At the Wilderness Edge: The Rise of the Antidevelopment Movement on Canada's West Coast 9780773556461

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AT T H E WILDERNESS E DG E

McGill-Queen’s Rural, Wildland, and Resource Studies Series series editors: Colin A.M. Duncan, James Murton, and R.W. Sandwell The Rural, Wildland, and Resource Studies Series includes monographs, thematically unified edited collections, and rare out-of-print classics. It is inspired by Canadian Papers in Rural History, Donald H. Akenson’s influential occasional papers series, and seeks to catalyze reconsideration of communities and places lying beyond city limits, outside centres of urban political and cultural power, and located at past and present sites of resource procurement and environmental change. Scholarly and popular interest in the environment, climate change, food, and a seemingly deepening divide between city and country, is drawing non-urban places back into the mainstream. The series seeks to present the best environmentally contextualized research on topics such as agriculture, cottage living, fishing, the gathering of wild foods, mining, power generation, and rural commerce, within and beyond Canada’s borders. 1 How Agriculture Made Canada Farming in the Nineteenth Century Peter A. Russell

7 Permanent Weekend Nature, Leisure, and Rural Gentrification John Michels

2 The Once and Future Great Lakes Country An Ecological History John L. Riley

8 Nature, Place, and Story Rethinking Historic Sites in Canada Claire Elizabeth Campbell

3 Consumers in the Bush Shopping in Rural Upper Canada Douglas McCalla

9 The Subjugation of Canadian Wildlife Failures of Principle and Policy Max Foran

4 Subsistence under Capitalism Nature and Economy in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Edited by James Murton, Dean Bavington, and Carly Dokis 5 Time and a Place An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island Edited by Edward MacDonald, Joshua MacFadyen, and Irené Novaczek 6 Powering Up Canada A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 Edited by R.W. Sandwell

10 Flax Americana A History of the Fibre and Oil That Covered a Continent Joshua MacFadyen 11 At the Wilderness Edge The Rise of the Antidevelopment Movement on Canada’s West Coast J.I. Little

AT T H E WILDERNESS E DG E The Rise of the Antidevelopment Movement on Canada’s West Coast

J. I . LI T TLE

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2019 isbn 978-0-7735-5630-0 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-5640-9 (paper) isbn 978-0-7735-5646-1 (epdf) isbn 978-0-7735-5647-8 (epub) Legal deposit first quarter 2019 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Little, J. I. (John Irvine), 1947–, author At the wilderness edge : the rise of the antidevelopment movement on Canada’s West Coast / J.I. Little. (McGill-Queen’s rural, wildland, and resource studies series ; 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn 978-0-7735-5630-0 (cloth).–isbn 978-0-7735-5640-9 (paper). –isbn 978-0-7735-5646-1 (epdf).–isbn 978-0-7735-5647-8 (epub) 1. Protest movements – British Columbia. 2. Green movement – British Columbia. 3. Economic development – Social aspects – British Columbia. I. Title. II. Series: McGill-Queen’s rural, wildland, and resource studies series ; 11 hm883.l58 2019

303.48'409711

c2018-905124-8 c2018-905125-6

Contents

Figures | vii

Acknowledgments | ix Introduction | 3

1

“One of the finest pieces of empty real estate in

Canada”: The Creation of Devonian Harbour Park,

1963–83 | 15

2 3

“The greatest playground in the entire Dominion”:

Defending Hollyburn Ridge, 1932–76 | 50

“Restful Refuge” or “Vancouver’s Bedroom”? The

Making of Bowen Island’s First Official Community

Plan, 1969–77 | 72

4 5

“The Newcastle of the Pacific”? Protecting the

Squamish Estuary and Howe Sound, 1971–79 | 97 “The best use of this island is for recreation”:

Resisting the Gambier Island Copper Mine Proposal, 1979–85 | 116

Conclusion | 128 Appendix | 135 Notes | 139

Bibliography | 187 Index | 195

Figures

Howe Sound relief map | 2 1.1 Len Norris cartoon, Vancouver Sun, 5 October 1973, in Norris: 101 Cartoons from the Vancouver Sun, 23rd Annual Collection | 14 1.2 Map showing location of Devonian Harbour Park | 16 1.3 “Four Seasons (All Seasons Park).” Brian Kent photographer, 29 July 1978. Source: Vancouver Sun/The Province Archives, Merlin id, 229,940,760 | 17 1.4 “How Would Entrance to Stanley Park Look if Four Seasons Development Goes Ahead?” Brian Kent photographer, Vancouver Sun, 9 March 1971. Source: Vancouver Sun/The Province Archives, Merlin id, TC#71-849 | 25 1.5 “All Seasons Park, at the Entrance to Stanley Park,” The Province, 7 June 1971 (no byline). Source: Vancouver Sun/The Province Archives, Merlin id 212,076,538 | 33 1.6 “Four Seasons (All Seasons Park). Alderman Harry Rankin Talking to Hippie Crowd.” Gord Croucher photographer. Source: Vancouver Sun/The Province Archives, Merlin id 229,803,644 | 36 1.7 Plan for Devonian Harbour Park, 1983. Source: City of Vancouver Archives, cov-S62-11, location 241-A-6, file 3 | 47

FIGURES

2.1 “Hollyburn Lodge, March 1927.” Source: West Vancouver Archives, Joseph E. Leyland fonds, 141.wva.ley | 53 2.2 Map showing Cypress Bowl land ownership and access. Source: West Vancouver Archives, 999.0141 dwv, Report of the 1970 Fact Finding Committee, plate 1 | 61 2.3 Len Norris cartoon, Vancouver Sun, 27 January 1972. Source: Simon Fraser University Library Editorial Cartoons Collection, 1-1972-01-27 | 65 3.1 Map of Bowen Island showing Union Steamship Company land. Source: Bowen Island Museum and Archives, “Bowen Island Study” (Ministry of Lands, Parks, and Housing, Greater Vancouver Regional District, 1981), 9A | 75 3.2 Picketing Stan James’s clearcutting. Source: Bowen Island Museum and Archives, photo no. 1565 | 93 4.1 Aerial photograph of Squamish Estuary, 11 October 1972. Source: John Buchanan | 99 5.1 Map of Gambier Island, 25 October 1979 | 117 5.2 Elspeth Armstrong, 1976. Source: Elspeth Armstrong | 124

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank series coeditor Ruth Sandwell for encouraging me to submit the manuscript for publication in the Rural, Wildland, and Resource Studies series. I have been inspired by her enthusiasm for rural history over the years since she was my doctoral student at Simon Fraser University. I also want to thank McGill-Queen’s editor Kyla Madden for shepherding the book so smoothly and expeditiously through the publication process and particularly for taking the care to select two exceptionally helpful anonymous readers, whom I hereby thank as well. Coeditors Kathleen Fraser and Finn Purcell and copy editor Shelagh Plunkett were also a pleasure to work with. And a special thanks is due to my student research assistant Alice Huang, who was not only very skilled at digging up sources but also methodical in organizing them and timely in presenting them. Most of the sources for this research project were found in local archives collections – collections that include news clippings as well as the fonds of community-based organizations. Particularly helpful were Catherine Bayly at the Bowen Island Museum and Archives, and the staff at the City of Vancouver Archives, the West Vancouver Archives, the Vancouver Public Library, and the bc Legislative Library. Vancouver historian Bob McDonald cast his critical eye on my main arguments, Ben Bradley was my go-to guy for sources on parks and tourism, Eryk

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Martin pointed to studies on the bc environmental movement, and Sean Kheraj informed me about the sources for the Harbour Park protests. Aateka Shashank produced the Howe Sound and Harbour Park maps, and Ben Frey the one for Gambier Island. On Bowen Island, my neighbour and friend Richard Smith provided expert computer assistance as well as serving as a sounding post during our weekend dog walks. Also on the island, Katherine Gish provided access to the Tunstall Bay Community Association Archives and Eric Sherlock persuaded me to join the board of Bowen Eco-Alliance, thereby sparking my interest in the historical background to the campaigns we were engaged in. A young Bowen eco-warrior, himself, during the 1970s, John Rich kindly consented to an interview as well as providing access to his extensive file of documents, which are now deposited in the Bowen Island Archives. In addition, environmental activist John Buchanan of Squamish sent me very useful research material on Howe Sound, and Elspeth Armstrong of Hornby Island responded to my questions about her leading role in the Gambier Island protest. Rafe Mair, who was provincial environment minister at the time, and Doug Morrison of Squamish also kindly responded to my inquiries. In addition, I wish to thank Bowen Islanders Will Husby, Sue Ellen Fast, and Bob Turner for their interest and support, and to dedicate this book to the Howe Sound environmental activists who, like them, work tirelessly for the benefit of their communities and future generations. Finally, essential to the production of this book was research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, but my greatest debt goes, once again, to my wife Andrea for providing the love and support that keeps me going.

x

AT T H E WILDERNESS E DG E

Howe Sound relief map.

CHAPTER 2

Introduction The line which marks off the frontier from the farmstead, the wilderness from the baseland, the frontier from the metropolis, runs through every Canadian psyche. — W.L. Morton, The Canadian Identity (1961), 93.

As the above statement by W.L. Morton suggests, Canadians have long associated their national identity with the wilderness.1 Nowhere has this been more the case than on the west coast where the provincial tourism board uses the tagline “Super, Natural British Columbia,” trumpeting: “We are the sea to sky province of abundant wildlife and cities on the edge of wilderness. We are a province shaped by nature. It has nurtured our people, our history, our culture … and our visitors.”2 Such claims are increasingly open to question, given that 85 per cent of the province’s population lives in urban areas and 60 per cent are in the Lower Mainland alone. In fact, local boosters now describe Vancouver as a city without a history, one that consequently offers unlimited opportunities for development.3 But that promotional image is misleading, as well, because it conveniently overlooks the history of popular challenges to development projects within the west coast metropolis and its surrounding communities. Two interrelated examples are the protracted protests in the late 1960s and early 1970s against the projects aimed at “renewing” Vancouver’s working-class Strathcona neighbourhood and building a freeway that would have destroyed the commercial section of neighbouring Chinatown, not to mention the elimination of several blocks of historic buildings in Gastown.4 Indeed, Greenpeace was famously born in a city that one

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founding member later recalled as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shitdisturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita in the world.”5 Antiestablishment youth culture clearly made a strong mark on Vancouver, as it did in other Canadian cities during the later 1960s and early ’70s.6 But a closer look at the west coast city and its peripheral area reveals that by the end of the ’60s there was also emerging a less radical, more broad-based, and more enduring culture of resistance, one that challenged the long-established assumption that there should be few limits or restrictions to economic growth and urban development.7 While Greenpeace was confronting nuclear testing and students were challenging the power structure within universities, older citizens – many of them professionals and many of them women – were organizing and petitioning to protect the city’s open green spaces8 and peripheral wild land areas from commercial and industrial development. The title of this book refers to the antidevelopment “movement,” but this was a series of locally based movements with little interconnection among the leading organizers.9 These actions may not have represented a challenge to the capitalist system, but they did demand that in the interests of the public good the state should place limits on what is commonly referred to as free enterprise. Influenced by the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, the environmental movement at that time was particularly concerned with air and water pollution.10 This was certainly the case for those opposed to the Squamish coal port and Gambier copper mine proposals examined in chapters 4 and 5, respectively. But the other protests explored in this volume were environmentalist in a different, less urgent sense insofar as they were less about the protection of a healthy natural environment in the face of industrialization than about opposition to large-scale urban and urban-fringe property de4

Introduction

velopment as a threat to the human enjoyment of open green spaces. That threat was not to a deeply entrenched rural way of life, as in Nova Scotia during the same general time period,11 but to what members of the mobile middle class considered to be a requisite for a psychologically balanced “lifestyle,” a word that became popular in the 1960s. The attraction to undeveloped spaces for personal well-being has a long history, dating to the dawn of urbanization, for – as Peter J. Schmitt notes in his book on the arcadian myth in urban America – it idealized places that lay “somewhere on the urban fringe, easily accessible and mildly wild.”12 But it was not until the 1960s and ’70s that such romantic sentiments – originally associated with rural picnics, lakeside cottages, roadside camp sites, public parks, and so on – resulted in a widespread back-to-the-land movement on the part of the baby-boom generation.13 Some young adherents of what was known as the countercultural movement also embraced anarchist politics,14 but for most people the desire to protect natural spaces did not imply a rejection of modern urban life (despite the antiurban rhetoric) or a resort to confrontational public protests. It did, however, reflect a significant shift in public sentiment, most notably within the most populous corner of a province where the drive, since the settlement era a century earlier, had been to wrest natural resources from a challenging physical environment. Historical geographer Graeme Wynn notes that this “difficult realm,” with its immense mountain ranges, was “a forbidding antagonist” that “brooked little benevolence from those anxious to convert it to their purposes.”15 Facilitated by a major expansion in hydroelectric generation facilities, as well as by extension of the highways network, the province’s annual timber production increased from 22 million cubic metres in 1950 to 54.7 million cubic metres by 1970, and the value of mineral production grew from $180 million in 1960 to $630 million by 1972.16 This economic expansion, argues political scientist Jeremy Wilson, resulted in increased leisure time and mobility, which in turn led to a surge in outdoor recreation activity and growing interest in the environment.17 To this shift in consumption should be added public 5

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reaction to the environmental devastation and human dislocation caused by a number of the province’s megadevelopment projects.18 Whichever was the more important underlying factor, however, the antidevelopment protests we shall examine reflected a questioning of the faith in unlimited urban expansion and what long-serving Social Credit premier W.A.C. Bennett repeatedly referred to as “the Good Life.”19 Whether this phrase implied an instrumentalist view of nature as little more than a collection of resources to be harnessed or harvested, or, as historian James Murton suggests, the belief that “development was natural and was proceeding more or less in partnership with the existing environment,”20 the result was much the same as far as Bennett’s resource-based economic policy was concerned. One might argue that the defeat of the Social Credit government by the left-leaning New Democratic Party (ndp) in 1972 represented a challenge to the postwar hegemony of high modernity, distinguished from modernity by its greater willingness to break from the historical and geographical contexts of places in the pursuit of material progress. Geographer David Harvey further refers to high modernity as “scientifically grounded technical-bureaucratic rationality as purveyed through monolithic corporate, state, and other forms of institutionalized power.”21 Nineteen seventy-two also marked a significant turning point in the city of Vancouver’s governance when the election of the Electors’ Action Movement (team) slate led by Art Phillips ended three decades of domination by the prodevelopment Non-Partisan Association (npa). Neither the ndp nor team rejected the abovementioned “technical-bureaucratic rationality,” however, and the protest groups, themselves, relied upon the reports of state-employed scientists and other technical experts to support their causes, as we shall see.22 This short volume of five detailed local histories does not pretend to present a comprehensive overview of the resistance to large-scale development in Vancouver and its surrounding area. Firstly, there were conservation protests long before the 1960s – the failed attempt during the 1920s to save the last remaining old-growth timber in Surrey, which 6

Introduction

lies to the east of Vancouver, being one example.23 But what changed in the 1960s was not only a move beyond conservation, which is associated with the demand for more efficient use of resources rather than their permanent preservation, but the rise of a protest movement that was more broad-based and therefore more politically effective. Another limitation of this study is that it examines only one edge of the broader metropolitan region, roughly following a geographic trajectory from the northwest corner of Vancouver further north to Hollyburn Ridge, then west to Bowen Island, and north again to Squamish before circling back to Gambier Island in the early 1980s. Not only do the surrounding suburbs largely remain to be studied but there were other protests in the heart of Vancouver itself, most notably the antifreeway struggle, noted above. The sites chosen for this volume are broadly representative, however, insofar as they are four distinctive landscape types – an urban shoreline, a mountain plateau, two relatively small islands, and an estuary. And the “stakeholders” ranged from downtown high-rise dwellers to hikers, skiers, and recreational boaters (not always different people), as well as ferry commuters, small business operators, liberal professionals, industrial workers, and First Nations members. The five protracted, complex, and ultimately successful antidevelopment protests are therefore representative of a broad-based grass-roots movement on the southwest coast of British Columbia. To those not familiar with the geographical areas and political jurisdictions referred to in the following chapters, a brief description is in order. All the places discussed lie within the Lower Mainland, but its boundaries are neither formal nor stable. It is generally understood to stretch from Vancouver to the American border on the south and eastward up the lower Fraser Valley as far as the edge of the mountains at Hope. To the north, however, Squamish has only been included in recent years as the transportation links to Vancouver have improved.24 More limited in area and more clearly defined than the Lower Mainland, the Greater Vancouver Regional District became a corporate entity (now known as the Metro Vancouver Regional District) in 1965. Its twenty-one member municipalities include West Vancouver and 7

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Bowen Island, but not Gambier Island or Squamish, and its board consists of the mayors and a limited number of councillors from each municipality, based on the population of that municipality.25 Finally, one more level of government is the Islands Trust, established in 1974 to oversee planning and zoning on the Gulf Islands, as we shall see in chapters 3 and 5. As for the broader political context of the antidevelopment protests examined here, they were part of a culture of political activism beginning in the 1960s. That culture has generally been identified with the rise of the New Left26 and with what historian Christopher Dummitt refers to as the decline of political deference.27 Most of the local organizations involved, however, were far from being radical in tactics or political ideology. As we shall see in chapter 1, those who opposed the construction of high-rise buildings in what became known as Devonian Harbour Park included members of political and labour organizations, as well as anarchistic members of the Youth International Party (Yippies). But the driving force was community groups, including those based in the well-to-do Kitsilano and Point Grey neighbourhoods. Nor was this an environmental struggle in the strict sense of the word, for little attention was paid to the ecological impact of infilling the foreshore, and the land had long since been cleared of its natural vegetation. It was, however, the main gateway to the iconic Stanley Park. It was largely because Stanley Park had become so sacrosanct, and because the neighbouring West End was undergoing intensive high-rise development, that groups mobilized to protest the extension of that same development between Georgia Street and Coal Harbour to the very edge of the long-established park. As a result, the site that most people now wrongly assume to be part of Stanley Park remains an open space, not much used by the public but providing an uninterrupted view at the edge of the downtown core to Brockton Point, West Vancouver, and the North Shore mountains. One of the original aims of the property development project on Coal Harbour was to attract tourists to an exclusive hotel, and much the same can be said for the ambitious ski resort planned for Cypress 8

Introduction

Bowl that had been carved by glacier out of Hollyburn Ridge. Hollyburn Ridge, in turn, is a relatively accessible southern extension of the snow-capped North Shore mountains which, like Stanley Park, are iconic features of the west coast city. Chapter 2 examines how the small-scale protests against logging Hollyburn Ridge in the 1930s evolved into the 1960s protests against the massive size of the proposed new ski resort. The concern was not for the preservation of old-growth trees or threatened species, a concern that would develop in later years, but for the potential spoliation of what many urbanites considered to be a natural playground. The result, as with Harbour Park, was the sidelining of the private entrepreneurs, this time by the newly elected New Democratic Party which finally opened a modest downhill ski operation in Cypress Bowl in 1976. Within close view of the peaks that surround Cypress Bowl, the urban expansionist pressure was also felt on Bowen Island, which had long served as a summer resort for cottage owners, campers, and picnickers. Because of the island’s proximity to the mainland, the inauguration of a car-ferry service in 1957 brought a wave of resident families whose breadwinners commuted to the city to work. Like the inhabitants of the other Gulf Islands, however, Bowen’s commuters as well as its summer residents clearly felt that they had rejected urban stress and suburban conformity for a more relaxing and independent lifestyle. As a result, when plans were made to convert the former Union Steamship Company’s picnic, camping, and small-cottage site in Snug Cove to a densely settled housing development, residents and seasonal property owners rose up in protest. Chapter 3 examines how, after eight years of resistance and negotiation, the island’s Official Community Plan adopted in 1977 would ensure that population growth remained slow and limited, with the result that most of the land surrounding Snug Cove was preserved as Crippen Regional Park in 1984. At the opposite end of Howe Sound from Bowen Island, the small lumber-producing town of Squamish began to feel a different kind of expansionist pressure in the late 1960s, namely that of industrial growth. As we shall see in chapter 4, the Squamish protest movement 9

