculous question that has been includedas a referendum question. Should we be
revisiting how our contributions are made tothe Island's trust. You know what the
(37:51):
answer is is, of course wedon't want to pay or we want to
pay less, but it's done onan equitable basis. It's done on an
ad valorrean system. And unless youwanted a parcel tax and we all pay
the same amount on every parcel,so you take the total budget, divide,
but throw number of parcels within thetrust area and that is what you
(38:15):
pay, well, we would be. We wouldn't like that either, because
then we'd be paying for things thatwe don't for services we don't receive.
So we pay three hundred thousand dollarsout of a nine million dollar budget,
so we pay three percent, butwe actually represent about ten percent of the
(38:36):
value the ad valorum and actually morethan ten percent of the population of the
island's trust. So actually it isdone fairly and credit has to go to
Alison Morris who did that work withthe trust staff of winnuing out what were
trust wide services and which were localarea services. And so we don't pay
(39:01):
for any of the local planning servicesthat the other islands pay for. We
have our own planning staff. Sothat's what delineates those three levels. You
know, of course we've got provincialand federal above that, so we have
five levels of government, which youknow, for people who are on the
(39:22):
end of the spectrum that they wantmore freedom or they want less governmance,
you know, that might must stickin their throat. And then on top
of that those five levels, you'vegot things like, you know, your
local service areas, so you mightbe in a sewer district or if you're
in a strata like bell Terra,and there are other stratus on the island.
(39:43):
You know, you're also having topay those fees and be under the
thumb of a local strata that mayhave very art gained rules, and as
we know under the Condominium Act thereare they can do all kinds of things.
You know, if they don't likethe color of your lawn, they
can step in. So that's thedelineation. Remember that's government and that's a
(40:08):
structure. Really what drives governance arethe people and the process, and you
know, maybe that's something we cantalk about as well. Later on,
we've been talking with Peter Fritten,who is a retired local and regional politician
on Bowen Island. In this episode, he's been sharing his stories of life
on Bowen, offering his perspective ofhow he got here, and explaining our
(40:31):
five levels of government. If youenjoy this episode, please share it,
and if you know someone with astory to share, please have them contact
us on social media or at theConversation Lab dot ca. The Boone Island
podcast should be available monthly on yourfavorite podcasting platform. To learn when the
next episode is please join or subscribewherever you listen to your podcast. This
(40:52):
podcast was cobbled together in a littlecabin in the woods near Bowen Bay.
Our gratitude to the cosalius nations ofthe Squamish Musk, I'm slay with tooth
on whose traditional territories were able todo this work. Thanks for listening.
I'm down Shafer
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