One Man's Trash
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
--Bill Vaughn
Robyn wasn’t impressed from the first encounter.
‘What are you, some kind of tree hugger?’ he said. Like it was some form of spiritual infirmity. She couldn’t hear him, over the angry deep-throated growl of heavy metal-on-metal excavator carnage, ripping up the forest around them. The smell of diesel, dirt, and cedar accompanied the visual devastation. A gigantic chipper-shredder sprayed a long continuous plume of ground forest, high into the air. ‘I want to know if it’s possible to save some of it,' she said. It wasn’t.
None of the characters in this story were evil. But some of them may have been carriers. The first was the original owner. He had bought the 12-acre property, two lots over, a few years before we arrived. After clearing a large site on the water, he built a modest, white, plastic-sided two-story house for his family, but fretted about whether he would have enough money to live on, in retirement. We used to visit each other, for barbeques, and bluegrass jam sessions. He planted a redwood grove down near the lake, and even gave us a couple of saplings, to plant on our own property. We took them home, along the short path and with the long view I thought we all shared. In 1994, Robyn and I noticed too many cars, parked down and the lights up, at his house, every night in a row, for a week. A few days later he came over, to tell us he had sold out…Foggy Mountain Breakdown. His plan was ‘to buy a woodlot somewhere.' The day the trees fell, another neighbour asked if he could rescue some firewood, but it was ‘spoken for.’
I’ve never been a big fan of Prince Charles, but this one he got right: ‘Somehow, we have to find the courage to re-assert the once commonplace belief that human beings have a duty to act as the stewards of creation,’ he said. Somehow, and unfortunately for Westwood Lake and creation, Banjo skipped class that day.
Enter the developer. No tree hugger, he, despite a local award for ‘Environmental Sustainability.' In 1994, he was still more grin than granola. The trees came down. Two whole years of metal-on-metal grating noise, from 7 am to 11 pm, rubbed the neighbourhood’s nerve endings raw. Not satisfied with a standard-density residential housing project, he set out to extract as much profit out of his clearcut as possible. The result was a 12-acre paved paradise of hydrocarbon runoff into Westwood Lake. The developer added and locked automatic gates, further isolating his asphalt sea from the rest of the community. Because of the property’s ‘Agricultural Zoning’ designation, he was able to call it a campground. Because of influence, an ol’ boy City Councillor referred to the new 150-lot carpark as a hell of a job. He got the first part right.
There was even an ingenious name devised for the campground. The sign outside says Luxury Resort. The definition of a campground is a site where people on holiday can pitch a tent. But no tents were allowed at the luxury resort, only Recreational Vehicles on 150 tiny asphalt rectangles of sumptuous parking luxury. Nonetheless, the developer surmounted one semantic obstacle after another. When City prohibited him from selling these parking spots as freehold real estate, he sold Lifetime Memberships. In 1998, when he realized that City bylaws restricted living in tin cans to six months out of the year, he applied for a Permanent Residence exemption to the rule. The Westwood Neighbourhood Association gathered 500 signatures on a petition, opposing the creation of this ghetto. City Hall equivocated. They assigned the ol’ boy Councillor to strike a Campground Committee, under the guise of conflict resolution. Conflict of interest contaminated the committee, and the unprecedented result changed the history of provincial municipal legislation. City created New RV Zoning, allowing year-round residency in recreational vehicles, and the proliferation of bylaw-exempt outbuildings, and other structures (with the grandfathering of those already erected).
Still, the blacktop investors struggled. In 2005, The developer applied again to rezone the property, to allow strata ownership. Once more into the breech. The public hearing was a fiasco. Flag-waving, Save our Strata-buttoned RV troglodytes flooded in en masse in support of this vital low-cost housing lifestyle choice. The chanting drowned out the debate.
To this day, the strata is still in limbo, because of the cost involved in upgrading. The property is now for sale, and a recent offer has fallen through. The self-induced handicap of lifetime members, and the history of incessant zoning brinksmanship, neighbourhood alienation, and environmental degradation (with the loss of wildlife and the natural aesthetic that used to grace our area), may make some prospective buyers cautious, for a while longer. Whoever that next fictitious character may be, the likelihood is that he will continue the inexorable tradition of devastation, that characterizes the species. We can look forward to another two years of metal-on-metal improvements. If we reward the misguided ethos that consumers are more important than citizens, our contempt for responsible stewardship will go on forever. For how could we ever conceive of an alternative to creating yet another place not worth caring about?
I walk through it quite all the time. The other day I met a lovely lady I know on the trail there. Her name is Vi. She has no plans to extract the most profit from anything. We spoke of the ducks and the rain and the forest. And we spoke of Bill Morrell, her companion before he died in 2003. Bill was a contractor but, unlike some environmental sustainability prize-winners, thirty years before he died, Bill donated 275 acres of forest to the public. For their enjoyment, year-round from dawn to dusk. No automatic gates. No lifetime memberships. No rezoning roulette. It’s called Morrell Nature Sanctuary, now owned by the Nature Trust of British Columbia. It’s also on a lake.
You can take refuge in a sanctuary. I like that. Robyn and I now have two giant redwoods. They touch the sky. I like that too.
--Bill Vaughn
Robyn wasn’t impressed from the first encounter.