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was less about preserving a nonurban lifestyle than about protecting the ecologically sensitive estuary from the proposed coal port. But that port would have also had an impact on the human quality of life insofar as it would have endangered not only the commercial salmon fishery and the survival of the local First Nations community but also the town’s air quality and the leisure activities of the many recreational fishermen who rented boats at the Howe Sound marinas. Furthermore, nearby Britannia Beach was rejected as an alternative coal port site not because it was an ecologically sensitive zone but largely because it would blight the spectacular view for tourists driving north from Vancouver to the newly established Whistler ski resort. As we shall see in chapter 5, however, the challenge of industrial development in Howe Sound did not end in 1979, when the coal port proposal finally died, for that same year a Vancouver mining company floated a proposal to develop a large-scale open-pit copper and molybdenum mine on Gambier Island, to the immediate north of Bowen. The Social Credit government was caught on the horns of a dilemma. Its choice was either to alienate the resource-development sector upon which it relied heavily for political support or to anger the tourist industry as well as the boat owners and skiers of Vancouver and West Vancouver who certainly did not wish to have their view spoiled by a scarred landscape as they sailed up Howe Sound or drove to Whistler. What the government chose to do was delay by allowing the mining exploration licences to expire as a result of the economic recession before placing a ban on future mining of the island in 1985. As in the Squamish coal port case, then, ecological considerations were bolstered by recreational and tourism ones. In short, these five chapters provide an in-depth examination of antidevelopment movements at or near what was popularly perceived to be the wilderness edge. The word “edge” may seem inappropriate for Devonian Harbour Park, which lies close to Vancouver’s downtown and the high-rise towers of its West End, but the park also marks the border of human habitation at the city’s northwestern periphery where neighbouring Stanley Park remains largely forested. Distinct from 10

Introduction

other large urban parks in that it was not the creation of a landscape architect, much of Stanley Park fosters the illusion to city dwellers of being wilderness.28 Closer to true wilderness (though – as historian William Cronon has argued – that concept is itself a cultural invention),29 Hollyburn Ridge on the North Shore lies at the edge of rugged mountains that remain snow-capped into the summer months. As for Bowen Island, also within close sight of Vancouver, its three forested mountains have forced property development to take place largely in scattered pockets near the shoreline. And nearby Gambier Island is so mountainous that it has very few inhabitants even today. Finally, the town of Squamish lies between the high Coast Range and the end of a fjord-like inlet widely celebrated for its spectacular wilderness scenery. In a sense, places such as Bowen Island and Squamish were borderlands between the wilderness and the city, yet the cultural influence was largely in one direction, from the metropolis outward, as illustrated by the rise of the antidevelopment movement, itself.30 Furthermore, the purpose of all the protests we shall examine was to draw a borderline between the developed and the undeveloped, that is, to maintain the boundary between what was urban and what was “nature,” and that stance – somewhat paradoxically – actually became more rigid over time. More research will be needed to determine how representative the antidevelopment movement examined here was as far as Canada as a whole was concerned. The Vancouver area is distinctive insofar as its residents have closer access to large wilderness areas than those of any other major population centre in North America and the corollary is that its population expansion is more physically constrained by mountains and ocean, not to mention the protected agricultural belt of the lower Fraser Valley. That said, several studies have focused on the antifreeways movements of other Canadian cities during the late 1960s and 1970s.31 Also, historian Steve Penfold’s article on a small town near Toronto between 1965 and 1975 suggests that the outlying communities studied in this volume were not the only ones in Canada to challenge urban expansion.32 11

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One feature that Canada’s west coast antidevelopment movement shared with similar movements elsewhere was its highly localized nature,33 for it was actually a series of local community-based and single-issue movements with no overall organizational structure. To quote Richard Walker concerning the San Francisco Bay area, “The big groups stand out like downtown skyscrapers – monumental, symbolic, and dominating – but they are far from the sum of the landscape of urban environmentalism.”34 Even though a Vancouver branch of the Sierra Club was established in 1969, followed by Greenpeace two years later, the fact remains that major environmental organizations played little role in the local antidevelopment protests, focusing instead on pollution control and the nuclear threat.35 The small Squamish branch of the Scientific Pollution and Environmental Control Society (also known as the Society for Pollution and Environmental Control, and now known as the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation) was the single exception, for by 1972 spec had shifted its focus from pollution abatement to what its newsletter referred to as “the source of pollution, growth itself.”36 Another striking feature of the antidevelopment protests studied here is the important role played by women, a feature also noted in recent environmental histories of Hamilton and Nova Scotia, as well as San Francisco.37 The female organizers in Vancouver were not radical feminists any more than most of them or their male counterparts identified themselves as environmentalists, but they were clearly taking significant steps towards a more inclusive role in political life. Furthermore, we need to take the actions of such low-profile individuals and their organizations into account if we are to understand what Samuel Hays refers to as the rise of the broad-based “environmental culture” that fed into the organized “environmental movement.”38 The stubborn resistance to property development at the entrance to Stanley Park, the rejection of a tourism-oriented outdoor recreation centre on the North Shore mountains, the opposition to a large-scale housing development project on Bowen Island, and the movement to protect Howe Sound each reflected an assumption that access to un12

Introduction

spoiled natural spaces was important for the psychological well being of people living in an increasingly crowded urban environment. That assumption was certainly not unique to Vancouver or its surrounding communities, but physical geography helps to explain why the backlash against a history of unfettered large-scale development was particularly strong there. Like the reaction to the rapid expansion of suburban tract housing in the United States, which, according to Adam Rome’s Bulldozer in the Countryside, led to the growing popularity of that country’s environmental movement,39 the antidevelopment campaigns this volume examines contributed to an ecological awareness and a sense of grassroots empowerment that has reached a wide population base in this era of protests against crude-oil pipelines, liquefied “natural” gas plants, and coal superports in the Vancouver area and beyond. As Walker observes of the San Francisco Bay area, the greater Vancouver region is not simply “a place full of green spaces, green projects, and green organizations. It is a place where green enthusiasms, like open space, are built into the fabric of urban life.”40

13

1.1 “Things are looking up …,” Len Norris cartoon, Vancouver Sun, 5 October 1973.

CHAPTER 1

“One of the finest pieces of empty real

estate in Canada”: The Creation of Devonian Harbour Park, 1963–83

Few people in Vancouver have heard of Devonian Harbour Park, which fronts Coal Harbour to the west of Denman Street, even though thousands of motorists pass by it every day on their commute to and from the North Shore. The reason for the small park’s invisibility, or more accurately its anonymity, is that it is an eastward extension of the much larger Stanley Park. The notion that this would be a public space dates back at least as far as 1929 when the first city plan stated that “Coal Harbour, in its present state, is a serious disfigurement of Stanley Park, and every opportunity should be taken to acquire the property on the north side of Georgia Street as far east as the Auditorium,” which was at the north end of Denman Street. Seventeen years later, the 1946 supplement to the city plan reiterated that “The present development in this area is so detrimental to such an attractive and valuable portion of the City that large expenditures would be justified to place it under public control.”1 What was being objected to was what Donald Gutstein in his Vancouver Ltd. describes as “‘rundown’ ship repair yards, ramshackle wharfs, and deteriorating storage sheds.”2 The solution initially fastened upon, however, would not be public ownership but consolidation into the hands of large-scale developers, for – in Gutstein’s words – “There were tremendous profits to be made by redeveloping the three blocks from their industrial uses

1.2 Map showing location of Devonian Harbour Park. 1.3 Opposite “Four Seasons (All Seasons Park),” by Brian Kent, 29 July 1978.

to high-density residential – commercial-marina uses. The land had all the right qualities: an excellent view, a waterside location, Stanley Park with all its recreational facilities right next door, and the downtown business district close by.”3 Paradoxically, it was not population growth that brought the pressure for Vancouver’s downtown development in the 1960s and 1970s but the reverse: the number of city residents increased by only 10.8 per cent between 1961 and 1971 and actually declined slightly from 426,256 to 410,188 between 1971 and 1981. This demographic stagnation was the result of a flight to the suburbs caused, in turn, by soaring real estate values and improved commuter highway facilities. The fact that the ratio of the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s population living in the city proper declined from 62 per cent in 1951 to only 43 per cent in 1971, and that the downtown merchants faced increasing com16

petition from suburban shopping malls, only intensified the desire to promote inner-city property development as a countermeasure. Fortunately for Vancouver’s boosters, the expanding forest, mining, and hydroelectric industries were beginning to erect large head-office buildings in the downtown area by the mid-1960s, with the result that the value of the city’s building permits grew from $36,847,190 in 1960 to $71,296,808 in 1970, before mushrooming to $236,357,663 in 1976. The lack of undeveloped land in the peninsular downtown area – hemmed in by the Burrard Inlet to the north, the Georgia Strait to the west, and False Creek to the south – was resulting in the construction of increasingly tall high-rise towers, with the city’s West End becoming Canada’s highest-density residential neighbourhood.4 There was little protest against the destruction of the West End’s aging single-family residences in order to erect those towers, but neighbouring Stanley Park was becoming more valued than ever as a natural retreat and recreation area.5 Thus, when a development permit was issued in 1963 for the block of land on Coal Harbour next to the park’s entrance, there was an outburst of sustained public protest by 17

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a surprisingly wide variety of local community and political organizations. The leaders, if not nearly all the members of the neighbourhood organizations, were white and middle class, but women played a prominent role at a time when they were still highly underrepresented in elected office, and there was also support from labour unions and radical youths. Powerful corporations did their best over a number of years to build high-rise hotels and apartment buildings on the very valuable piece of land, but the days of unfettered expansion were coming to an end. Observing that a “gray haze” now often obscured “those breath-taking North Shore mountains,” the Vancouver Sun claimed in 1971 that “Mayor Tom Campbell’s boasts about Vancouver’s growth have become hollow, for some, who wince when he insists the city’s West End will become the Manhattan of the West Coast.”6 In 1976 the last in a series of would-be developers of the contested land at the entrance to Stanley Park was finally thwarted by public pressure groups. In fact, opposition to development had become so strong that after the city council acquired the land that year it was unable to offset improvement costs by adding public amenities. As a result, the site remained a wasteland until an Alberta charitable foundation came to the rescue in 1982.

The First Proposal: Coal Harbour Investments The first step towards the attempted development of the site was taken in 1962 when Webb and Knapp Canada, owned by the highly successful New York developer William Zeckendorf, assembled all the private properties between Cardero Street and the entrance to Stanley Park.7 The company then formed Coal Harbour Investments to develop the property, which had been rezoned to high-density commercial. The plan it submitted included twelve luxury apartment blocks, ranging in height from twenty to thirty-five storeys, all to be built within ten years. A project of this scale would require the lease of the federally

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owned water lots as well as infilling them to the high-water mark, thereby adding twenty-three acres to the five that had been purchased.8 The city’s Community Arts Council supported the plan, recommending only minor alterations, but the Vancouver Parks Board (elected by city residents) opposed it and the municipality’s powerful Technical Planning Board – made up of the department heads involved with planning, assessment, and engineering – expressed strong reservations.9 The board conceded that a “very run-down” residential area close to downtown would be rebuilt “in a most attractive way”; that with modifications to provide for more waterfront commercial facilities the development would “enhance the attractiveness of Vancouver for both tourists and residents at large”; that views and access to the waterfront would be improved; and that the city would benefit from additional taxes. For the plan to be approved, however, the Technical Planning Board argued that it would need significant improvements, including preservation of the waterfront for marine activities and designation of approximately five acres for tourism-related facilities. The board’s opinion was also that the density requested – 50 per cent higher than in the neighbouring West End – was “grossly excessive” given that it would accommodate 6,500 to 9,500 people. In fact, the density was “equal to over 60% of all the purpose-designed apartment buildings now located in the West End.” The proposal would therefore delay the planned replacement of the more than a hundred acres of aging houses in the West End. The Technical Planning Board’s report also suggested that it was doubtful that Georgia Street would be able to handle the extra traffic, even with the relief of pressure from the Lions Gate Bridge that would follow the anticipated (but never built) third crossing over Burrard Inlet.10 Coal Harbour Investments replied that the density should be based on the entire 28.1 acres,11 much of which was then underwater and controlled by the National Harbours Board (nhb). Furthermore, the Downtown Business Association protested that, “If downtown Vancouver is going to survive, the density of the population in the area,

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particularly in the West End, must be increased, and to set a limit of 65,000 people far understates the potential.”12 The progrowth NonPartisan Association (npa), which had controlled the municipal council since 1940, thought along the same lines.13 Mayor Bill Rathie, whose election slogan had been “Let’s Get Vancouver Moving,” rather predictably declared that he was “very disappointed” with the “negative thinking” of the Planning Board. “Sure we’ll ask for their advice and take whatever part of it is good for the city,” he added, “but we are not going to allow them to destroy the constructive thinking of private developers.” Equally outspoken, but in opposition, was Harry Rankin, the high-profile lawyer and former member of the Communist party who was president of the Central Council of Ratepayers. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, when the rezoning application went forward for a public hearing at the Playhouse Theatre in June 1963, the meeting attracted 600 people.14 “The audience became so vociferous in opposition to the proposed plan,” it was later claimed, “that Mayor Rathie threatened to close down the hearing and expel them.”15 Without a ward system for civic elections, Vancouver residents relied to a considerable degree upon neighbourhood organizations to make their wishes known. Thus, speaking against the Coal Harbour Investment project were representatives of the Kitsilano Ratepayers’ Association, the Fairview Ratepayers’ Association, the Sunrise Ratepayers’ Association, the West End Ratepayers’ Association, the West End Downtown Association, the West End Community Council, and the Northwest Point Grey Home Owners’ Association. Beyond the neighbourhood level, the Apartment and Lodginghouse Association, the Central Council of Ratepayers, the Community Planning Association of Canada, and the Vancouver Committee of the Communist Party of Canada also registered their objections to the development plan. The Communists, however, were alone in arguing that the rezoning was premature given the lack of a plan for the city’s port facilities at a time when Pacific trade was projected to double or triple within the next decade. The Vancouver Town Planning Commission – an advisory body appointed by council to represent community interests – sup20

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ported the proposal but only on condition of lower density, the creation of a more attractive and defined public waterfront walkway, protection of views, and so on. Otherwise, the only collective voices of support came from the Vancouver Board of Trade, the Downtown Business Association, and the Community Arts Council.16 This did not stop the developer-friendly city council from giving its stamp of approval three days after the public meeting;17 the Coal Harbour Investments proposal would, however, go no further.

The Second Proposal: Harbour Park Developments The following year, in 1964, Webb and Knapp’s financial difficulties forced it to sell the Coal Harbour Investments holding to Harbour Park Developments, established by Montreal’s Power Corporation and a syndicate of local businessmen.18 Coal Harbour Investments had not formally acquired the water lot leases that were a condition of the rezoning granted them, but – with its substantial resources and strong Liberal connections – Harbour Park Developments was quick to resolve that issue under very favourable conditions, namely a sixty-threeyear lease at six cents a square foot.19 In 1965 the company submitted a rezoning application for fifteen high-rise buildings (an increase of three from the Coal Harbour Investments plan), ranging from fifteen to thirty-one storeys in height, with no town houses but more square footage for apartment development and double the former amount for commercial purposes. Also added was ground level parking for 317 cars (there had been none in the previous plan), but the landscape setback along Georgia Street was reduced.20 The Technical Planning Board felt that the new plan was generally an improvement because it would “create a greater sense of openness,”21 but the Community Arts Council withdrew its support, criticizing the uniformity and spatial grouping of the buildings, the greater obstruction of views, and the insufficiency of open green areas. Should the developers not revert to the superior plan approved two years earlier, the Arts Council argued, the city 21

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should “acquire the said land with a view to its use as a park and as a site for a museum – art gallery complex.”22 The public ownership option was, in fact, gaining in popularity. For example, the West End and Downtown Ratepayers’ Association submitted a brief in March 1965 requesting that a plebiscite be put to the ratepayers in D.L. 185 (the area between Burrard Street and Stanley Park) for the acquisition of 28.1 acres of Coal Harbour (23.1 acres of which were foreshore controlled by the nhb), “for the public use and welfare for all people and for all time.” The brief noted that under the new federal urban renewal legislation Ottawa would pay 50 per cent and the province 25 per cent of the cost to acquire and clear industrial slums. This would leave only $1 million for the city to pay, which was a relatively small amount, the brief argued, compared to the two to three million dollars worth of land the council had recently offered Stafford Smythe to build a hockey coliseum on the assumption that it was “for the common good.” The proposed plebiscite would even ask the West End ratepayers if they alone would be willing to pay the city’s share of the cost. The Ratepayers’ brief concluded that the extra tax for a typical home on a thirty-three-foot lot would be only $20 per year, which was “considerably less than the cost of the paved lanes which, for the most part were forced upon the ratepayers of the westend by the council.”23 A hint that a motive for the urban park initiative might have been to maintain local property values can be seen in the Ratepayers’ complaint that 223 acres in the West End had been up-zoned for apartments, but only seventy-eight acres had apartment buildings on them. Further reflecting an over-supplied property market was the fact that there were 1,800 unoccupied suites, with 5,300 coming onto the market within the next few months. An additional 3,200 apartments in Coal Harbour, with its unobstructed views and low-cost land rental from the nhb, would obviously make it more difficult for West End proprietors to sell their land for the purposes at which it was being taxed. The West End and Downtown Ratepayers’ Association was anxious, however, to forestall charges that its brief was motivated by the eco22

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nomic self-interest of a few. It claimed that its plan had “the heartfelt, positive and unanimous backing of the West End Community Council which is composed of two official delegates from each and every political party, every church, and every worthwhile organization such as the P.T.A., Royal Canadian Legion, [and] the Non-Pensioned Widows’ Association of Canada.” Moreover, it reminded the city council, “we have the support of the elected Vancouver Parks Board members – elected by the same electorate as yourselves.”24 At the public hearing held in April 1965 the Ratepayers’ Association submitted another brief, this time pointing to the trend toward increased leisure time and increased delinquency, coupled with the worldwide population explosion. Rather than high rises and a hotel, it argued, there should be “a redesigned bigger entrance to Stanley Park, a San Francisco style fisherman’s wharf … marina, tourist information centre, permanent industrial exhibits, West End Community Centre, and a Senior Citizens home.” As for the claim that the apartment houses would bring additional municipal taxes, the brief concluded, “This is completely fallacious reasoning because what would be gained here in buildings would be lost elsewhere to the West End and balance of Vancouver.”25 Hyperbolic as the West End and Downtown Ratepayers’ brief may have been, the corporate property developers had clearly gone too far by increasing the density of the project. City council referred the plan to its design panel of architects and engineers, which declared, “The number of towers will result in a palisade, no matter how they are placed.”26 Despite this opinion, when the developers agreed to minor changes and asked in June 1965 for approval of only the first stage, the Planning Department and the council complied.27 Instead of pursuing the development, however, Harbour Park Developments then sold the block east of Denman Street to the US-based Marwest Hotel Company for a million dollars more than had been paid for the entire property. Owners of the nearby Bayshore Inn, Marwest proceeded to gain permission to build two office towers, a convention centre and merchandise market, as well as a second hotel. The remaining two blocks to 23

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the West of Denman Street were leased by Harbour Park Developments to Four Seasons Hotels of Toronto, though the federally owned foreshore, almost half of which was still under water, would not be transferred until 1971.28 Finally, the city-owned half acre at the end of Gilford Street was sold to the federal government with the intent that it would be leased to the developers.29 This minor technical manoeuvre would ultimately prove to be the ace in the hole for those who opposed the development.

The Third Proposal: Four Seasons Hotels The Four Seasons project, announced in May 1969, consisted of a $40 million complex with less ground coverage but more overall height than the preceding one. It would include a 600-room hotel adjacent to Stanley Park; 1,000 apartment units in three thirty-storey apartment towers at the east end of the site; 300 units in buildings two storeys to eight storeys high located in the centre of the site; and seventeen townhouse units. There would also be a restaurant, small retail shops, and a small marina, as well as public walkways from Georgia Street and along the waterfront (see figure 1.4).30 The city’s design panel again expressed concern about the site coverage of the project but agreed with the location of the hotel, which would prove to be a sore point with the public. In late August the rezoning bylaw was approved by the Technical Planning Board and the Town Planning Commission but subject to a revised scheme that would retain the view of the harbour, set aside a space of slightly less than an acre for public use, and address the impact on traffic and transportation by paying for the north-side widening of Georgia Street when required by the city.31 Such revisions did not placate the Park Sites Committee of the Vancouver Parks Board, chaired by outspoken high-school teacher George Puil.32 Puil submitted a report to August public hearing that strongly encouraged the city to acquire the block next to Stanley Park, valued

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1.4 “How Would Entrance to Stanley Park Look If Four Seasons Development Goes Ahead?” by Brian Kent, Vancouver Sun, 9 March 1971.

at $500,000. The report argued that this would give the city the right to lease the nhb water lots, and allow for a public park of 195,410 square feet. This land, it further claimed, would be needed for a new bus loop, a public marina, a fisherman’s wharf restaurant, a tourist information centre, and other amenities. If the developer refused to cooperate by selling the block, Puil claimed, the city could refuse to provide a development permit.33 Public resistance to development of the foreshore remained stronger than ever, for opponents to the Four Seasons development plan included some of the city’s most affluent citizens, such as members of the West Point Grey Civic Association34 and Vancouver’s Save Our Parkland Association – whose honorary directors included prominent figures such as provincial cabinet minister Grace McCarthy, who had

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served six years on the Vancouver Parks Board. The Save Our Parkland Association submitted a letter, presumably to be read at the August public meeting, supporting the parks board plan and claiming that “Citizens and tourists alike enjoy looking at the Park as much from the outside as from the inside – from Kitsilano, from the North Shore, and as we approach the park on Georgia Street. A ‘bottleneck’ entrance at Denman Street would be atrocious.”35 Influential women such as McCarthy took an active role in the opposition, for a brief was also submitted by the Vancouver Council of Women protesting that Harbour Park Developments had failed to meet the conditions of its development permit when it sold part of its holding, including the federally owned water lots, to the owners of the Bayshore Inn. This sale, the brief claimed, “vindicated the charge originally made that they [Harbour Park Developments] merely intended to speculate with the concession granted them.”36 The aggressively prodevelopment mayor, Tom Campbell of the npa, was not moved by these objections, nor were the majority of councillors. The same day as the August public hearing, council voted in favour of the first stage of the project estimated at $20 million.37 Conditions included a $1 million performance bond to guarantee completion within four years plus payment by the developer to the federal government of $165,000 for the lot at the end of Gilford Street. When Four Seasons objected to the bond amount, it was subsequently reduced to only $200,000.38 Although the civic opposition party known as the Electors’ Action Movement (team) had been recently established by young professionals who favoured a limit to development,39 it supported the project proposal. This did little to appease the public, however, and team councillor Art Phillips was repeatedly shouted down when he defended the council’s case at a West End meeting called by the parks board in November 1969.40 A series of letters from city residents protested against the “Eastern-based” development, particularly because it would detract from the beauty of Stanley Park but also because it would block the view of the North shore and 26

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create traffic gridlock at the Georgia Street entrance to the causeway. One woman added, Things are bad enough already with the high-rise eye-sore currently under construction at the Bayshore Inn and the West End is filled up with enough unlovely apartment buildings to keep the realtors happy – we certainly do not need others along Coal Harbour. I urge you to preserve this invaluable, irreplaceable area, to encourage the small businesses and the yachtsmen and fishermen they cater to, and to co-operate with the Parks Board in their proposal for development of the block adjacent to Stanley Park. You can surely provide interest and pleasure to a great many people if you were willing to realize the potential of the area in question as a tourist area similar to Victoria’s Inner Harbour and it would be a waste not to do so!41 Another woman wrote, “if we can talk of spending $165 million to carry more cars over another bridge (or whatever) then surely the taxpayers will gladly support the plan of their Parks Board to beautify the Coal Harbour area of the park entrance.”42 Most of the letters were, in fact, written by women, and in the case of a typed letter submitted by a man, his wife added in pen, “I agree with everything in the above letter, only I would have put it more strongly.”43 The members of the Canadian Daughters’ League Assembly number 1 also submitted a letter,44 and prominent women – such as Phyllis Ross, the mother of federal justice minister John Turner – joined antidevelopment groups in lobbying the federal government. As a result, national fisheries minister Jack Davis, who represented the North Shore Capilano riding and who was responsible for the nhb, delayed having the sublease signed. Furthermore, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau had informed the parks board that he was concerned about the development.45 In an attempt to undermine the growing opposition, Harbour Park Developments (acting for its lessee, Four Seasons) employed a public relations firm but its strategy to bring the labour 27

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unions onside backfired when the twenty union business agents who were invited for drinks at the Bayshore Inn refused to approve a motion approving the project. According to Vancouver Sun columnist Allan Fotheringham, they were irritated with this tactic and decided to call their own meeting a week later when they would invite opponents to the scheme to make their case. Pointing to the low rate and long term negotiated for rental of the publicly owned water lots, Fotheringham declared, “The whole thing gets down to one simple question: Should private developers be allowed to make a profit from Crown land?”46 Opposition to the project was strengthening, for eight of the organizations fighting it soon joined to form the Save the Entrance to Stanley Park Committee (sespc).47 All twenty-seven of the briefs presented at the public meeting held on 31 March opposed the project and urged council to buy the land for public use.48 The Communist Party had been quick to weigh in against the development proposal, and now the Vancouver and District Labour Council declared that the labour movement “was not so selfish as to push for any available development which might mean jobs without consideration of the environmental consequences … Nature has endowed Vancouver with a setting unrivalled anywhere in the world. We can build a city appropriate to its setting or we can commit ecological rape by allowing spontaneous building guided by the profit motive.” Despite the Labour Council’s reference to ecological concerns, they were not foremost at the time, but the Sierra Club of bc and the Society for Pollution and Environmental Control (spec) did submit requests to appear at the meeting, which lasted four hours.49 Finally, Harry Rankin – now a councillor representing the recently formed left-wing civic party known as the Committee of Progressive Electors (cope) – moved that a city-wide plebiscite be held to determine whether the hotel–apartment complex should proceed.50 Wealthy former lieutenant-governor Frank M. Ross proposed the same idea in a telegram submitted to the meeting, but John Stanton of the New Democratic Party (ndp) Vancouver-area council went further by challenging the municipal councillors to call an election on the issue, 28

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adding that “A new council could bring Vancouver out of the 19th century, a century of real estate rip-offs a la cpr.”51 Rankin’s motion was tabled, however, and city council assured the federal transport minister that the public meeting was for information purposes only and that it had no intention of dropping the bylaw. As a result, the long-delayed water lot leases covering ten acres were signed by the nhb the following day. The nhb’s hands had been tied because it had stated clearly that it was up to local municipalities to set zoning regulations on federal land use.52 The bc University Liberal Federation complained, nevertheless, that “This is another slap in the face of the people of B.C. by the Eastern-dominated federal government.”53 Grace MacInnis, prominent ndp member of Parliament for Vancouver-Kingsway, shifted the blame back to the city council by stating that its support for the development had left the federal agency with no other choice. Harbour Park Developments had, in fact, filed a writ with the province’s Supreme Court to compel the nhb to hand over the leases or pay full compensation. MacInnis lamented, however, that “Instead of the smell of flowers and grass, we’ll have the smell of money for a few – and the smell of automobile exhaust fumes for the rest of us.”54 On a similar note, the young internationally honoured architect, Arthur Erickson, declared that the proposed high-rise buildings “show a complete indifference to the environment, almost a hostility in the way they oppose and confront each other.”55 Finally, federal consumer affairs minister Ron Basford, whose riding was Vancouver Centre, also expressed his concern about the density of the development before announcing that he was sending questionnaires to 42,000 Vancouver households, asking “Would you like the Vancouver City Council to hold a plebiscite on the Harbor Park – Four Seasons development?”56 Basford had stated earlier that “if a plebiscite were held and the people of Vancouver decided to buy out the tenant’s assets I am sure the federal authorities would assist carrying out any decision like that.”57 The results of his questionnaire are not known but a public opinion poll conducted by the Vancouver Sun in late April resulted in 29

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3,320 votes against any form of commercial development at the site and only 282 in favour. For the 374 who added notes, the main concerns were traffic congestion and the impact on Stanley Park.58 Sensing the strength of the opposing tide, the president of the npa had already released a statement declaring somewhat disingenuously that the association had “no view on the desirability or undesirability of the Four Seasons project” because it was not a political party and “did not get involved in controversial political matters.”59 Mayor Campbell finally bowed slightly to public pressure by proposing that the hotel, which was originally to be built 120 feet from the Stanley Park boundary, should be moved 215 feet further back to near Gilford Street.60 Campbell’s professed aim was to avoid the plebiscite that would ask if voters wanted the city to purchase the land, a plebiscite that he and the npa councillors had recently proposed and voted for, yet that he now claimed would be a waste of money as it would certainly be defeated.61 Three parks board commissioners, including George Puil, had apparently formulated the hotel setback compromise with Campbell, but Puil later claimed that it was only to be a last resort, if all else failed. In fact, he now referred to it as “the greatest sellout in the history of Vancouver.”62 The president of Four Seasons subsequently rejected the compromise on the grounds that the parks board needed to be involved in any new negotiations and concur with any changes. He suggested, however, that he would be willing to reduce the size of the hotel by 200 suites.63 Like Campbell, Four Seasons was no doubt confident that the “no” side would win in the plebiscite because the odds were heavily stacked in that side’s favour. Despite demands by the parks board, the Vancouver School Board, the Citizens’ Council for Civic Development, and others to have a plebiscite that would simply ask Vancouverites if they opposed the development project,64 they were instead asked if they wished to buy out the developers, making it a plebiscite on a money bylaw. As a result, according to the Vancouver Charter, only property holders could vote, and a 60 per cent majority was required.

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City staff announced that the compensation to the development company would be between $6 million and $7 million, an amount Puil declared to be grossly inflated (it was double the amount fixed a year earlier by the provincial assessment appeal board),65 but Four Seasons complained that it was too low, and Mayor Campbell had earlier suggested that it could be as high as $10 million. Arbitrators subsequently arrived at a $7.3 million price tag, but added to the plebiscite was an additional $700,000 in compensation to Four Seasons plus a very generous $1 million estimate for park development, thereby further stacking the odds against a “yes” vote.66 Finally, the npa councillors claimed that the water lots would be of no value for park purposes, therefore the city would actually be paying $8 million for only four acres of usable land.67 Declaring that city council had “Neatly finessed opponents of the Four Seasons complex,” the Province suggested that it was “highly unlikely” that voters in the east end of the city would vote to support “spending so much tax money to provide a West End park.”68 And Fotheringham’s column, titled “Slickest Manoeuvre of the Year,” claimed that by asking ratepayers “to buy the whole flipping 14 acres” when there had never been “any suggestion that the city wanted – or could afford – every inch of the project … some shrewd mind somewhere decided the solution was to smother the protesters with kindness.”69 Mayor Campbell had, indeed, refused to accept Rankin’s amendment to add the option of buying only one block of the land. Of course, as Puil and team councillor Walter Hardwick pointed out, if the “yes” side won, the land not reserved for a park could be sold to developers, thereby greatly reducing the cost to taxpayers, but this was asking them to demonstrate considerable trust in city hall.70 The plebiscite, which Grace McCarthy referred to as “nothing more than blackmail,” was to be held in late June. In the meantime, however, the provincial attorney general lent his name to a court challenge of the legal validity of the city’s bylaw rezoning the Coal Harbour site for the proposed apartment–hotel complex.71 The plaintiffs argued that

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city council did not have the authority to pass zoning regulations governing the use of a public harbour and that a new bylaw outlining conditions was required each time the property was transferred to new owners.72 Because the value of the land would obviously plummet if the court case were won, opponents of the development requested that the plebiscite be postponed until after the court had ruled, but city council refused.73 The legal action was later dropped, but May brought the direct action generally associated with the 1960s era and which is the only element of the Coal Harbour antidevelopment movement to have survived in the public memory.74 In attention-grabbing fashion, young protesters – identified at the time as Yippies and members of the city’s Free University but apparently also including members of the anarchist Vancouver Liberation Front – tore down part of the fence surrounding the site and renamed it “All Seasons’ Park” (see figure 1.5). One of the eight arrested was young high-school student Paul Watson, future founder of the radical Sea Shepherd Society.75 Mayor Campbell complained about “a complete disregard for authority” and the “breakdown of society,” but protest organizers were, in fact, quite concerned about the public’s reaction. Although they had originally expected to be removed within a few days, they built rockeries, swings, benches, and an “oriental pond” without water, and planted saplings and a vegetable garden as well. They also asked those who were not helping cultivate the site to go elsewhere at the end of each day, leaving a core group of thirty to forty, and they obtained a number of Canadian flags to replace their green, red, and Viet Cong ones. In fact, one newspaper article noted that the site had become “something of a tourist attraction,” drawing “A wide spectrum of political activists, 10-speed cyclists, middle-aged ladies bearing gifts of potted shrubs, camera bugs and family strollers.”76 One sympathetic observer was journalist Bob Hunter, who – with young camp spokesman Rod Marining – would join the Greenpeace expedition that attempted to sail to the nuclear test site at Alaska’s Amchitka Island in September. In one of his Vancouver Sun columns Hunter imagined the site as a 32

1.5 “All Seasons Park, at the Entrance to Stanley Park,” The Province, 7 June 1971.

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“nomadic encampment with the dark green fence along Georgia Street rising like a battlement and the turrets of the glass castles of Fort West End beyond.”77 Four Seasons had little choice, then, but to turn a blind eye, aware as it was that trespassing charges against the youths could jeopardize its position in the upcoming plebiscite.78 The plebiscite debate did become increasingly heated as the 21 June deadline approached. The hotel chain claimed that the project would bring $45 million in investment capital and $600,000 in annual city tax revenues. It would supposedly also provide the equivalent of 250 full-time construction jobs for four years and 650 permanent jobs in the hotel alone.79 Four Seasons also financed a “Committee of Concerned Citizens” who published newspaper advertisements and flyers emphasizing the $9 million cost to taxpayers and claiming that the choice was between hospitals and a park.80 Mayor Campbell even claimed that turning down the development would mean no new parks in Vancouver for twenty years, adding that “we probably won’t even need a parks board – just a few gardeners.”81 The ballot, itself, was somewhat deceptive, for it made no mention of the Four Seasons project, simply asking voters if they approved of the city borrowing up to $9 million to purchase the property and develop it for park purposes. A “no” vote was, of course, effectively a “yes” vote for the development even though many voters would likely be registering a protest against the magnitude of the compensation figure.82 Not surprisingly, the polls were divided between the eastern and western parts of the city, but – even though most residents of the West End were tenants and therefore ineligible to vote – a slight majority (51.2 per cent) of the 48,000 property owners who cast ballots voted to purchase the development site.83 This margin was far from the 60 per cent required to pass, but it did not prevent the Province from declaring that city politicians “will have to digest the fact that environmentalism is a potent and growing political force that can no longer be pushed aside.”84 Columnist Gary Bannerman also referred to the result as “a stern rebuke to the mayor’s office and city council.”85 Sensitive to the political situation, Mayor 34

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Campbell and a spokesman for Four Seasons subsequently announced that negotiations for a compromise would take place.86 Campbell was not in a conciliatory mood, however, as far as the protestors were concerned. With what the Province referred to as his “first postreferendum political move,” as soon as the votes were counted he drove to the contested site where he boasted to about one hundred young occupiers that they had lost and would have to move on. After refusing “a slug of wine, a chewed sandwich and a book of Chairman Mao’s thoughts,” Campbell came close to blows with a young man who spat at him.87 The occupation did, in fact, continue throughout the summer, reaching peak estimates as high as 300 to 400 people, though most of the original protesters left after the plebiscite, vowing to return when the zoning issue came before the courts. In the meantime, the site’s population was a fluid one, a reporter from the Province claimed, including “campers from Massachusetts, tenters from Toronto, and teenyboppers from Edmonton.”88 The most serious complaint, however, appears to have come from nearby tenants concerning the playing of bongo drums late into the night89 (see figure 1.6). Due to the hostile political climate, Four Seasons made some relatively minor changes to its plan in July when it renewed its offer to locate the hotel half a block further back from Stanley Park and upped it with the elimination of one nine-storey apartment building. These concessions split the parks board, some of whom were in favour and others – including Puil – opposed. The sespc and Vancouver and District Labour Council remained unimpressed.90 City council nevertheless approved of the revisions without the public hearing that its legal expert claimed was necessary and despite the fact that its planning director complained that the proposed hotel had the appearance of a gigantic cement slab.91 After being transferred to the federal Urban Affairs portfolio, Ron Basford reiterated his opposition to the project, stating that the plan that had originated a decade earlier was no longer appropriate. In his words, “The density that has built up in the West End, different views on the kind of cities we want, and a concern for 35

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1.6 “Four Seasons (All Seasons Park). Alderman Harry Rankin Talking to Hippie Crowd,” by Gord Croucher.

environmental factors have caused this change.”92 The federal government now refused to lease the crucial Gilford Street water lot, thereby effectively killing the Four Seasons project, at least in its current form.93 Fotheringham pointed out the irony that “a city council, on the scene, was prepared to let the deal go through and that it took a government 2,500 miles away to kill it. Someone can read plebiscites, however phonily worded. Who says public opinion doesn’t work?”94 Fotheringham’s colleague Jack Wasserman noted further that the toughminded Basford’s control over the country’s Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation funds, as well as over federal assistance for rapid transit, meant that developers and municipal politicians would not protest too loudly.95 With the property now in limbo, young squatters began to return as the spring weather improved. This situation soon led to a statement from the city’s health officer that the site was becoming a health haz36

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ard, with rats, “unacceptable” toilet facilities, and no water supply or garbage pickup. The problems, he added, were all on nhb land, therefore the city’s hands were tied. Former mayor Bill Rathie, who was now chair of the nhb’s Vancouver Port Authority, accused the municipality, in turn, of “sloughing off its responsibility to give the property police protection and to enforce health and building bylaws on it.” According to the Province, the young people claimed that they were not protesting against large-scale development, they simply had nowhere else to go.96 In late April, however, Rathie ordered the nhb police to evict some thirty squatters, with the result that their makeshift shacks were bulldozed into the mud.97 City council had already announced in March that it would be willing to develop the Four Seasons site as a park but only if the water lot leases reverted to Ottawa, which would then make them available to the city.98 Speaking to the 500 delegates at the Pacific Northwest district conference of the National Recreation and Park Association, Grace McCarthy declared that it was not too late to save the entrance to Stanley Park nor “for the federal government to undo the sell-out they perpetrated on the city by granting the waterfront leases to private ownership.”99 The fact was, however, that the municipal council’s request to pay only a nominal sum for the water lots was about to be rejected by the federal minister responsible for the nhb.100 In April, Four Seasons announced that it was eliminating the hotel, thereby reducing the cost of the project from $40 million to $30 million,101 but a smaller hotel of 200 rooms at the east end of the property had been added by June. The three apartment buildings would each remain thirty-three storeys high, though they would now be slimmer, accommodating 1,000 people rather than 1,500, as originally planned. In addition, the city would be required to pay $1.5 million to Harbour Park Developments for the 14.5-acre block (ten acres of which was leased from the nhb) adjacent to Stanley Park. Mayor Campbell, who had helped negotiate the proposed plan, called it a “happy compromise” that would likely pass council when it reconvened in July.102 Despite Campbell’s optimism, however, his council rejected the deal. 37

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Even when Harbour Park Developments and Four Seasons offered to trade the land for a parcel of equal value elsewhere, the parsimonious councillors expressed concern that the city might have to pay rental to the nhb for the foreshore leases, and they asked for another development proposal, instead.103

The Fourth Proposal: Dawson Developments Rather than comply with the city council’s request, the obviously frustrated Four Seasons decided not to renew its lease with Harbour Park Developments, leaving the company’s owners in a financial jam.104 Finally, in May 1973, the company and its assets – including the sixtythree-year water lot leases – were sold to locally owned Dawson Developments (later known as Daon Developments) for $6 million.105 Dawson would face an uphill battle because the prodevelopment npa had finally been swept from municipal office by team the previous November.106 team councillor Setty Pendakur, who now headed the Waterfront Committee, told the press that the new owners were aware that any future plans must have “regard and respect” for the park entrance as well as the need for much lower densities.107 This was not to be, however, for Dawson Developments almost immediately proposed a $50 million project that included four apartment towers of seventeen to twenty-two storeys, an office tower of eighteen storeys, and a twenty-storey, 480-room hotel, occupying a total of 1.35 million square feet, not a great deal less than the 1.8 million feet in the defunct Four Seasons project.108 Pendakur, in turn, declared that the proposal was unacceptable, suggesting that it might simply be a trial balloon.109 Pendakur also stated that city council should press Ottawa to cancel the water lot leases, thereby reducing the value of the western block to as little as $1 million and making it attractive for the city to purchase. Failing this, Pendakur advised, the city should expropriate the block.110 In the meantime, the Waterfront Committee set down