‘What are you, some kind of tree hugger?’ he said. Like it was some form of spiritual infirmity. She couldn’t hear him, over the angry deep-throated growl of heavy metal-on-metal excavator carnage, ripping up the forest around them. The smell of diesel, dirt, and cedar accompanied the visual devastation. A gigantic chipper-shredder sprayed a long continuous plume of ground forest, high into the air. ‘I want to know if it’s possible to save some of it,' she said. It wasn’t.
None of the characters in this story were evil. But some of them may have been carriers. The first was the original owner. He had bought the 12-acre property, two lots over, a few years before we arrived. After clearing a large site on the water, he built a modest, white, plastic-sided two-story house for his family, but fretted about whether he would have enough money to live on, in retirement. We used to visit each other, for barbeques, and bluegrass jam sessions. He planted a redwood grove down near the lake, and even gave us a couple of saplings, to plant on our own property. We took them home, along the short path and with the long view I thought we all shared. In 1994, Robyn and I noticed too many cars, parked down and the lights up, at his house, every night in a row, for a week. A few days later he came over, to tell us he had sold out…Foggy Mountain Breakdown. His plan was ‘to buy a woodlot somewhere.' The day the trees fell, another neighbour asked if he could rescue some firewood, but it was ‘spoken for.’
I’ve never been a big fan of Prince Charles, but this one he got right: ‘Somehow, we have to find the courage to re-assert the once commonplace belief that human beings have a duty to act as the stewards of creation,’ he said. Somehow, and unfortunately for Westwood Lake and creation, Banjo skipped class that day.
Enter the developer. No tree hugger, he, despite a local award for ‘Environmental Sustainability.' In 1994, he was still more grin than granola. The trees came down. Two whole years of metal-on-metal grating noise, from 7 am to 11 pm, rubbed the neighbourhood’s nerve endings raw. Not satisfied with a standard-density residential housing project, he set out to extract as much profit out of his clearcut as possible. The result was a 12-acre paved paradise of hydrocarbon runoff into Westwood Lake. The developer added and locked automatic gates, further isolating his asphalt sea from the rest of the community. Because of the property’s ‘Agricultural Zoning’ designation, he was able to call it a campground. Because of influence, an ol’ boy City Councillor referred to the new 150-lot carpark as a hell of a job. He got the first part right.
There was even an ingenious name devised for the campground. The sign outside says Luxury Resort. The definition of a campground is a site where people on holiday can pitch a tent. But no tents were allowed at the luxury resort, only Recreational Vehicles on 150 tiny asphalt rectangles of sumptuous parking luxury. Nonetheless, the developer surmounted one semantic obstacle after another. When City prohibited him from selling these parking spots as freehold real estate, he sold Lifetime Memberships. In 1998, when he realized that City bylaws restricted living in tin cans to six months out of the year, he applied for a Permanent Residence exemption to the rule. The Westwood Neighbourhood Association gathered 500 signatures on a petition, opposing the creation of this ghetto. City Hall equivocated. They assigned the ol’ boy Councillor to strike a Campground Committee, under the guise of conflict resolution. Conflict of interest contaminated the committee, and the unprecedented result changed the history of provincial municipal legislation. City created New RV Zoning, allowing year-round residency in recreational vehicles, and the proliferation of bylaw-exempt outbuildings, and other structures (with the grandfathering of those already erected).
Still, the blacktop investors struggled. In 2005, The developer applied again to rezone the property, to allow strata ownership. Once more into the breech. The public hearing was a fiasco. Flag-waving, Save our Strata-buttoned RV troglodytes flooded in en masse in support of this vital low-cost housing lifestyle choice. The chanting drowned out the debate.
To this day, the strata is still in limbo, because of the cost involved in upgrading. The property is now for sale, and a recent offer has fallen through. The self-induced handicap of lifetime members, and the history of incessant zoning brinksmanship, neighbourhood alienation, and environmental degradation (with the loss of wildlife and the natural aesthetic that used to grace our area), may make some prospective buyers cautious, for a while longer. Whoever that next fictitious character may be, the likelihood is that he will continue the inexorable tradition of devastation, that characterizes the species. We can look forward to another two years of metal-on-metal improvements. If we reward the misguided ethos that consumers are more important than citizens, our contempt for responsible stewardship will go on forever. For how could we ever conceive of an alternative to creating yet another place not worth caring about?
I walk through it quite all the time. The other day I met a lovely lady I know on the trail there. Her name is Vi. She has no plans to extract the most profit from anything. We spoke of the ducks and the rain and the forest. And we spoke of Bill Morrell, her companion before he died in 2003. Bill was a contractor but, unlike some environmental sustainability prize-winners, thirty years before he died, Bill donated 275 acres of forest to the public. For their enjoyment, year-round from dawn to dusk. No automatic gates. No lifetime memberships. No rezoning roulette. It’s called Morrell Nature Sanctuary, now owned by the Nature Trust of British Columbia. It’s also on a lake.
You can take refuge in a sanctuary. I like that. Robyn and I now have two giant redwoods. They touch the sky. I like that too.
Lawrence Winkler is a retired physician, traveller, and natural philosopher. His métier has morphed from medicine to manuscript. He lives with Robyn on Vancouver Island and in New Zealand, tending their gardens and vineyards, and dreams. His writings have previously been published in The Montreal Review and many other literary journals. His books can be found online at www.lawrencewinkler.com.