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guidelines in July for development of the block that did not lie adjacent to Stanley Park. The aroused public was, however, in no mood for compromise. At a well-attended open meeting held the following month most of the speakers favoured saving both blocks. This hard line was also supported by the labour movement insofar as it was represented by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America as well as the Vancouver and District Labour Council.111 Furthermore, the local area council of the ndp objected to the city’s guidelines, despite their requirement for a relatively low development density, announcing that the guidelines “cater to these national and multinational corporations which can use tax write-offs to finance prestige office buildings as well as the tourist trade, and that very small percentage of [the] Vancouver population who can afford expensive apartment suites.”112 In a similar vein, Harry Rankin proposed that the land be rezoned as a public amenity.113 Even the mainstream Vancouver Sun asked, “Why is council considering a proposal, laughably called a ‘compromise’ that would inflict on half of this contested land a development hardly distinguishable from what has been declared intolerable for the whole?” The Sun was particularly concerned about the impact the project would have on automobile access to the Lions Gate Bridge, for it declared that “A development that aggravated the West Georgia bottleneck would be unacceptable if it were sited on the head of a pin.”114 Dawson Developments subsequently submitted a second proposal that it claimed to be less than half the size of the first one, though, at 1,060,774 square feet, the ratio was actually two thirds. There would be a low-rise hotel near Georgia Street, a seven-to-eight-storey office tower, and a number of low-rise apartment–commercial buildings, “some of which would stretch out over the water on stilts or be placed on pontoons.” Canals and bridges would also feature in the plan. Pendakur now claimed that it was a great plan, but Mayor Art Phillips remained noncommittal.115 Obviously not confident that even this proposal would be accepted, the company agreed to sell the land to

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the city for the price it had paid, plus costs.116 Although Pendakur had speculated publicly that the property might be worth ten to thirteen million dollars,117 members of the team majority on council voted against spending the $6.4 million required for the entire fourteen acres. Dawson Developments then agreed to a compromise in which the one and a half blocks closest to Stanley Park would be sold for $2 million in return for the city’s support to develop the remaining half block,118 a proposal similar to the one that the previous mayor had arranged with Harbour Park Developments a year earlier. Council organized a plebiscite on the issue in October, this time including tenants as voters. Somewhat confusingly, the first two options were either to pay $6.4 million for the two blocks of land and dedicate both to park use or to subsequently sell the four-acre half-block not facing Stanley Park and not fronting the shoreline but valued at $4.4 million.119 (For legal reasons, neither of the blocks could be purchased separately by the city).120 The third option was to vote against the other two. Mayor Phillips made it clear that he felt that the large sum that would be required to retain the four acres in question could be better used on park acquisition elsewhere in the city, an argument that was difficult to refute given that Pendakur claimed that spending the full $6.4 million would tie up park money for five years.121 Phillips also hinted strongly that the height of the buildings in the half block to be sold for development would be limited to three or four storeys and therefore “no more massive” than what was already there. Finally, even though Dawson Developments had agreed to purchase back the half lot for $4.4 million, the city would be free to find a higher bidder, thereby further reducing the cost of the other one and a half blocks.122 Not surprisingly, the council’s preferred option received an overwhelming majority of public votes – 68 per cent – though only 21 per cent of those eligible to cast a ballot did so.123 As for what the city would do with the ten acres to be saved from development, it was announced that the parks board would propose two alternative plans, with the public being asked to choose between them.124

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The Fifth Proposal: Harcourt Development Even though three quarters of the contested area had been saved for public purposes, any development of the other quarter would be controversial. Dawson Developments failed to repurchase the four acres, and in 1975 the city invited developers to submit proposals to develop the site that was repeatedly referred to as “one of the finest pieces of empty real estate in Canada.”125 The chief conditions were that it would be leased for sixty years at a fixed price of $48 million and have a maximum building density of 420,000 square feet.126 A jaded Vancouver Sun columnist insisted that council should admit that “there is no tolerable way it can have its cake and eat it too, that no one will stand for the spoiling of a good thing, that a viable private development and a sane scenic entrance to Stanley Park are wildly contradictory. In short, forget it.”127 There were only four submissions, and in late 1975 the advisory panel of architects and planners selected for a public hearing the one put forward by Harcourt Development of Calgary. It featured two apartment towers, one of twelve floors and one of nine floors, linked by a lower office and commercial building, this despite the fact that office space was not included in the competition’s conditions.128 Also envisioned were a “cabaret, restaurants, community, cultural and recreational facilities, theatre and parking facilities.”129 The city planning commission approved of the choice, but three aldermen opposed any development on the site, with Warnett Kennedy claiming rather ironically as a member of the npa that it would be “a ghetto of millionaires.”130 As an alternative, Kennedy championed the proposal that had been submitted for a density exchange that would save the Harbour Park parcel by selling its building density to developers on the opposite side of Georgia Street.131 The proposal was supported by sespc, the Community Arts Council of Vancouver, and the Save Our Parkland Association, but Mayor Phillips simply dismissed it, arguing that it would save the view for those who drove along the street but block it for those

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who lived in the West End.132 From the left, Harry Rankin referred to the idea as “a shameless political ploy” that would place council “not in a law-making role but rather that of a czar wheeling and dealing in development rights between private developers.”133 Kennedy, in turn, angrily referred to his colleagues as a “bunch of amateurs” involved in “squalid politics.” He also claimed that the Calgary developer’s plan was the result of “an ambitious young architect’s dream to win the (panel’s) prize and once the developers realize the costs involved they’ll pull out.”134 This prediction would prove to be prescient. Small waterfront businesses were issued eviction notices, however,135 causing Michael F. Holt of Western Technicomm to protest that driving out “the marginal operators, the people who are working at crafts and businesses because they enjoy it, not necessarily because they make a lot of money out of it,” would result in “a dead and sterile area.” Holt argued, further, that by replacing waterfront activity “with another few hundred yards of tedious seawall walkway, you would not only be doing a disservice to the residents in the area but also would be removing a significant point of interest for the many sight seers and visitors who come to visit us at all times of the year.”136 There was no detectable public sympathy for current occupiers of the shoreline, however, or for its future development, as reflected in the correspondence Philips received from citizens in the ensuing months. He was blunt in his replies, reminding them that council was honouring the wishes of the people, as expressed in the 1973 plebiscite. Thus, he wrote to one of his critics, “The people of Vancouver may not have agreed with your position, and for that I can hardly be held responsible,” while to another he lectured, “One of the problems with democracy is that you don’t always get what you want … I know of no area in the city that has been more extensively studied, planned, replanned, restudied and investigated for the purpose of maintaining the high-quality environment in that area.”137 Harcourt Development’s project was running into trouble, however, for its chief financial backer, Dr Charles Allard (Allarco Developments) of Edmonton, withdrew from the consortium in April 1976.138 In a 42

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memo to members of the city council, the mayor explained that the “economics of the city’s proposition seem to be realistic and there do not appear to be any complaints about the lease arrangements or development permit requirements put forward by the city,” but several financial and development organisations had “shied away” because of the project’s “controversial political history.” One alternative, Phillips suggested, would be to grant the short extension that the remaining Alberta partners in Harcourt Development requested to complete their financing. Another would be to call again for proposals, with variation of conditions if necessary, and a third would be to put a plebiscite to the public authorizing the spending of five to six million dollars “for park purposes.” If the plebiscite lost, Phillips felt, “the development proposal would take place in a politically clearer atmosphere.”139

Final Proposals: Creating a Public Park Perhaps tiring of the never-ending controversy, council refused to grant the Alberta group its requested ninety-day extension, instead voting unanimously for a fall plebiscite that would ask voters if they wished to absorb the $4.8 million from reserve funds and retain the entire site as a park.140 Then, in September, Mayor Phillips abruptly reversed his position about the importance of honouring the result of the previous plebiscite by announcing that, rather than having another one, council would simply vote to retain all of the property for public use.141 The reason Phillips gave to the public was that the city was in good financial shape and, with the land finally cleared of buildings, the importance of the view had become obvious. Privately, he added, “we will have much more leverage with the Bayshore if we keep our part of the property open than if we allow a great deal of development on it. And I think that we will want to scale down the expansion plans of the Bayshore.”142 Fellow team councillor Mike Harcourt (future mayor and ndp premier of the province) disagreed, declaring, “This is totally against 43

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the instructions voters gave us the last time around.” Harcourt (who was apparently not related to the developer) added that the money should instead be placed in the rapid transit fund or spent to improve the city’s neighbourhood parks, which he described as “graveyards without tombs.”143 But Grace McCarthy, who was now the Social Credit government’s provincial secretary, telegraphed Phillips congratulating him and his council “for setting aside the entrance of Stanley Park for park purposes for the use of all the people for all time.”144 Unable to come up with a definition of “public use,” however, city council appointed a task force in late 1977 to examine three alternatives, each of which included a marina and some commercial development.145 Council finally voted to devote the entire fourteen acres to a “marina-meadow.” Phillips had resigned from office by this time, however, and his successor – the more conservative Jack Volrich – claimed that the council’s vote did not rule out recouping some or all of the $4.8 million by some sort of development in the future.146 Perhaps not surprisingly, Volrich’s decision was supported by Mike Harcourt as the city council’s new planning chairman.147 Vancouver Sun columnist Christopher Dafoe suggested mischievously that local residents would be pleased that the topic would continue to “see them safely through a variety of social occasions. When conversation flagged at dinner parties, for example, the astute hostess could always get the ball rolling again by mentioning that she had heard that council was planning to sell the land to the owners of a bowling alley chain. Smalltalk at cocktail parties invariably became brisk and heated if someone mentioned that he had seen Col. Sanders officiating at a sod-turning ceremony on the site.”148 Colonel Sanders did not make an appearance, but in the spring of 1978 city council entertained proposals from members of the provincial forest industry to build a $6.3 million education and exhibition centre on the northeast corner of the site. Another group wanted to build a First Nations development village in the same location for $5 million.149 Noting that “the relationship between the larger Canadian population and the Native Indian people is all too often in the form 44

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of confrontation,” the city planning department reported that the First Nations village, which was aimed at promoting social and cultural exchange, “would appear to have a wider appeal to Canadians and our visitors as a whole and to retain that appeal within the changing society over a longer period of time.”150 The city manager concluded, however, that both proposals were excellent and that the solution might be to have the two groups combine forces for a joint development.151 The Forest Foundation had the advantage because it had already persuaded the provincial government to contribute $650,000 for a forest education centre and, according to one newspaper article, “had prepared a 19-page booklet with a fold-out architect’s rendering to hand around explaining the goals and shape of things to come.” The vision included a forest park “with streams and ponds and walkways among the newly planted saplings,” plus “two buildings of approximately 50,000 square feet that would combine educational displays, meeting and convention areas for the forest industry, and a restaurant–marina.” The view of the North Shore mountains would be preserved by the low-rise building, but traffic would remain an issue as the foundation anticipated 200,000 visitors annually.152 Although George Puil, who was now an alderman, supported the forestry centre on the basis that it had the best chance of succeeding, the parks board that he had once chaired preferred that it be built in the University Endowment Lands on Point Grey, closer to where families and students lived.153 In addition, the forestry foundation had asked for the land rent-free, but city council insisted that the centre would have to cover the cost of services and site maintenance, plus the rent that the city was paying to the nhb (approximately $70,000 a year) and the interest on the land purchase.154 By September 1978, when the ante had been upped to between $2.5 million and $3.5 million, the forestry centre idea was rapidly losing steam.155 Furthermore, citizen opposition to development of any kind had not diminished. Newspaper columnist Daniel Wood claimed, somewhat hysterically, that, “the thought of thousands of people tagging along behind forest guides in the depths of Stanley Park conjures up 45

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images of the very worst of other overloaded places. On the Acropolis, for example, one has to elbow one’s way through clumps of Danish and Spanish and American visitors each trying to sense what it was once like to confront Zeus there.” Such a prospect apparently did not worry the associate director of the city planning department, however, for he suggested that a sculptor might create “something symbolic” like the Picasso in downtown Chicago, adding, “Just think what the Statue of Liberty once did for New York City or the Sydney Opera House did for that town.”156 But Margaret Pigott – chief spokesperson for the sespc – protested against having the two-block area “turned over to private control,” arguing that the forestry project would add to traffic congestion.157 And the energy crisis of the following year saw the introduction of a new note from the West End Traffic Committee, which declared that it was “opposed to the use of public park land for private automobile use and parking.” The chair added, “In a time of oil shortages and already over-crowded streets, public transit must be encouraged and providing park land for parking is no insentive [sic] for drivers to leave their cars at home.”158 No further steps were taken until October 1980 when city council declared Harbour Park to be a heritage site while rejecting alderman Kennedy’s motion to invest $250,000 in its improvement as a meadow.159 The council majority clearly preferred the offer made by Harbour Ferries to pay for dredging, a seawall, and pedestrian walkways, among other improvements, for a total of $1.5 million, in return for a twenty-year waterfront lease.160 The lease remained unsigned by Harbour Ferries, however, due to the economic downturn that hit the province’s resource industries particularly hard in the early 1980s.161 As a result, Harbour Park was still being referred to as a “wasteland” two years later, in 1982, when the city finally transferred it to the Vancouver Parks Board on a ninety-nine-year lease. The parks board, in turn, announced that it had no money to carry out improvements.162 Calgary’s Devonian Foundation finally came to the rescue soon afterward with the promise of a $300,000 grant but only on condition that the park be open to the public within a year. This spurred the 46

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1.7 Plan for Devonian Harbour Park, 1983.

parks board to sign the long-pending twenty-year lease with Harbour Ferries, which would be responsible for improving the park with shoreline planting and stabilization, as well as building separate pedestrian and bike paths, the total estimated at approximately $750,000.163 The original lease proposal would have limited the marina and tour boat operation to the waterfront between Denman and Gilford Streets but now the frontage for a 200-berth marina was extended to nearly all the Harbour Park site (see figure 1.7). Margaret Pigott spoke out once again, complaining that the view from Georgia Street would be obscured by the marina and that there would now be no water amenity added to the site. Largely to blame, in her opinion, were the inept parks board negotiators but the four left-wing cope councillors had also supported the deal, and Harcourt, Kennedy, and Puil had not even shown up for the vote.164 Pigott could take some comfort later in 47

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the year, however, when the Devonian Foundation grant finally enabled the parks board to announce a large pond with “a $600,000 labyrinth of bridges, rose gardens, viewing areas, pebble beaches and pedestrian footpaths.”165 The park would henceforth be officially known as Devonian Harbour Park, though – as noted above – very few people in Vancouver are aware of the name.

Conclusion Pointing to the “scores of Vancouverites” who played a major role in the wilderness conservation campaigns his book examines, political scientist Jeremy Wilson asked why they stood by resignedly “while the quality of their immediate environment was steadily diminished by speculator-driven pro-development policies, dismal city planning, uncontrolled population expansion, and even more rapid growth in automobile use.” Despite the fact that he appears unaware of the local antidevelopment movements that many Vancouverites did participate in, Wilson’s question is an important one, and his analysis of the province’s wilderness campaigns points to the need for potent symbols as well as skill in the art of political mobilization.166 Stanley Park served as such a symbol in the protracted campaign to “save” its entrance. Furthermore, the political mobilization was widely based socially, as Vancouver Sun columnist Jack Wasserman observed in 1977 when he commented on “the strange alliance between millionaires, yippies, middle class apartment dwellers, and leftist politicians with their varying motives, ranging from concern that their own property will be devalued, to the out-right opposition to any form of development anywhere.”167 During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was the city’s elite who opposed any alteration of Stanley Park,168 but in the 1960s and 70s it was members of the broadly defined middle-class, many of whom were women, who formed the backbone of organizations such as the Save the Entrance to Stanley Park Committee. These people were clearly motivated by a 48

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genuine civic concern, as were local mainstream politicians such as George Puil and Warnett Kennedy, though that concern was quite distinct from North America’s earlier playground and City Beautiful movements, both of which lobbied for major alteration of public spaces.169 One could argue that the Harbour Park case illustrates how the affluent west side of the city monopolized municipal park funds. After all, the new park lay at the very entrance to one of the largest urban parks in North America. But that park was as close to the working-class residents of East Vancouver as it was to the affluent middle class in Kerrisdale and Point Grey, and the municipal councils – whether dominated by the npa or team – were quite parsimonious when it came to investing in the site. In fact, it was only a commercial operation and philanthropic funds from the neighbouring province that rescued the space from ongoing neglect. Devonian Harbour Park’s role as an open green space is now essentially to serve as a buffer between Stanley Park and Coal Harbour’s high-rise buildings, and as a view corridor from traffic-choked Georgia Street to the North Shore harbour and the mountains beyond. One might, of course, question the value of such a passive role for a public space. Referring to Vancouver, Lance Berelowitz has warned that “a society that allows its true public spaces to be turned into benign venues of consumption and leisure … is in danger of losing the will and ability to appropriate those spaces as theatres for vital, legitimate political expression.”170 It is rather ironic, from that perspective, that Devonian Harbour Park was itself the product of “legitimate public expression,” one that was remarkable for its persistence as well as its refusal to compromise in the face of multiple corporate initiatives. It could be argued that the sustained effort to save an open space adjacent to a very large park detracted from more important environmental issues, but the fact remains that the protest movement did signal a widespread shift away from an unreflective faith in the benefits of large-scale urban property development and expansion.

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CHAPTER 2

“The greatest playground in the entire

Dominion”: Defending Hollyburn Ridge, 1932–76

During the 1920s a Vancouver Daily Province article by Pollough Pogue, self-styled “Forest Ranger of the Mountain,” claimed that “Stanley Park is celebrated in the popular idea all over Canada for its sylvan beauty, but on the plateaux of Hollyburn Ridge there are twenty Stanley Parks, between three and four thousand feet high, with every charm and delight wild nature can offer.”1 Hollyburn Ridge lies above West Vancouver, between the Capilano River and Howe Sound, and it includes two peaks – Mount Strachan and Black Mountain – that, after many years of controversy, were developed as the downhill ski facility known as Cypress Bowl. In fact, when Pogue wrote his effusive article, Hollyburn Ridge was already under threat by loggers and property developers. By the late 1920s its lower reaches were laced with skid roads that had been abandoned by logging companies operating on private land. Furthermore, in 1927 the Hollyburn Ridge Syndicate announced the development of a 1,000-acre resort that was to include a mountain hotel, winter sports facilities, and highway to the summit.2 The ambitious project did not materialize, but in 1931 the cash-strapped Municipality of West Vancouver sold 4,000 acres of the Ridge for $75,000 to British Properties, owned by Dublin’s Guiness Brewing Company. The company then built the First Narrows Bridge to Vancouver in 1938 in order to promote its upscale housing development.3 Soon afterward,

Defending Hollyburn Ridge

an American timber-lease holder began to harvest trees at the higher elevations, stopping only when the provincial government finally negotiated an exchange in 1944. The Ridge was subsequently left to local hikers and skiers until the 1960s when the boom in the downhill skiing industry led to plans to develop Cypress Bowl as a multimillion dollar destination ski resort. But the 1960s was also a decade of growing attachment to “nature” as well as political activism, and the result was a public outcry that brought an abrupt halt to the project and ended any possibility of hotels and residential towers being erected on Hollyburn Ridge. Instead, Cypress Bowl became a modest alpine ski facility without overnight accommodations, and the greater part of the Ridge was set aside as a provincial park in 1975. Environmentalist concern over the impact of clear-cut logging played a role in this controversy, particularly as it threatened to affect West Vancouver’s water supply. Fundamentally, however, it was about two competing concepts of recreation, one that envisioned a largescale downhill ski facility with commercial eating, drinking, sleeping, and entertainment facilities, and one that was more geared to families on a limited budget as well as to anyone who wished to escape the distractions of the city. In a sense, the latter more traditional concept was also more exclusive insofar as it would attract far fewer people to the slopes of Hollyburn, but it would prove to have the more vocal support base in the form of ski clubs and those who believed in the benefits of a more intimate contact with nature. This, in itself, was an environmentalist perspective even if the time for appeals to wildlife habitat and ecological diversity had yet to arrive.

Fighting the Logging Companies Outdoor recreationists from Vancouver and its suburbs were quick to take advantage of the roads abandoned by early twentieth-century logging operations on Hollyburn’s lower slopes. In 1926 a group of Scandinavians converted abandoned sawmill buildings into the first 51

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commercial ski operation in the North Shore mountains, and the Hollyburn Pacific Ski Club was established the same year. With the Vancouver Ski Club, formed in 1930, the Hollyburn club built cabins and organized ski jumping and racing tournaments during the following years, drawing competitors and spectators from throughout the Pacific Northwest4 (see figure 2.1). By 1932 so many outdoors enthusiasts had built cabins that West Vancouver’s municipal council passed regulations “the objects of which are to protect our water supply, to preserve the Ridge in all its beauty, and at the same time to prevent the indiscriminate cutting of trees that has been going on during the past year or two.” Claiming that “the beauty of the Ridge” was being marred with “all sorts of shacks scattered without any regard to order here and there in the woods, and trees hundreds of years old sacrificed at the whim of the cabin builder,” the city set aside “a cabin area of the Alpine village type with only cabins built of logs, outside of which no new cabins may be erected.” The council also appointed a forest ranger to enforce the regulations.5 Three years later, in 1935, the Municipality of West Vancouver informed the provincial administration that it had been accumulating land on Hollyburn Ridge and that it wished to obtain for a park all the remaining property in what was “a unique playground in winter and summer and an invaluable scenic asset to the entrance of the harbour of Greater Vancouver.”6 The municipal council assumed that all the remaining timber licenses had expired, but the provincial government subsequently refused to pay the $125,000 that the timber was said to be worth in order to cancel remaining company leases.7 A 3,500-acre tract on the Ridge was then threatened with logging in 1938 by Heaps Timber Company of Los Angeles whose leaseholds many of the cabin owners were squatting on. As a result, motions of concern were presented by the West Vancouver Liberal Association and both the Vancouver and the North Shore Local Council of Women.8 As early as the 1930s, then, women’s organizations were prepared to make themselves heard about local environmental issues.

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2.1 “Hollyburn Lodge, March 1927.”

An official report for the provincial Forest Service submitted the same year by L.C. Rodgers of the Capilano Timber Company sounded a positive note, however, claiming that Hollyburn Ridge would be left with “an excellent road,” as well as new ski grounds, thereby putting West Vancouver “on the map for winter sports.” Rodgers also claimed that the logging area would not be visible from the newly constructed First Narrows (later known as Lions Gate) Bridge and that he had observed that open areas held snow longer than did standing trees. This observation led him to believe, somewhat conveniently, that “it is not the timber that holds the water, but the low scrub timber above [the] timber line.”9 Heaps, in turn, declared that the logging road he planned to build to the top of Hollyburn Ridge would be “one of the finest

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things that could have happened in West Vancouver” because it would “make the wonderful ski-ing ground on top accessible in exactly the same way that Grouse Mountain highway has made that winter sports playground available to the multitude.”10 The timber entrepreneur did hint, however, that he was looking for a generous buyout, for he conceded that the logging operation would destroy the natural beauty of the area, adding, “What is the value of your Stanley Park? … Multiply the value of your park by ten times and I think you will get the idea.”11 Concerning the Rodgers report, West Vancouver reeve J.B. Leyland, who had been leading the campaign to prevent logging on the Ridge, wrote to the province’s minister of lands in 1938 that “It is no desire of mine to embarrass the Government in any way or to take any extreme views in the matter, but … I am still hoping that some solutions may possibly be found to preserve the beautiful area for the benefit of the people for all time to come.”12 Public pressure began to build, with one newspaper article proclaiming that “this vandalistic nonsense must stop.” Reflecting the rise of socialist ideas in the 1930s, the journalist added, “To our minds it does not seem to make very much difference whether these gestures towards logging off Hollyburn Ridge are genuine or only part of a skilful bluff to force the Government into buying the area. The point is that in principle all such areas which function as a natural scenic background to any great city should be nationalized and parked as circumstances and revenue permit.” With a national park clearly in mind, the article concluded that “the community of Greater Vancouver will have to hold Ottawa politically responsible” should either Hollyburn Ridge or Grouse Mountain “be denuded of their beauty as the Green Timbers were raped and despoiled several years past.”13 Why the journalist would demand that the park be a national rather than a provincial one is not clear, especially given that the province was particularly active in park creation during the 1930s.14 In any case, Bruce Hutchison of the Vancouver Sun reported in the fall of 1938 that the provincial government had been quietly working towards establishing a park that would stretch from Grouse Mountain to Indian 54

Defending Hollyburn Ridge

River, “including Hollyburn to the west.” Hutchison boasted that the alpine park, “green in summer, white in winter … would make Vancouver unique among all cities of the world.” The Sun also noted that a proposal was about to be submitted to “a mass meeting of skiers, mountaineers, hikers and sportsmen tonight by the Hollyburn Ridge Ski Promotion Committee.” The goal was to establish a cooperative, including cabin owners and ski-club members, in order to acquire the Heaps timber limits, as well as land owned by the municipality of West Vancouver, and to develop it “for park purposes.” The meeting, held in the spacious Hotel Vancouver, unanimously supported a plan that included the construction of trails, ski runs, a five-and-a-half-mile road into “the Cup of the Gods” (presumably what became known as Cypress Bowl), and a $12,000 chalet and sports centre on the northern shore of Yew (Cypress) Lake.15 Downhill ski promoters and wilderness enthusiasts would be less friendly towards each other in the future. In the meantime, however, it was announced that James Sinclair – “noted athlete and Rhodes scholar” (and future father-in-law of Pierre Elliott Trudeau) – had been appointed by the provincial minister of trade and industry to investigate land titles on the North Shore mountains. He was also to “plot the layout of trails, roads, ski-jumps, lodges and shelters” with the aim of creating “the most elaborate winter sports park in the Northwest.”16 Sinclair’s report suggested that a park encompassing the North Shore mountains, the development of which would be funded by the province, was both feasible and desirable.17 In July 1939, when he was identified as secretary of the Vancouver Ski Club, Sinclair chaired another meeting at the Hotel Vancouver, one that featured what one newspaper referred to as “the heavy artillery of federal, provincial and municipal governments, not to mention the Vancouver Parks Board.” The reporter added that the hotel ballroom was filled with “more than 1500 youthful skiing enthusiasts” who took part in a discussion “which was characterized by its supreme optimism, its uncontrolled enthusiasm and – hope.” The hope was that the various government representatives would “throw every influence” toward the building of 55

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what Gerry McGeer – who had been the mayor of Vancouver before becoming a member of Parliament – called “the greatest playground in the entire Dominion.”18 Wells Gray, the province’s minister of lands, was supportive, but West Vancouver was reluctant to give up control of its watershed without a guaranteed water supply from other sources, estimated to cost $20,000. As a result, the ambitious park plans were dropped.19 Gray had assumed that the timber leaseholder was bluffing, given the low value of the hemlock and balsam that dominated the Ridge, but circumstances were changing with the growing market demand that followed the outbreak of war in 1939.20 The following spring Heaps sold his Hollyburn leases to another company for $60,000, and in the fall of the same year the bc Mountaineering Club reported that “logging operations had so altered the appearance of the country that the trails were lost in a hopeless maze.”21 In 1941 councillor Sears of West Vancouver complained that further logging “would not only cost West Vancouver the loss of its principal water supply but would place an ugly scar on the hills, visible from Vancouver City and all ships entering the port.”22 West Vancouver Council was so concerned by this time that it offered to transfer to the province all the land it owned on Hollyburn Ridge, subject to protection of the municipal watersheds, if Victoria would cancel all the timber leases in that area. The province declined, however, citing lack of funds.23 In 1943, with 40,000 to 50,000 feet of logs being produced daily, protests mounted from organizations such as the local chapter of the Alpine Club of Canada, Vancouver Natural History Society, Burnaby Field Naturalists’ Club, the University Outdoors Club, and the bc Natural Resources Conservation League.24 Referring to the area as “Vancouver’s playground,” former Conservative cabinet minister and current Conservation League president H.H. Stevens (who had founded the national Reconstruction Party in 1935), declared in a newspaper article that, “There are things in life which are infinitely more important than profits on a timber deal, and the glorious, health-giving beauties of Hollyburn Ridge is one of them.”25 Finally, 56

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in the fall of 1944, the provincial government set aside 3,500 acres (1,417 hectares) on the crest of Hollyburn Ridge as a park reserve, though not yet a park, which would have required public investment.26 Hikers and skiers subsequently relied upon converted army trucks to climb the roads left by the logging operations, which had cleared approximately one hundred acres.27 The local equivalent of what historian Andrew Denning refers to as “Alpine modernism,” which combined technological innovation and celebration of speed with idealized notions of nature,28 finally arrived on Hollyburn in 1951. That year saw the construction of a $250,000 chairlift – the second longest in North America – making single-day trips from the city of Vancouver and beyond possible. But some people were interested in a more intimate contact with nature for, as of 1953, there were still 275 private cabins as well as three lodges.29 Furthermore, the bc Mountaineering Club complained that the focus on roads and chairlifts for skiers meant that hiking was being overlooked. Reflecting the contemporary Canadian obsession with juvenile delinquency,30 the club claimed that the social problem “would appear to stem largely from a lack of healthy physical outlets for the younger generation.” It petitioned the City of West Vancouver to preserve “the only remaining trail leading up to the Municipal park lands of Hollyburn Ridge that has not yet been ruined or obliterated by logging.” Although the petitioners admitted that this last trail was on private land, they argued that making public access to the mountain entirely dependent upon the privately owned chairlift would deny access to youths whose parents could not afford the cost of the tickets. As for “those that get there in the easy fashion it does not help to alleviate the chronic disease of boredom our youngsters suffer, from lack of sufficient physical recreation in healthful and natural surroundings.”31 Meanwhile, Hollyburn Ridge itself was said to be suffering from over crowding due to the size of the area declared off limits to protect the West Vancouver watershed, and council was pressured by recreation groups to give up the city’s water rights.32 There was also tension between the municipality and owners of cabins, some of which were 57

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found to be within the official watershed boundaries.33 A more serious concern, however, was the growing risk of forest fires caused by the expansion of logging. An article in the Province in the late summer of 1952 claimed that West Vancouver was sitting on the edge of a timber powder keg left by 3,000 acres of dry slash. More than two thirds of this slash was on land owned by British Pacific Properties and therefore outside municipal jurisdiction.34 The threat was presumably curbed slightly in 1955 when the municipality purchased a fifty-two acre block in order to preserve it from logging.35 In 1957, responding to the urging of the Lower Mainland Park Advisory Committee,36 West Vancouver announced that 2,000-acre Cypress Bowl would be opened to the public within the next two to three years. Nothing had happened three years later, however, when the Vancouver Ski Club applied for permission to develop the area.37

Alpine Outdoor Recreation Resources Ltd Finally, after another four years without further development of Hollyburn Ridge, West Vancouver Council in 1964 approved in principle a $10 million proposal by Vancouver’s Alpine Outdoor Recreation Resources Limited to develop “commercial and noncommercial facilities” in the Bowl.38 Despite the “non-commercial” reference, the aim was to create a large-scale distinctly commercial operation, one that clearly would have aroused local concerns even in earlier years. With the growth of environmental consciousness and antiurban sentiment during the 1960s, however, a concerted protest movement was inevitable. The developers certainly displayed little sensitivity to the changing climate of opinion or to the history of physical recreation on the Ridge, for by February 1965 the original proposal – which was to feature a 120-room hotel – had been expanded from a $10 million project to a $20 million one. According to company general manager Chuck Eadie of West Vancouver, there would now be a ten-storey “core” 58

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building that would contain “barber shops, drugstores, and soda fountains on the ground floor, restaurants on the second floor ranging from serve-yourself to the international kind that have foot-square wine lists on vellum, and every grade of overnight accommodation.” There would also be beer parlours and cocktail bars, and “in moments of extreme enthusiasm,” the Province reported, Eadie also envisioned “full-screen closed circuit tv from Vancouver nightclubs, with a personal visit from a star playing in the city.”39 In short, the part of alpine modernism that celebrated nature was completely eclipsed by a vision of urban modernity as associated with industrial technology, large crowds, and environmental degradation. Perhaps because Hollyburn Ridge had been neglected by governments for so long, however, opposition to the commercial proposal was somewhat slow to develop. The West Vancouver Council facilitated the development by holding a public hearing in July to consider the division of Hollyburn Ridge into the Mountain Public Recreation and Natural Wilderness Zone and the Cypress Bowl Recreation Zone (see figure 2.3). In addition, an Official Community Plan was drafted for the latter zone with the intent of leasing it to a private ski-hill operator.40 The deputy clerk stated that no correspondence from the public had been received concerning the matter, but three local residents did speak in its favour, one of them declaring that conditions on neighbouring Grouse and Seymour Mountains had become “intolerable” due to over-crowding. Ray Perrault, the local Liberal member of the province’s Legislative Assembly (mla), also spoke in the proposal’s favour, stating that he hoped the provision of commercial recreational facilities on public lands by a private enterprise group would not become a “political football.” Perrault added that waiting for the provincial government to provide such facilities would only allow the continued “‘siphoning off ’ of millions of dollars to U.S. resorts like Mount Baker and Stephens Pass.” Another Liberal mla, Gordon Gibson, also supported the proposal, but New Democratic Party (ndp) mla (and future premier) Dave Barrett stated that, “although he was not opposed to the development of the Cypress Bowl area,” he 59

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“felt that the lands should not be alienated” and “that the development should be performed by the Provincial Government.”41 Barrett had also accused the Social Credit administration of using the West Vancouver Council as a blind to hide behind a plan to sell parkland to a private developer.42 When the province created the 2,100-acre Cypress Bowl Recreation Zone in August, Eadie’s Alpine Outdoor Recreation Resources negotiated a twenty-one-year lease to develop a year-round recreational village of 22.5 acres, with the option to purchase the land on which permanent structures would be built.43 That fall the municipality approved the selective logging by the company of 300 acres in order to remove balsam timber damaged by woolly aphids, as well as “unsightly downed trees and scrub.”44 Three years later (in 1968), however, councillors were becoming concerned that 10 million feet of lumber had been harvested even though the promise had been that 4 million feet would suffice, yet no public facilities had even begun to be constructed.45 West Vancouver’s municipal forest ranger Jack Wood had voiced concerns about the scale of the logging operation, reporting that – contrary to the original proposal to construct a fifteen-foot-wide tote road – the company had cut a sixty-six foot swath, with grades too steep in places to serve as a road for other than logging purposes.46 In September 1968 Wood reported that in his opinion “the area is not being cleared with any idea of making the best of the land for ski development.” Soon afterward, he also questioned the accuracy of the Forestry Progress Report prepared by a private consulting firm and submitted by the developers. They had assured the municipality in 1966 that slope clearing would be supervised by the Provincial Forest Service and that they were not “embarking on a normal logging operation, but a selective logging operation in accordance with the Recreation Development Plan.”47 The company’s October 1968 progress report stated, however, that it was “essential to develop as clean a slope as possible in one operation, if costs are to be kept within reason” and that to avoid building skid roads it had been forced to resort to the more costly use of portable steel spars that yarded timber of all size 60

2.2 Map showing Cypress Bowl land ownership and access, 1970.

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and condition to the landing.48 How the environmentally destructive practice of high-lead logging fit the definition of a “selective logging operation” was not explained.49 Reacting to the forest ranger’s reservations, the municipality hired its own consulting firm, C.D. Schultz and Company, which rejected the charge by the recently formed Save Cypress Bowl Committee that the logging was “flimsy camouflage for a highly profitable logging operation.” To the contrary, Schultz claimed, Mountain Timber Ltd had lost approximately $19,000 during its first year of operation. Inspired by this report, city council then issued a statement declaring that there was a real danger of aborting the Cypress Bowl development if “irresponsible public controversy” persisted. It added, sarcastically, that, “Critics, particularly those to whom the sight of fallen trees results in emotional trauma, overlook the obvious necessity of clearing enough timber to make skiing for large numbers of people a possibility.”50 Stung by the charge that Schultz had a conflict of interest, however, the council then announced the formation of an advisory group that included members from the Save Cypress Bowl Committee as well as local ski associations and regional parks organizations. The province, in turn, informed West Vancouver in early December 1968 that further cutting permits were being withheld pending an independent appraisal.51 The expert chosen for the appraisal was Mel Borgersen, a managing consultant from Seattle. Referring in his March 1969 report to the trees cut on Black Mountain, Borgersen stated that the small size of the remaining leave blocks meant that their role as wind barriers and shade providers to ensure good quality snow as well as snow retention had been compromised, as had visibility during white-outs. He nevertheless defended the much-criticized clearing of a lower area of Black Mountain as being necessary for a parking lot and viewing area, and claimed that the proposed fifty to sixty acres for up to 6,000 cars appeared to be justified for summer and winter use. The plan for clearing another twenty-five to thirty acres for parking would be realistic, however, only if it were demonstrated that the area could support 35,000 62

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to 40,000 visitors a day. Borgersen had little doubt that the public demand would reach that level, but he expressed concern that this would “exceed the resources available,” adding that, “Controls will have to be exercised to retain the ecology and to balance the resources and attendance.” Alpine Resources was granted permission to resume operations in June but only with the proviso that it adhere to Borgersen’s guidelines, which it agreed to do.52 But even though Alpine and its subsidiary, Valley Royal Road Control, had finally provided West Vancouver with a performance bond of $50,000, some council members continued to be concerned about the nature of the clearing operations, especially in the area lying outside municipal boundaries. Provincial forest minister Ray Williston declared in November that the trees cut by Mountain Timbers were “an over-age crop and a decadent crop” that should have been harvested long ago,53 but there was cause for serious alarm that same month when Alpine announced that it had sold 75 per cent of its shares to a foreign investment company for $1.5 million. Without the city council being informed, Alpine had abandoned its original provincial lease of 22.5 acres for twenty-one years in favour of three ten-year leases over the much larger area of 544 acres, plus 88 acres for “residential and commercial development purposes.” The total rent would be $12,472 a year.54 The development that was to be known as Valley Royal would now include not only a hotel, artificial ice rinks, a heated outdoor pool, and a golf course, but 978 single-family dwellings, 5,580 lowrise apartments, and 2,400 high-rise units!55 Not surprisingly, given the history of environmental degradation on the Ridge as well as the ongoing protests against the large-scale development proposals for Coal Harbour (as discussed in chapter 1), many members of the public were not impressed. An excited young reporter captured the rebellious mood of the era when he described as follows the three-and-a-half-hour November council meeting held in the community centre and attended by approximately 700 people: “At times it resembles a lynch mob, sullen and hostile. At times it is reasoned and sober. It hoots, boos, stamps, jeers. 63

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There is enough up-tight making the rounds to fill a Vietnam platoon and there is heat in the air.” Alderman Ken Farquharson, chair of the Save Cypress Bowl Committee, reminded the meeting that people had been assured in 1965 that the scheme would cost $10 million, that local money was available, that the project would be completed by 1969, and that the public would have free access. Now, they were being told that the first stage would not be finished until 1972, that the cost would be $20 million, and that a fee would be charged for access to the area. Farquharson then implored council to ask the province to give Cypress Bowl full park status with control in the hands of West Vancouver. He also charged the municipality with negligence for not seeking tenders or even levying the standard stumpage rate before allowing Alpine Resources and Mountain Timbers to sell logs cut on access roads, and he noted that alderman Donald Lanskail had shared a directorship of Lakeland Base Metals with Alpine’s Chuck Eadie. Worse still, Farquharson charged, the company’s new majority shareholder, Manilabased Benguet Consolidated, owned extensive gambling interests. Council subsequently resolved that a full report should be submitted concerning the transaction between Alpine and Benguet, “including any involvement by members of council or others of a personal nature or alleged impropriety.”56 Despite the onslaught from speakers such as popular cknw radio hot-liner Jack Webster and prominent ndp mla Bob Williams, city council initially refused to pass a motion asking the provincial government to stop the logging. The reason it gave was that the Attorney General had already been asked to launch a judicial inquiry.57 But the council majority changed its mind the following day. Referring to the “great public concern … expressed regarding the development of Cypress Bowl and the reputation and procedures of the development companies concerned,” a council motion demanded that the provincial government “order the immediate cessation of all operations in Cypress Bowl including removal of any cut timber” pending an investigation by a Supreme Court judge. The minister of lands issued a stop-work order the same day but did not appoint the judicial inquiry 64

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2.3 “Would you tell the Minister …,” Len Norris cartoon, Vancouver Sun,

27 January 1972.

that West Vancouver and the ndp had requested.58 Provincial opposition Liberal leader Patrick McGeer was especially critical, charging that the minister of lands had been secretly encouraging Benguet Consolidated and claiming that “The shameless rape of the bowl for logging profit was undertaken with the consent and encouragement of the provincial government.”59 It was clearly not the environmental issue that was the primary concern of the morally conservative Social Credit administration, however, but the revelation that Benguet Consolidated had gambling connections in the Bahamas where it had been involved in payoffs to cabinet ministers and the governing party. Furthermore, a prominent member of its board had been convicted of stock manipulation and fraud in 1941, not to mention the embarrassing fact that four of the 65

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original five Alpine board members had been replaced by men from Freeport.60 The provincial government advised Alpine Outdoor Recreation on November 26 that, “a recreational concept of the magnitude anticipated should not be controlled by financial interests which are now concerned with other types of recreation not compatible with the laws of British Columbia and the philosophy of the government.”61 With the ndp still calling for a judicial inquiry,62 logging operations were brought to a halt in January 1970, the real estate proposal was rejected, and Alpine was given until May to come up with a new financial backer. Benguet appears not to have given up easily, however, for one of its chief figures indicated in a letter to the ndp’s Dave Barrett that it was taking steps to proceed through subsidiary companies. But another troubling revelation was to follow, for Barrett disclosed in April that one of Benguet’s sister companies had bought 38 per cent of two bc investment companies in which Social Credit fundraiser Einar Gunderson was a director.63 The deadline to find a new backer was, nevertheless, extended after the Benguet Company stated that it had divested itself of its interest in Alpine.64 Meanwhile, Mountain Timbers, the firm subcontracted by Alpine to clear the Cypress Bowl area and the access road, had declared bankruptcy in March. Whether or not it had funnelled to Benguet much of the $2 million it had received for road work and timber sales, as charged by the Vancouver Sun,65 the fact was that the Bank of Montreal had seized more than 800,000 board feet of its logs. Finally, in December 1970, when Alpine had yet to come up with another financial backer, the government argued that the leases were invalid based on the convenient technicality that it had neglected to publish the necessary notice in the bc Gazette.66

A Public Park The legacy of the large-scale commercial operation was not only the taint of political scandal for the ruling Social Credit party but also considerable environmental damage, effectively making it politically 66

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impossible for the provincial government to privatize the recreation facility, at least in the short run. West Vancouver municipality’s 1970 Fact Finding Committee reported that left behind were “many stumps and little noticeable grooming for the ski runs.” The only structures were “one lone ‘shack’ at the ‘core,’ one surveyor’s cabin near the summit of Black Mountain, and one former bunkhouse campsite with quantities of materials laying in the meadowland west of the core area.”67 Furthermore, specified, “‘leave’ areas for windbreaks, orientation, aesthetics, etc.” had in many instances either been completely cut over, reduced in size, or relocated without the authority of the municipality. Finally, timber had been taken on slopes that were “excessively steep for mass skiing purposes.” As for stumpage on the logs removed from the tote road and the access road where it crossed municipal lands, the total paid was less than $10,000.68 Striking a more optimistic note, consultant Mel Borgersen reported to the Vancouver–Fraser Park District that even though logging had skimmed approximately 700 of the 6,000 acres in the Cypress Bowl area, no irreparable damage had been done. He claimed that much of the logging had been “necessary for the development of a ski area,” even though his preferred approach was to cut trails through trees rather than clear cutting the slopes. But Borgersen did recommend that there be no residential buildings – not even cabins – in the Bowl and that parking lots should be restricted to lower levels in order to preserve the ecology of the higher levels. Finally, he concluded enthusiastically that, “I do not know of any other place in the world where there are resources such as this so close to a large centre of population.”69 Not surprisingly, given the legacy left by the private sector, Forest Minister Williston announced in January 1971 that the government would proceed on its own with construction of the ski facilities and road access. Noting that this had been what the ndp opposition had been advocating all along, the party’s former leader, Robert Strachan, declared mischievously that it should be named Barrett Park.70 The government plan was to drop expansion plans for publicly owned Mount Seymour to the east, with its dangerous terrain and difficult 67

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access, and invest in Cypress Bowl instead. It envisaged an 8,000-acre public park, 1,500 acres of which would be developed for intensive recreational use by the winter of 1972–73.71 Pointing to urgent need for such facilities in a metropolitan area of over a million people, the Province criticized Victoria for the dangerous state of the trails in Seymour Park, where “many unwary hikers have been lost among the cliff walls and canyons that have killed too many people.” The newspaper also warned that if the government planned to develop Cypress Bowl “at a snail’s pace … the applause for Mr Williston’s announcement will subside quickly.”72 More than a year would, in fact, elapse before the provincial government informed West Vancouver that it planned to proceed with the Cypress Bowl downhill ski project. The first phase, initially estimated to cost $3 million, was now to be double that amount. The municipality had preferred that the land be sold or leased to a private developer instead because that would allow it to impose zoning regulations,73 but Art Langley, who was now the reeve, supported the transfer. Langley also noted that a land exchange with the province might speed up and improve the quality of the proposed Hollyburn Ridge golf course, which could be enlarged from eighteen to twenty-seven holes.74 This had been his pet project during the previous four years, and $11,000 of federal grant money had been dedicated to surveying the proposed course, which was to be at a 2,480-foot elevation (see figure 2.3). In addition, the province had granted the municipality’s request to have the new $1.5 million, three-lane paved road to Cypress Bowl pass close to the site of the golf course.75 The land exchange approved by council was 587 municipal acres on Hollyburn Ridge for 593 acres of Crown land surrounding Eagle Lake near the base of Black Mountain, which was West Vancouver’s primary source of water.76 As for the ski facility, the Social Credit government was defeated before taking any concrete steps to construct it. In the fall of 1972, the recently elected ndp government’s conservation minister, Bob Williams, announced that the plan for Cypress Bowl would be scaled down because it would have necessitated additional logging. Williams 68

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added, “We just can’t continue to work with massive machinery and massive capital. It’ll destroy what’s left of the poor little valley already.”77 Another year elapsed before provincial authorities announced in September 1973 that peak downhill ski usage would be 5,000 persons a day, with parking for only 600 cars, a drastic reduction from the 6,000 previously envisioned. Furthermore, ski lifts proposed for the top and south slopes of Hollyburn Mountain to the east of Cypress Bowl were to be deleted and the area reserved for cross-country skiing, snow shoeing, and sledding. Summer hiking trails would be opened, and 60,000 more trees would be planted to augment the 150,000 firs planted earlier in the logged-over areas.78 In 1975, shortly before it lost power, the ndp government designated the area as a class A, category 6 park dedicated to recreation and preservation of the environment.79 Construction of the ten-mile access road to Cypress Bowl Provincial Park was finally completed the same year, at a cost of $8 million. In addition, the province had spent more than half a million dollars to clean up the logging slash left by Mountain Timbers, and $600,000 to put the ski slopes into shape. The two Cypress Bowl chairlifts and the rope tow would cost $1.3 million, and services such as electricity, water, and sewer an additional $1.5 million. With the purchase of equipment such as graders and snow packers, the construction of visitor and staff facilities, and the development of cross-country ski trails, the total bill was nearing $13 million by the end of 1975.80 The downhill runs consisting of five miles of intermediate slopes were finally opened in January 1976, by which time the rapidly developing Whistler Mountain resort – 120 kilometres to the north – was offering Vancouver’s alpine skiiers more dependable snow and a much more expansive terrain. During the ensuing years the province reportedly subsidized the Cypress Bowl recreation services by $500,000 annually. Finally, in 1984, the free-enterprise Social Credit administration sold the operation, including a fifty-year park use permit, for only $500,000 and a 2 per cent annual tax on gross income.81 The owner’s push to expand the operation in the face of competition from Grouse and 69

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Whistler mountains led to the formation of the Friends of Cypress Provincial Park Society in 1990, and a master plan signed in 1997 ended any possibility of expansion outside the ski company’s permit area.82 As for the municipal golf course proposal, it was finally defeated by a referendum in 1990, and three years later 86 per cent of the votes cast supported the preservation of the fifty-four-hectare (133.6 acres) site, which included a thirty-hectare (74.1 acres) stand of old-growth trees at its northern end.83 The rapid growth of the metropolitan area, including its expansion up the slopes of the North Shore mountains, had only strengthened the public’s resolve to preserve the greater part of Hollyburn Ridge as a place where outdoor recreation did not require expensive passes or equipment, much less large-scale destruction of the natural environment.

Conclusion Given the contested history of many of this country’s ski resorts, surprisingly little scholarly history has been written on the topic. A rare Canadian exception is Jenny Clayton’s examination of the role played by residents of Scandinavian origin in the origins of the operation at Revelstoke in the Kootenay Rockies.84 Swedish and Norwegian immigrants also played an early, though less formal, role in the development of skiing on Hollyburn Ridge. And, as in the European Alps and North American Rocky Mountains, the rugged Nordic ethos finally gave way to ski lifts, groomed downhill runs, and ancillary services.85 In contrast to the broad-based opposition to the development proposals for what would become Vancouver’s Devonian Harbour Park (see chapter 1), there was initially little public opposition to the large-scale resort promoted by Alpine Outdoor Recreation Resources Limited. It was only as it became clear that logging operations were causing serious environmental damage without significant progress being made in construction of the ski facility that alarm bells were raised. 70

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Whether or not the company was corrupt from the start, as some have charged, its proposal was probably too ambitious because Cypress Bowl never could have become another Aspen or Vail. Not only was the climate warmer and the terrain more limited in area, but – as the president of the western division of the Canadian Amateur Ski Association pointed out in 1969 – there was no need for a residential village when the city was only a few minutes away.86 The more positive legacy of the entire fiasco was a growing public awareness of the need to protect the tree cover on the mountains that overlook the metropolitan area. Although the prodevelopment Social Credit party and its Liberal offshoot have governed the province for much of the time since the mid-1970s, the steady growth of environmental consciousness, coupled with the rapid development of “world-class” Whistler and Blackcomb, has ensured that the Cypress Bowl ski lifts have been expanded only on an incremental basis. As for the greater part of the Ridge, its preservation has been ensured for wildlife as well as the increasingly popular low-impact recreational activities of hiking, crosscountry skiing, and snowshoeing.

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CHAPTER 3

“Restful Refuge” or “Vancouver’s Bedroom”? The Making of Bowen Island’s First Official Community Plan, 1969–77

The March 1973 editorial in the Bowenian, which was the newsletter of the Bowen Island Improvement Association (biia), painted a bleak picture: “Vancouver’s skyline together with West Van’s shoreline viewed from the Gulf of Georgia, resemble nothing so much as the erect tombstones of distant graveyards; and these could well be monuments to vanished benefits – light, fresh air and the view of unparalleled beauty which surrounds these communities.” This description nicely captures the antiurban attitude that had emerged in North America during the 1960s when the mantra for many young people was to drop out of society and go back to a simple and pure life on the land. But because Bowen Island lay at Vancouver’s “front door,” in the words of the editorial writer, who was far from being a hippie, it was “like a ripe plum ready for the speculator’s plucking.” Readers were warned: “Yes, we will have our condominiums, and our charming villas – Our swimming pools and golf courses … But where have the trees gone, those alchemists of nature who purify our air and conserve our water, and to say nothing of beautifying our surroundings?”1 Developed and promoted by two successive Vancouver-based steamship companies, Bowen Island’s Snug Cove had served as a popular summer escape for day-trippers and campers from the turn of the twentieth century to the late 1950s.2 After the resort era ended,

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Bowen appealed to retirees and commuters seeking a refuge from the city, though it was too mountainous to offer the pastoral arcadian refuge that attracted significant numbers of young back-to-thelanders to Hornby, Denman, and the more southerly Gulf Islands with their open meadows and fertile valleys.3 Despite the romantic antimodernist tone of their antiurban rhetoric, then, biia members were certainly not countercultural radicals. Rather, most of them were middle-aged, middle-class, politically engaged citizens with a strong faith in the technocratic exercise of community planning.4 Given their desire to keep at bay the social problems of the city and the cultural emptiness of the suburbs, Bowen Islanders clearly shared an element of elitism and “nimbyism” (a term first used in the 1980s). The fact remains, however, that the biia was not opposed to the responsible, carefully planned development of what was a challenging physical environment, and it was also in favour of an outdoor-oriented tourism economy. The volunteer group had the support of the great majority of Bowen residents – both year-round and seasonal – as we shall see, but several influential property developers, supported by a few small business operators, did manage to delay the implementation of a restrictive Official Community Plan (ocp) for a number of years. When that plan was finally implemented in 1977, it set the basic blueprint for Bowen Island’s slow pace of development – one heavily reliant on off-island employment but focused on a service, leisure, and artisanal economy.

The Move towards Zoning Aside from a handful of settler families and the summer communities established on its southern and northern shores by members of the Vancouver elite,5 Bowen Island’s population growth began in earnest only in the late 1950s when the resort era of the Union Steamship Company (usc) ended and that of the car ferry began. There was little official government oversight of the Gulf Islands at that time, aside 73

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from regulations for forestry, mining, and fishing.6 As a result, because Bowen did not fall within a municipality, the biia played a growing role as the island’s informal governing body.7 The minutes taken at a 1973 quarterly meeting, for example, reveal that the association’s committees were named transportation and communication, fire, rod and gun, water, planning, and political action.8 In the meantime, the usc had turned to subdividing and marketing its property in Snug Cove and surrounding area (see figure 3.1), and – according to an article published in Vancouver’s Province in 1972 – visitors no longer felt welcome: “Whether on foot, bicycle or in cars, they found pathways blocked off with private property signs. Former picnic areas, now overgrown, were uninviting. And dust from the unpaved roads was choking in midsummer heat … A nice place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit there.”9 usc estate agent Grahame Budge had predicted in 1967 that within ten or fifteen years “The Island might well replace West Vancouver as Vancouver’s bedroom.”10 Budge’s prediction was widely off the mark, failing to take into account, as it did, not only the cost and inconvenience of the ferry ride for commuters but the island’s mountainous and rocky topography. As late as 1971 there were only 351 year-round inhabitants on an island that was nearly fifty square kilometres (12,600 acres) in size.11 As the above-quoted Bowenian editorial suggests, however, development pressures on the Gulf Islands were increasing by the late 1960s,12 forcing the provincial government to respond to calls for regulation and control. In 1969, when there were 117 applications to purchase Crown land on Bowen alone, the Social Credit administration – evidently bowing to pressure from well-healed supporters who owned seasonal properties on the Gulf Islands – imposed a Crown land sales freeze on all those islands plus a freeze on the subdivision of privately-owned lots that were under ten acres in size, pending land and water surveys.13 The Bowenian expressed its gratitude, claiming that “If nothing had been done,” the island would have become “a bald prairie,” for the actual attraction in the eyes of the so-called developers was the island’s 74

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BOWEN ISLAND

U N I O N ST E A M S H I P L I N E S VACA N T C R O W N L A N D

3.1 Map of Bowen Island showing Union Steamship Company land, 1981.

“prime timber.” “Imagine coming in on the ferry and seeing those beautiful knolls ahead all cut and covered in slash,” the editor wrote, “Not only would the Island’s beauty have gone but your property and mine would have been worth half today’s value.”14 The Crown land freeze, which would become permanent for large tracts in early 1971, 75

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affected two Bowen interests in particular, for the usc had applied to add 1,325 Crown acres to the 1,200 acres it already owned, and Maui Holding Limited had applied for 540 acres.15 Both companies had more ambitious plans, however, than simply cutting timber. Maui Holding’s high-profile Stan James of West Vancouver would become the principal figure in the development controversy during the next five years. His company appeared to be a solid operation, for it included shareholder companies from Honolulu and Nassau, as well as individuals from San Francisco, Wailuku (Hawaii), Seattle, Calgary, and Vancouver. James, nevertheless, had a less-than-impressive record as a developer. According to the Vancouver Sun, during the 1950s he had been a principal in a firm known as Fintry Estates that had sold more than 3,000 lots at Lake Okanagan on a $10 down/$10 a month basis, before going bankrupt. His attempt in the late 1960s to develop a Hawaiian resort through Maui Holdings had reportedly also failed.16 But this did not prevent James from proposing a $6 million recreational–residential development on Bowen that would feature 500 townhouses, an eighteen-hole golf course, buried domestic service lines, swimming pools, shopping centre, and water piped from the mainland.17 Concerned about the clear-cut logging that was taking place on nearby Cypress Bowl in West Vancouver (as we saw in chapter 2), the biia expressed its support of the Crown grant to James’s company only on condition that he submit a bank bond of $500,000 and that “no more than 150 acres be developed at one time,” although the biia also stated that the project should be completed within a threeyear deadline.18 The Bowenian called as well for zoning regulations, asking, “of what use [is it to] a taxpayer to build his dream-house and then have it violated by the close proximity of hot-dog stands, or the wanton disposal of garbage or junked cars – to say nothing of undesirable transients?”19 Approving of the provincial government’s promise to send planners to the island “not only to plan our land but to, at long last, put our watershed into shape,” the Bowenian’s summer 1970 edition proclaimed that the day had passed when Snug Cove’s water supply 76

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should be the asset of the usc alone: “Water on this Island belongs to all and the lakes on our highlands should be used for the good of everyone.”20 The survey would, however, be a long time in coming. That following year, 1971, saw the provincial government transfer its planning responsibility for Bowen Island to the board of the Greater Vancouver Regional District (gvrd), which included one Bowen representative. A distinction was made by the gvrd board between regional and local planning, with the latter contracted to a private firm in consultation with each member community’s appointed six-member Advisory Planning Commission.21 Subsequent progress was rapid, for in January 1972 gvrd representatives presented zoning bylaws for discussion at a heavily attended and lively public meeting on Bowen. Attendees were informed that once the revised plan had been endorsed by the gvrd there would be further meetings on the island to seek public approval, followed by a local referendum. Attendees at the meeting were warned, however, that the provincial government might override a negative vote and make acceptance of the zoning bylaw compulsory. The most contentious issue was the minimum acreage that could be subdivided, with the chair of the gvrd observing that there were “two entirely different perspectives – on the one hand, the individual property owner, and on the other, the developer, – both approaching the problem from their own selfish point of view.”22 The zoning bylaw for Bowen was passed by the gvrd the following June, but at a second public hearing in November the gvrd presented an amendment to increase the minimum lot size in areas with sewage facilities from 6,000 square feet to 7,500 square feet. This proposed minimum, allowing for five houses per acre, still did not satisfy the biia, which had circulated a petition asking that it be increased to 12,000 square feet.23 The reasons given in the Bowenian were essentially aesthetic, for its readers were asked if they wished to see the island’s green slopes above Snug Cove “criss-crossed with black-top roads, and checkered with the houses of over-populated growth.”24 Although the November meeting on Bowen was informed that the 77

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requested increase in minimum lot size would require a new bylaw, former usc agent Budge – who was now the island’s gvrd representative – did promise that the 12,000 square foot proposal would be acted upon after the zoning bylaw was passed by the provincial government.25 The growing interest in the minimum lot size was clearly fuelled by the recent purchase of the usc’s strategically located land by Stan James, who was no longer with Maui Holding.26 James had informed the Bowen Advisory Planning Commission that a decrease in density from the 6,000 square feet per building lot originally proposed, and as found in “several villages and municipalities in the Province,” would jeopardize his plan for “clusters of residential units set into the existing forest cover; the majority of which will surround the proposed golf course.”27 In the meantime, property development was still on hold because of the aforementioned ten-acre minimum temporary freeze on subdividing Gulf Island lots, imposed by the provincial government in 1969 in order to provide regional district planning boards with the time needed to prepare formal plans for the islands. The Liberal mla for West Vancouver–Howe Sound, Allan Williams, assured a public hearing that the freeze would remain in effect until the newly elected New Democratic Party (ndp) government was satisfied with the gvrd’s regulations.28 Budge, who now owned his own real estate agency, nevertheless succeeded in having the gvrd pass a bylaw that lifted the freeze on Bowen.29 The biia reacted, in turn, by printing “Save Bowen Island” stickers and circulating a questionnaire soliciting opinions on zoning and the need for a comprehensive study of the island’s resources before the approval of any further property developments.30 Local land developer Donald Cromie claimed to have collected 100 signatures on a petition favouring the gvrd bylaw that exempted Bowen from the temporary freeze, but the provincial government refused to approve it pending the report of the twelvemember legislative committee it had appointed to study the land situation on the Gulf Islands.31

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Conflicting Visions If the Social Credit administration had been responding to the concerns of wealthy summer residents on the Gulf Islands, land developers had still more reason to be worried about its social democratic and technocratic ndp successor. Shortly before the committee chaired by Alfred Nunweiler (ndp – Fort George) arrived on Bowen in the summer of 1973, the outspokenly pro-free-enterprise Cromie published a letter in the Vancouver Sun (which he had once owned) warning that “Land values, and the public’s search for a share in our environmentally-delightful vacation and commuter and retirement lands, are at stake.” Obviously referring to Stan James, Cromie admitted that, “among the developers, practically all local people with years of Bowen living, there is one newcomer with plans for a big, rather frighteningly crowded project.” But, despite Cromie’s own elevated social status, he proceeded to associate those who opposed development on Bowen with the members of the Vancouver elite who kept their waterfront properties as a “private reserve” with no public beach access or parking and who opposed any change to “their spooky if effective water system and forbidding roads.” Meanwhile, due to the ten-acre freeze – Cromie concluded – “Our coast and islands sleep nearly empty in the sun, progressively depleted of their unemployed young people,” while “Washington State developers cultivate our market with glee and fill project after project with bc customers.”32 Cromie had in mind his own Tunstall Bay development on the west side of Bowen Island, for he had managed to survey only 131 of 450 planned lots before the freeze was imposed.33 While he claimed that the biia’s proposed “Total Resources Study” was unnecessary because “all of the relevant information already exists,”34 he clearly feared that its findings would jeopardize the further development of his property. Cromie claimed that an engineering firm had reported that the Killarney Lake and Grafton Lake watersheds provided enough water for 25,000 to 30,000 people and that Josephine Lake held further reserves for the southeast area.35 Bowen certainly has more rainfall than the 79

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Gulf Islands that are in the lee of Vancouver Island’s central mountain range where water quality and quantity has underlain all other environmental issues,36 but it, too, has long dry summers. Not surprisingly, then, the biia brief requesting an “overall Land Use Study” pointed to water supply as a major concern. It noted that the lakes and streams providing much of the community’s supply were, for the most part, privately owned and that the distribution system for Snug Cove consisted of “old, unrepairable, wood stave pipes” unable to withstand additional pressure. Sewage disposal was another basic problem, according to the biia brief, for it was not practicable on many recently subdivided lots “due to the metamorphic rock composition of our island and the precipitous topography.” In short, developers should be required to submit plans for approval rather than having subdivisions continue “in isolated pockets with little, if any, consideration of the Island as a whole.” As for commercial resorts and hotels that “could well prove to be out of character with the island’s tranquil beauty,” the biia argued that the expanding population of the Lower Mainland would be better served by improving Bowen’s polluted and mostly inaccessible beaches, opening up the Crown land “with the provision of access roads, camp grounds, parks and wilderness trails” and requiring that any subdivision or other land development “provide adequate areas for recreation.”37 Following the July 1973 public consultation on Bowen, when – according to the Vancouver Sun – “more than 200 people jammed the meeting and another 100 waited outside,”38 the province’s Nunweiler Committee recommended that the local community provide input into the final plan and bylaws that the gvrd would be drafting for the island. In response, the biia drafted a plan that recommended a slowgrowth policy to ensure that the island remained a “restful refuge” for residents as well as tourists. The proposal’s highlights included a permanent freeze on the further lease or sale of Crown land, conservation of agricultural land, creation of parks, prohibition of roadside advertising, and a ban on logging. The plan also reiterated the request for thorough studies of the water, sewage, waste disposal, and transporta80

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tion systems, and recommended zoning categories to perpetuate the “rural character of the island,” plus government acquisition of some privately owned scenic sites. Finally, the far-reaching biia plan stated that “separations between subdivisions are to be encouraged to prevent them from growing together and creating large patterns of continuous housing developments,” that “no subdivision lots will be allowed to border or cross lakes and creeks,” and that commercial and light industrial development should be “strictly limited to serving the needs of island residents and visitors only.” Such developments would also be subject to rigid design controls to ensure that they “blend with the surrounding features.”39 As Richard Walker writes of the critics of the exploding San Francisco metropolis, the biia members were “not simply Romantics recoiling against modernity” but believers in enlightened management “over and above the pursuit of private profit.”40 The chair of the biia committee informed a Vancouver Sun reporter that the local public response to its report had been generally positive, aside from the proposed ban on cars not owned by islanders. This last proposal was dropped by the committee, though not the one recommending that the village of Snug Cove be restricted to pedestrian traffic only.41 The biia did not represent the views of everyone on the island, however, for a newly formed group known as the Bowen Ratepayers’ Association (bra) presented its own community plan to the gvrd (bypassing Bowen’s Advisory Planning Commission). As the voice of the island’s developers and large property holders, the bra opposed zoning regulations entirely and, in the words of a Vancouver newspaper article, favoured “a system of land-use contracts to be worked out between the Island’s governing body and individual members.”42 The bra plan included ecological reserves, at least one major park, neighbourhood and village parks, common land accompanying strata development, and public beaches, but also marinas, hotels, resorts, golf courses, more summer cottages, campgrounds, tree farms, and light industry. Less realistically, it also proposed that six sites be reserved for village shopping centres and that a road be constructed around the island’s mountainous perimeter. In fact, the bra claimed 81

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that it could see no reason why the island could not accommodate 50,000 people (said to be two housing units per acre of private land) by the end of the century.43 (There were only 3,402 residents as late as 2011.) According to the bra mouthpiece, the Bowen Breeze, there were 12,000 residents – mostly professionals – on similarly sized Bainbridge Island near Seattle, and it had two golf courses, a theatre, two shopping centres, twelve churches, excellent schools, a library, and medical and dental services.44 What the author neglected to mention, however, was that the highest point on Bainbridge Island is only 130 metres while Bowen’s Mount Gardner is 762 metres high, and its Mount Collins is 411 metres. The Bowen Breeze also resorted to right-wing scaremongering, warning that “one way or another the socialists are going to take your property away from you. It may not happen this year or next but already the machinery is in operation. If they don’t get it under regional zoning or building restrictions they’ll get it under land reserves, agricultural reserves, waterfront reserves, park reserves, you name it. They’re chip, chip, chipping away at property rights that have carried since the Magna Carta.”45 The short-lived newspaper was shouting in the wind, however, for the biia boasted 700 members while the bra had only 120.46 Not surprisingly, the Nunweiler report, which had been tabled in September 1973, was very much in the spirit of the biia recommendations. In fact, it concluded that, “the islands are too important to the people of Canada to be left open to exploitation by realestate developers and speculators.” Clearly fearing that those interests would have too much influence within the gvrd, dominated as it was by suburban mayors and councillors, the commission also recommended the creation of an islands trust “to be responsible for and coordinate the future of the islands.”47 In keeping with these recommendations and claiming that “the local governments have not fulfilled their responsibilities concerning the islands,” the ndp government introduced the Islands Trust Act the following April. Characterized by one former trustee as “a bold and

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visionary experiment in ecologically-based planning and governance of a particularly sensitive, rural area in British Columbia,” the Islands Trust nevertheless lacked the power to plan or regulate development in a systematic fashion.48 Its powers were more negative in nature insofar as it could veto community and regional plans, zoning and subdivision bylaws, land-use contracts, and so on.49 This would, of course, include a review of land-use bylaws passed for Bowen Island by the gvrd. Some Gulf Island residents objected to the undemocratic nature of the new body, for even though it would include two elected members from each of the thirteen member islands, the three government appointees would outnumber each island’s representatives in reaching decisions on matters concerning the island in question. Issues concerning more than one island would be in the hands of the three appointees alone.50 In response to opposition protests, Minister of Municipal Affairs James Lorimer simply replied that the islands “are loved and cherished by a lot of us,” and the general trustees represent “the rest of the people of bc.”51 Despite its criticism of the Islands Trust Act, a year after the Social Credit party had returned to power in 1975 it strengthened the body’s authority by eliminating the preliminary role of regional district boards in adopting zoning and planning bylaws. The Islands Trust was, still more surprisingly, also now empowered to adopt special regulations to protect designated areas of “high recreational, scenic or ecological importance.” The head of Victoria’s Capital Regional District complained that the bill was a step back to a time when “the King had absolute powers,” adding that Gulf Islanders were being relegated to “the same category as Indians on reserves.” The chair of the gvrd, on the other hand, welcomed the minister’s decision, saying, “God bless him. If he wants Bowen Island he can have it – it takes up about 20 per cent of our time.”52 Meanwhile, in keeping with the request by the biia, Bowen Island became the only community in the gvrd to elect its own Advisory Planning Commission members rather than have them appointed by

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the gvrd board. The election was not formally recognized by that board, but Bowen’s first representative on it, Patrick Thomas, committed himself to appointing the two winners in each of the island’s five geographic zones.53 Assisted by gvrd planners and the Islands Trust, but without the benefit of the professional study of the island’s “supportive” resources that they had requested,54 Bowen’s Advisory Planning Commission members began work on the ocp in January 1975.55 After presenting the components at a series of seventeen daylong seminars, the Advisory Planning Commission produced a document in June that, perhaps not surprisingly, closely reflected the recommendations the biia had presented a year and a half earlier.56 Proclaiming that “Short-sighted planning eventually creates an imbalance between man and nature, with man severely damaging his natural environment,”57 the draft ocp stated that bylaws related to future developments would have to preserve watershed and catchment areas, prohibit the discharge of sewage into any water bodies including the ocean, maintain low population density within residential and even commercial areas, prohibit strip developments, limit multiple dwellings and prohibit apartment buildings, limit extractive industry to small-scale operations for the needs of the island, limit road and transportation systems “to a rural size and nature,” discourage the use of motor vehicles, provide for “suitable areas for recreational use,” organize community facilities to avoid decentralization, and retain the agricultural use of suitable land. Furthermore, buildings should be designed to “harmonize with the natural environment and a rural/ small village appearance,” and visitor accommodations should be small-scale and “of ‘rural’ or village atmosphere rather than of ‘resort’ or ‘on-highway’ type.”58 Bowen might be able to support 5,000 permanent and seasonal residents, the community plan concluded, but “A population above that will force the island community into urban economies of scale and service, and Bowen Island will become a suburb of Vancouver, with the high tax costs and social problems experienced by suburban communities.”59 As with other Gulf Islanders, then, members of the biia and Bowen Advisory Planning Commis84

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sion promoted what they considered to be the island’s distinctive lifestyle, one in keeping with the arcadian tradition that had come to be defined as the balance between nature and culture.60

The Stan James Offensive Although they might appeal to potential clients by depicting the island as a refuge from the city, Bowen’s developers viewed the draft ocp as a major threat to their own interests. Taking the offensive, Stan James warned that if it were implemented his company would be forced to increase substantially the water rates for its 220 customers in Snug Cove because of the $600,000 required for repairs to the water system. Speaking at a meeting on the island’s school grounds, a company representative claimed, further, that permission to develop as few as sixtysix acres would reduce the forthcoming extra water rate charge to each household from $390 annually for a ten-year period to only $100 per year.61 What James had aimed for since 1969, however, was a considerably more ambitious project than a sixty-six-acre subdevelopment. Despite his complaint in January 1976 that the proposed ocp “has virtually expropriated our resort,”62 James printed a glossy brochure advertising essentially what historian Lincoln Bramwell defines as a “wilderburb,” namely a “traditional-size” subdivision “located far beyond the city’s edge.”63 Close to Vancouver in distance but not in access, James’s subdivision plan featured single-storey houses “located inland in clusters adjacent to lakes and planned golf courses,” as well as being “screened by massive green belts, and completely obscured from the existing government blacktop roads.” The brochure also claimed that “sufficient water, sewage and ecological studies for the proposed development were completed four years ago” and that the zoning bylaw he had complained so bitterly about would allow for 2,000 units on 300 acres. This would generate $1,200,000 in taxes at current mill rates while the usc would remain responsible for private roads, water and sewage systems, outdoor lighting, and storm drains. 85

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More than $300,000 per month would be paid in wages to 700 people employed “for maintenance and ancillary services,” “all of which, with transportation, conforms to the liveable region concept of the g.v.r.d.” While the aim of that concept, proposed in 1975, was to counter the trend toward a concentration of office jobs in the city and housing in the suburbs,64 the transportation system promised by James was the operation of a twenty-four-hour-a-day “hoverferry” service for commuters to and from Vancouver. It would be “operated at cost by a private Bowen Island club” and connected to “a rapid island bus service.” Adding still more icing to the cake, the brochure also claimed that planned “community and recreational facilities and amenities” included “golf courses, winter club [perhaps an allusion to the local ski resort reportedly promised], riding, tennis and squash courts, marinas, plus a medical–dental centre.” These amenities were clearly meant to appeal to an urban middle-class clientele, as was the nod to so-called “usc tradition” by promising, as well, the “immediate and simultaneous restoration of the nostalgic Bowen Island Resort facilities.” In short, at a selling price of from $20,000 for a onebedroom bungalow to $30,000 for a three-bedroom one, the usc was offering “quality medium priced housing in a country club setting.”65 James had already moved ahead by hiring an “internationally famous” golf course designer from Houston, Texas to lay out his muchhyped links between Killarney Lake and Grafton Lake, which happens to be a steeply sloped area.66 According to a document written in support, the greenways would “weave through the forest and meadows around lakes, along streams with a view to sea and mountains.”67 James tried once more in early March 1976 to have the ten-acre development freeze lifted.68 When he was again turned down, he applied pressure by clear-cutting a wide swath on the north side of the main road leading from Snug Cove, claiming that this admitted destruction of “the ecology and aesthetics of a scenic part of the Union Steamships property and the island” was necessary because the wooden stave pipe water system serving the village would collapse if used to fight a fire.69 According to an article in the Vancouver Sun, however, most islanders 86

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felt that James had “defiled not only the hillside but also the pleasant memory of Union Steamships, the outfit that was government, god and good money for more than 30 years.”70 Finally, James also erected gates at each end of the footpath across the causeway that connected most of the residents of Snug Cove with the ferry terminal and village shops, though he did not go so far as to lock the gates.71 In order to drum up outside sympathy, James had recruited a sympathetic columnist, Ed Keate, who wrote in February 1976 that readers might finally be able to purchase a Bowen lot for $5,000 or a two-bedroom home for $25,000, “both with some recreational facilities thrown in for good measure … now that saner, less biased heads are looking at the dilemma of the Union Steamships Company and shaking their heads over the bureaucratic run-around the pioneer company has suffered these past 40 months.” Keate then resorted to sensationalism by claiming that unfounded rumours were circulating that James was “fronting for questionable money” and that a summer dweller had disclosed that he and some others “were so concerned about James that they were considering hiring someone to rough him up.” The columnist added that, in addition to the slanderous remarks made about James and his employees and associates, the company’s buildings had been vandalized and “outright frauds were perpetrated to prevent James from making any move with land on which the company has paid taxes for some 78 years.” To take one example, “Lands belonging to Union Steamships that were rock knolls covered with timber were classified as farm lands, making them not suitable for subdivision, but adjacent farmlands belonging to others were not classified as farmlands.”72 Keate also echoed the complaint of Bowen developer Don Cromie when he added that “The half dozen families who own large pieces of acreage (the Rogers, Burkes, Malkins, etc.) would just as soon keep it that way, and those in the exclusive community of Hood Point certainly want to preserve the summer lifestyle they currently enjoy.” As for the ordinary people living in Snug Cove and in Cromie’s Tunstall Bay, Keate claimed that they were “of mixed emotions,” not wanting 87

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“to water down the supply and demand ratio which currently gives them a handsome profit.” As a result, James was as welcome on Bowen “as a bastard at a family reunion,” and his “quite genuine and honest efforts to improve the hazardous water system” of Snug Cove and Miller’s Landing had been dismissed by the current regional director as “thinly disguised bullshit.”73 In the same scatological vein, Bowen potter Bob Kingsmill replied in the same newspaper that Keate’s column was “vitrolic verbal diarrhea.” After questioning why Keate had not contacted the police upon hearing the threat against James, Kingsmill pointed out that the old Union Steamship Company was not the new property development company of the same name and that it was “illogical nostalgic falderal to infer that the latter has paid taxes for 78 years – and on that premise cry with huge alligator tears that ‘they’ should now be able to ‘move’ on the land.” Kingsmill also claimed that the prices advertised by James (roughly half that for equivalent homes on the mainland) were little more than “an enticing lead” and that his development would have to be much larger than stated if he were to do more than recover the $1,277,000 he claimed to have lost in carrying charges due to the fortymonth delay in lifting the ten-acre development freeze.74 The gvrd consultant to Bowen’s Advisory Planning Commission tended to agree, stating that major flaws in James’s ambitious plan to develop relatively high-density housing on Bowen included the problem of water supply during the dry summers, the prohibitive cost of running sewers through rocky terrain, and the expense of commuting by ferry to work off-island.75 As he had promised, James had taken steps to address the latter problem by contracting with a Pittsburgh company to build three fifty-foot “quiet hoverferries,” each costing $500,000 and each capable of carrying sixty-two passengers from Bowen to downtown Vancouver in fifteen minutes.76 The ferries were also to serve his Sechelt development on the nearby Sunshine Coast, but the fact was that James had yet to obtain approval from local regulatory agencies, and a March news release drafted by the biia noted that Hong Kong, Sydney, Southampton, and other ports where similar 88

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vessels were reportedly used “are free of logs and the kind of flotsam that abounds in our waters.” The news release then asked readers to picture themselves “hitting a telegraph pole at 50 mph with your car and then imagine the damage that could be done to a rudder and propeller; not to mention the hole in the hull.” Even without such mishaps, the article added, the three vessels would be able to deliver only a small percentage of the anticipated 1,500 commuters to downtown Vancouver in a timely manner, not to mention the monthly crew wage of approximately $27,000 plus the cost of insurance, fuel, and maintenance. As had Kingsmill, the biia also splashed cold water on James’s promise that he would sell three-bedroom houses for $30,000, noting that building costs for such a house on Bowen would be at least $34,000, added to the minimum land cost of $8,500.77 Perhaps not surprisingly, the Sechelt development that James was basing his figures on was halted by the province’s Superintendent of Insurance a month later, following complaints about contraventions of the Real Estate Act.78 Unpaid suppliers and subcontractors had slapped liens on some of the properties with the result that, according to the Vancouver Sun, “About 40 families, attracted by the prospect of low-cost housing, have paid dearly in time and anxiety for their involvement with the Seaside Village project.”79 The main problem, as the principal contractor admitted, was that the small houses could not be built for the selling price of $17,000 (not including the land).80 In the meantime, however, James fought the biia and the Advisory Planning Commission by threatening through an anonymously written document to block resident access to usc facilities and parks, as well as to double the water rates and deny further water hook-ups for the foreseeable future.81 He also joined forces with other large landowners on the island to sabotage the draft ocp at a public meeting held to discuss it in late March 1976. As we have seen, the ocp’s goal was to protect Bowen Island’s “marine-oriented rural environment,” and its main emphasis was on zoning to prevent unregulated growth. Building lots were to be restricted to one acre (0.4 hectares) in those “limited development areas” that were supplied by community water 89

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systems and to three acres (1.2 hectares) for properties dependent upon private wells.82 Burnaby mayor Tom Constable, who chaired the island’s overflow meeting of 260, reported that of the sixteen briefs presented not one supported the Advisory Planning Commission’s restrictive proposals. Constable added that there would “obviously have to be some changes in the plan” before it could be approved by the gvrd board (regional district boards would not lose this power until late in the year) and that another public meeting would likely be necessary.83 According to a Vancouver Sun reporter who had attended the meeting, however, the great majority in attendance actually favoured the draft ocp, though only two of them spoke out. Perhaps cowed by the campaign James had orchestrated, “The rest just watched: spectators to the end, though they may have been witnessing a fatal blow to a way of life most have cherished and would want to pass on to their children.”84 Cromie claimed, in turn, that, “the repressives hope to delay recognition of the turn of public opinion on Bowen and the turmoil arising from understanding of the Plan’s devious blockages buried in its morass of amateur expertise.” More than forty Bowen residents and property owners nevertheless wrote letters to the gvrd supporting the draft ocp, and 287 permanent residents signed a petition in its favour.85 In addition, the biia printed a circular deploring the “unwarranted attempt” of the petitions circulated by the draft ocp’s opponents “to split the mixed population of Islanders into opposing camps. Residents on one hand and offislanders on the other.” The circular rejected what it claimed was the inference that “only residents have the Island’s good at heart, while non or part time residents are the wealthy and indolent, caring nothing about Island affairs.” Noting that “the latter, whether wealthy or poor, pay the bulk of the Island taxes,” the biia also challenged the assertion that the community plan meant “no growth” by pointing out that there were “some 600 plus lots already sub-divided and now eligible for development, and, they are presently being built on at an average rate of 50 per year.” Not 90

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only did those who opposed the draft ocp “seek the destruction of Island life through urbanization,” the circular concluded, but “Bowen Island has an obligation to the rest of the Province of bc as a recreational area and facility.”86 Supporters of the draft ocp also revealed that North Vancouver mayor and gvrd chair Ronald Andrews was one of Stan James’s fortythree summer-cottage tenants who had not been asked to pay rent during the previous two years.87 Not surprisingly, then, the gvrd planning committee voted six to three in favour of the Bowen ocp, though the island’s representative – who was the local gas station operator – was one of those who voted against it.88 Approval by the Islands Trust, which added a provision for clustered housing, followed a public meeting on Bowen in May 1976 at which – in sharp contrast to the previous meeting – almost all the presentations were in favour.89 The full gvrd board added its stamp of approval later in the month, thereby almost bringing to a conclusion a process that had involved sixty-two planning seminars, two public meetings chaired by the gvrd, and the receipt of more than 200 written submissions.90 Almost, but not quite, for the Social Credit government’s minister of municipal affairs, Hugh Curtis, announced the following December that he was returning the plan to the gvrd for further refinement on the rather surprising grounds that it had to be made more environmentally sensitive to Bowen’s physical features.91 The chair of the gvrd Planning Committee had reminded Curtis the previous month that the ocp was to be reviewed in two years time “when more accurate and settled information on the Island’s capacity for growth will be known.” In the meantime, he added, Bowen’s Advisory Planning Commission had been proceeding with bylaws to implement the plan. Passage of those bylaws involved numerous public meetings and the expenditure of “significant funds,” so that failure on the part of the province to approve the ocp would result in “considerable cynicism about local people taking responsibility for their environment.” Finally, the Planning Committee chair closed with the threat that the gvrd board would refuse to be involved in the drafting of another 91

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ocp, and “If the Minister wishes to decide policy for Bowen Island then it would be better if Municipal Affairs again took over responsibility for local area planning.”92 Whether or not the aim of the pro-free-enterprise provincial government was to sabotage the ocp through delay, the island’s developers had not entirely given up on their campaign. Thus, Ted Rogers – a member of the influential Rogers Sugar family and the leading figure behind the prodevelopment Bowen Ratepayers’ Association93 – followed Don Cromie’s example in February 1977 by pointing in a public letter at members of his own social elite, namely the “tiny clique of wealthy and wilful small-lot owners and their planner/supporters.” If their plans were implemented, Rogers claimed rather illogically, “The recreation role of Bowen that goes back over 50 years will finally be completely destroyed.”94 At last, after still further discussion by the gvrd, Islands Trust, and Bowen’s Advisory Planning Commission, as well as delegations and letters to the provincial government, the amended ocp became legislation in June 1977 and the ten-acre freeze was lifted soon afterward.95 As for the Stan James project, its fate had effectively already been sealed in May of the previous year with the foreclosure of an overdue $275,000 mortgage bearing 24 per cent interest on a 220-acre block near Snug Cove. Furthermore, James had only until the following October to meet the $1.8 million obligation bearing 30 per cent interest on another 400 acres extending to Killarney Lake.96 He presumably was able to negotiate a further delay, however, for in February 1977 he stubbornly resumed clearing land for a 200-acre, nine-hole golf course that was legally permitted within the Agricultural Land Reserve. James also announced that the Snug Cove marina would be developed to provide facilities for golfers sailing from the mainland.97 In response, Bowen’s Advisory Planning Commission passed a resolution deploring the fact that the company had filed no plans for the development, adding that “There is a strong probability of extreme environmental damage, a danger to the island’s largest water supply system and a complete disregard for the wishes of the citizens and the planning pro92

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3.2 Picketing Stan James’s clear-cutting.

cess.”98 The land clearing process was then halted by a picket line (see figure 3.2) and a violent confrontation ensued when a bulldozer drove through the forty demonstrators who were of a wide age range. Three people clung to the blade while the operator, despite being pelted with mud, sticks, and stones by a pursuing crowd, drove about 150 metres over rough ground before coming to a halt. The wife of one of the riders (the above-mentioned Bob Kingsmill) then jumped into the cab and grabbed the driver who roughly brushed her aside, only to be punched by her burly husband! Coincidentally, it appears, that same day the provincial government issued a cease and desist order against further clearing, pending an official investigation.99 Tensions remained high, for the following evening – according to a newspaper report – the 93

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night watchman guarding the land-clearing equipment was struck on the head and left unconscious.100 But the saga was effectively over, for James’s creditors soon foreclosed on him, and his dream of a golf course and a 2,000-lot subdivision went no further. Given the physical challenges presented by the island, James’s ambitious project was probably too large to succeed even without the restrictions imposed by the Official Community Plan, but local protesters had ensured that it was nipped in the bud and that the environmental damage it would have caused was kept to a strict minimum.

Conclusion As noted in a recent environmental history of Prince Edward Island, “Islands are perhaps the most obvious places to teach the lesson of limits.”101 It is not surprising, then, that newspaper reporter Alex Young could write in 1976 that Bowen might be “an island of serene beauty … isolated from the hubbub of the mainland” but it was also “a seething hotbed of politics.”102 With a small relatively stable population at a time when that of the nearby mainland was growing rapidly, Bowen Island was then at a critical crossroads. According to the Province that same spring, two main questions arose when considering the island’s Official Community Plan and the contrasting vision promoted by developer Stan James. Firstly, “How many ordinary people – representing a wide range of income groups and interests – will have the chance of a share in Bowen’s future?” Secondly, “How many people (and concomitant development) can the island absorb before it loses the flavor and atmosphere that sets it apart from other communities?”103 The more crucial question for Vancouverites, however, was whether Bowen should effectively become a suburb or serve as a readily accessible destination for day-trippers and weekenders who wished to escape the crowded city and enjoy a relatively quiet rural environment.

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This broader perspective was articulated succinctly by student researchers Julie Glover and Peter Chataway who were funded by an Opportunities For Youth grant in the summer of 1973. In their words, “if the provincial government … opts for development, [a] potential recreational playground will be lost for all time and there will be even more traffic congestion on Lions Gate Bridge. And there will be a precedent for development of other islands in the sound.”104 Unlike most provincial parks that “conserve areas of magnificent beauty and rugged nature,” Glover and Chataway argued, Bowen would be “used and not just looked at.”105 In his capacity as chair of the gvrd, Bowen summer resident and Vancouver mayor Art Phillips – who was then working towards municipal acquisition of what would become the city’s Harbour Park (see chapter 1) – offered to assist proposals for the conversion of the island to parkland. In response, however, prodevelopment Bowen representative Grahame Budge simply charged Phillips with outside interference.106 A major park on Bowen was still technically feasible in the mid1970s because 3,600 of its 12,000 acres were Crown land, and another 4,914 acres (42 per cent) were owned by only twenty proprietors, with more than 2,000 acres held by Union Steamship/Bowen Island Estates and Rogers/Touchstone Investments, alone.107 In practical terms, however, expropriation from those powerful interests would have been out of the question, and there was no public pressure for the province to purchase the large private holdings. Vancouverites had a wealth of nearby outdoor recreation places to choose from, especially in the North Shore mountains but also on the local beaches and in Stanley Park. As for the biia, despite its antiurban rhetoric and the heated charges of its prodevelopment critics, the organization was more interested in rational growth based on landscape analysis than in converting much of the island into one large park. Bowen’s mountainside Crown land was popularly (and mistakenly) considered to be safe from logging, but strong local support did develop for a smaller park consisting of the relatively flat and accessible usc land in the area

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from Snug Cove to Killarney Lake. Because of the subdivision restrictions and depressed market, the gvrd was able to purchase the 600 acres that became known as Crippen Park in 1983.108 As with the campaign to prevent development at the entrance to Stanley Park and on Hollyburn Ridge, then, the protracted resistance on Bowen Island resulted in the creation of a public park, one that each year welcomes approximately 15,000 tourists and day-trippers, many of them firstgeneration immigrants experiencing their first taste of the west coast’s “wilderness” environment.109

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CHAPTER 4

“The Newcastle of the Pacific”?

Protecting the Squamish Estuary and Howe Sound, 1971–79

Mayor Pat Brennan’s campaign advertisement for the Squamish municipal election of December 1972 asked voters to recall “when Squamish was a village of flooded streets and sidewalks” and “when cows wandered into the downtown area from adjacent open range.” During his term of office, Brennan boasted, a multimillion dollar diking programme had been completed, the new airport had been blacktopped, and highways had been improved.1 Hemmed in by high mountains at the head of the famously scenic forty-two-kilometre stretch of water known as Howe Sound, Squamish was still a town of only 6,000 in 1972. But its ambition to become the site of a deep-sea terminal dated to the early twentieth century when the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (which became bc Railway in 1972) forged a link to the province’s central interior, long before it created a land connection to Vancouver in 1956. A highway to Vancouver followed two years later, but it was not until 1971 that the Pacific Great Eastern’s extension into the coal-bearing northeastern corner of the province began to make the hope for a deep-sea terminal at Squamish a very real possibility. Little attention was paid at first to the ecological damage caused by dumping fill on the large Squamish River estuary, but the prospect of a coal port did raise alarm bells. Demands from an increasingly concerned public that further destruction of the estuary be halted because

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of the threat to the salmon fishery soon expanded to demands that Howe Sound as a whole be protected from industrial pollution. As a result, successive provincial governments found it politically unwise to support even the former copper-mine port at nearby Britannia Beach as an alternative to Squamish for exporting coal. It was not only in the metropolitan centre and its immediate fringe, then, that the antidevelopment movement was growing in the 1970s but in the nearby industrial zone as well.

The Central Delta The provincially owned railway company announced in March 1971 that it planned to develop its 1,100-acre holding on the Squamish waterfront by constructing wharves as well as storage facilities for the export of forest products and minerals from the province’s interior to Pacific Rim countries. Eager to take advantage of the global energy crisis and particularly the rise in Japan’s demand for coal, the company agent envisioned that within two years as much as 20 million tons of coal would pass through the port.2 The first major step in the project was the investment of $500,000 to extend the flood control dike well beyond the mouth of the Squamish River in order to prevent the accumulation of sand and silt that would interfere with navigation.3 This so-called training dike would also serve to protect the fill that was being dumped on the central delta of the large estuary where the terminal site was to be located (see figure 4.1). Although the remarkable productivity of salt marshes was being widely trumpeted at the time by popular American periodicals such as Life, Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, and National Geographic,4 the Liberal opposition member of the Legislative Assembly for West Vancouver–Howe Sound, Allan Williams, expressed his enthusiastic support at the August public meeting where the project was officially announced, as did Member of Parliament Paul St Pierre and Mayor Pat Brennan. Apparently no objection was raised at the public meeting 98

4.1 Aerial photograph of Squamish Estuary, 11 October 1972. The training dyke

is the white line extending from right towards centre in the top half of the photo. The white line bisecting the lower half of the photo is the highway to Vancouver.

concerning the unavoidable damage to an ecosystem that sustained important salmon and steelhead runs, as well as the many eagles and other wildlife that depended upon those runs. Steps were announced, however, to establish an independent harbour commission to allay fears about the human health effects of dust and smoke from coal and sulphur. Further demonstrating that the health of the aquatic environment remained a low priority, Brennan proudly announced that most of the air pollution from the nearby Woodfibre pulp mill would soon be eliminated but that water cleanup would be postponed because the fish “seems to get fat swimming around in that foam.”5 The provincial government was also anxious that Squamish, which was a significant forest products terminal,6 become a coal port as well despite the problems being faced by the producers of southeastern coal then being shipped to Japan via the large new terminal at Roberts 99

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Bank, south of Vancouver.7 An article in the Vancouver Province claimed, however, that the economics of moving coal required ships of 100,000 tons or more and that the narrow approaches to the head of Howe Sound meant that “these are simply not feasible at Squamish.” Furthermore, there was the ecological question, for Ron Hourston, regional director of the federal fisheries service, had warned that the use of river estuaries as port sites would jeopardize salmon fry survival. But even though Mayor Brennan had only eight months earlier recommended a commission to study whether the future focus of the Squamish–Lillooet Regional District should be on tourism rather than heavy industry,8 his angry reply to Hourston’s statement was that “The fisheries biologists don’t know what they are talking about. They’ve just discovered this new kick about young salmon living in marsh grass. Why the marsh grass in the Squamish River delta is seldom covered with water. The area we propose to fill is used to graze cows, not fish.”9 Premier W.A.C. Bennett of the strongly prodevelopment Social Credit government was also disinclined to heed fisheries biologists. In August 1972, shortly after he had announced a provincial election, he launched an ambitious plan to transport low-grade coking coal 420 miles to Squamish from the Sukunka valley, south of Chetwynd in the province’s far northeast. A twenty-year $250 million contract would be signed with Coalition Mining, backed by Brascan Ltd of Toronto and Brameda Resources of Vancouver, to ship 2 million long tons per year, increasing to 3.5 million tons after five years. At the unveiling of a largescale model of the proposed Squamish superport, which would be dredged to fifty-five feet, Vice President J.S. Broadbent of the bc Railway Company stated that the cost of the terminal would be $10 million. An average of twenty-five railway cars an hour would dump up to 24,000 tons per day, but the terminal operator would be asked to consider installing “some kind of protective cover” over the piles of coal.10 The plan was to drain the Squamish estuary, yet Broadbent claimed that much of it would be preserved in its natural state. Set aside as a conservation area, Broadbent suggested, the area “likely will become 100

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the subject of a study aimed at increasing the life-supporting potential of the estuary for both marine life and water fowl.”11 He was confident, furthermore, that the federal–provincial task force study on the port’s potential impact on salmon runs – which had been appointed in December 1971 – would prove that “a step by step development of the port will not interfere with the salmon” because culverts would connect the harbour with the Squamish River. In fact, Broadbent claimed, extending the river training dike on which the coal would be stockpiled would give the salmon a more peaceful life cycle “because we won’t be destroying the river in a calamitous way as nature does.”12 Not surprisingly, Hourston of the federal fisheries service was quick to criticize Broadbent’s rather clumsy effort at what we now know as greenwashing. After declaring that there was “no evidence at all that the total plan will include a number of culverts,” Hourston added that, “estuaries are very important areas for aquatic life” and that if the port plan proved not to be compatible with natural fish runs, alternatives would be recommended.13 Before the environmental study was completed, however, the Squamish municipal council was pressured by bc Rail to sign a Department of Transport certificate granting permission to begin dredging on the estuary. At a heated public meeting of 200 in the local high school cafeteria in September 1972, Gordon Ritchie of the railway company’s real estate division promised that the coal cars would be covered, a coal dust collection system would be implemented, and consideration would be given to storing the coal in silos. Ritchie also promised that the development would provide 2,500 new jobs for terminal and railway employees. bc Rail vice president Broadbent had stated that the Squamish town council was in complete support of the project, having been promised that the railway tracks would be moved away from the downtown area,14 but Mayor Brennan now stated that his council would “very very seriously” consider waiting for the environmental impact study before signing the certificate. Those in attendance at the meeting were not, however, reassured by Brennan’s pronouncement. Perhaps inspired by the environmentalist 101

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stand taken by Liberal provincial leader David Andersen,15 mla Allan Williams changed tack, warning that if the Squamish council signed the certificate before the task force report was released, “you’ll in effect be giving your seal of approval to a project whose outcome nobody knows.”16 In addition, Dr Hamish Redford, a local physician associated with the broadly based Scientific Pollution and Environmental Control Society (spec),17 argued that the heaps of coal would give Squamish a bad image and might well frighten away other potential industries as well as detract from tourism. As for the fishery issue, Cal Woods of the bc Wildlife Federation stated, “it’s important that we think about fish as well as people,” and Jim Culp of the bc Steelhead Society pointed out that the Squamish estuary was a major spawning ground that could be destroyed by the port development. Hugh Clifford of the Capilano Rod and Gun Club was still more emphatic, referring to the proposed development as a monstrosity, one that would “negate the whole of Howe Sound as a recreational area.”18 Particularly concerned about that possibility was Tom Sewell, operator of the Horseshoe Bay marina near the mouth of Howe Sound. Sewell had helped to organize the Save Howe Sound Committee as a coalition of outdoor and conservation groups to fight the coal port proposal, and, when asked why he would oppose moving it to any nearby site, he replied, “Because I don’t want to see the sound become another Burrard Inlet.” Sewell also described Howe Sound as the most valuable recreation property in British Columbia and warned that it could become a dead sea.19 Under such widespread pressure, the Squamish council voted unanimously a week later to put the dredging permit aside until the federal–provincial environmental report was filed.20 As members of the environmental and recreation groups anticipated, when the report was released in late October it declared that further draining of the Squamish estuary would ruin the sport and commercial fishery in Howe Sound. It would do so, the report claimed, by destroying “virtually all of the largest, most stable and productive parts of the remaining inner estuarial area” which contained “the only reliable source 102

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of food there available to juvenile salmon, herring and other fishes.” The river’s once great herring spawn had disappeared within the previous decade, but the report estimated that the annual average wholesale value of its pink and chum salmon was still $3.2 million, and for spring and coho it was $1.3 million. Aside from the value of the commercial fishery, that of the sports fishery was calculated at $2.3 million for coho and spring, and $700,000 for steelhead. Federal environment minister Jack Davis had, a couple of months earlier, indicated his approval of the project, provided that the area for stockpiling coal be moved further north and transported to the loading area by covered conveyors, but he now announced that – in light of the recent elimination of nearly 100 acres of intertidal marsh by the river training dike and dredge spoils – no further industrial development would be allowed on the estuary. Furthermore, he added, bc Rail might have to remove part of the fill that had been “sneaked in” without knowledge of the federal fisheries department.21 In support of Davis’s decision, the Vancouver Province stated that it made sense from an economic perspective because “the capitalization involved in commercial fishing boats and tackle and in processing plants ashore, as well as the sports fishing equipment, is many times more than the actual catch. It could be as high as $100 million.” And, while the fishery was a renewable resource, coal was not.22 Mayor Brennan continued to sit on the fence, however, stating, “I’m not necessarily in favor of either environmentalists or industrialists,” though he did add in his characteristically colourful fashion, “I believe in the fishery. I’d be the first one to shoot someone who wanted to ruin it.”23 Public concern was not limited to outsiders, for an opinion poll with forty-six respondents published by the Squamish Citizen in November 1972 indicated strong local opposition to the coal port.24 At the public debate preceding the December municipal election, however, most of the ten candidates avoided taking a direct stand on the coal port, and several supported a referendum. Predictably enough, Brennan waffled once again by stating that the municipal council 103

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would have no say in the decision and that “he did not think we should tell the rest of the world how to run the province.” But he could not resist adding, “Put in a nice overpass, take out the way tracks, move all the log dumps down past the end of the coal dock and it wouldn’t be too bad.” Judging from the report in the Squamish Times, most members of the debate’s audience favoured the port, for one of them questioned the right of the people of Horseshoe Bay and elsewhere in the Lower Mainland to oppose it, and another pointed to the pollution caused by the Howe Sound marinas.25 A letter to the editor published in the same edition declared, “I for one, want industry here, coal dock and all, in fact any kind of industry that wants to come in here, we are not all anti-Squamish and anti-British Columbia like our minister in Ottawa.” As for the Capilano Rod and Gun Club, the West Vancouver Rod and Gun Club, and the resort owner at Horseshoe Bay, he added, “These people do not live in Squamish, do not pay taxes here and the only thing they leave in Squamish is their empty bottles and sandwich bags therefore should not have a say as to what goes on in this community and should be barred from speaking at any future public meetings.”26 Environmentalism was evidently still a new and threatening concept to many of the people in Squamish who relied upon the exploitation of natural resources for their livelihoods.

Mamquam Blind Channel The coal port issue placed the newly elected ndp government in a difficult position in 1972. It had campaigned against the long Social Credit history of government-initiated megaprojects, yet the provincially owned bc Railway lacked a deep-sea port, and it stood to profit greatly from a coal outlet in Squamish where it owned most of the waterfront land.27 Provincial resources minister Bob Williams told the press that he was “not unsympathetic” to the threat posed to the fishery by the proposed coal port; he was sharply critical, however, of Davis’s resort to a press conference to announce his department’s 104

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rejection of the estuary location, without even sending a copy of the environmental report to his provincial counterpart’s office.28 In early December the ndp government proposed a new site for the terminal, namely Mamquam Blind Channel on Squamish’s eastern border. Premier Dave Barrett and Jack Davis jointly suggested that pollution mitigation measures would be taken, such as dredging the silt in the channel to remove mercury deposited by the chemical plant in operation there since 1965, having logs sorted on land rather than in the water, and improving the estuary for herring and salmon spawning.29 The province also commissioned Howard Paish and Associates to produce a quick environmental study, but this initiative did not satisfy either spec’s Squamish branch director, who claimed that the decision would ultimately be a political one, or the executive director of the bc Wildlife Federation who charged that it looked like an attempt to “sugar-coat an unpalatable decision already made.”30 The latter statement is difficult to explain, given that Paish had been executive director of the same federation and that he had brought to it what one academic study refers to as “more of a ‘gloves off ’ approach, greater use of tactics designed to win public support, and calls for broad structural reform” to resource management.31 Opinion in the Vancouver press was also critical, however, with the Sun referring to the commissioning of a second environmental study as “a trendy bit of overkill.” The newspaper did concede that “we’ve come a way since W.A.C. Bennett’s dependence on heavenly advisers,” but added that if the studies were being asked to prove that “a channel that has already been destroyed by log booms” is better suited for a coal dock than “a sensitive fish run,” the answer was obvious: “The real question – and it is essentially political – is whether Howe Sound should be sacrificed to dirty industry and massive coal freighter traffic. It’s not whether we want a cancer here, where it shows, or here, where hardly anyone will notice, but whether we want a cancer at all.”32 Davis responded to this article by writing that “Premier Barrett is pushing ahead and is all for the coal port at Squamish. I am not.”33 As a federal cabinet minister, Davis openly favoured the northern port 105

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of Prince Rupert which was served by the nationally owned Canadian National Railway Company (cnr), and which was some 500 miles closer than Squamish to Japan, the chief market for the Sukunka coal. Strongly denying Davis’s statement that his mind had been made up, Barrett informed the federal transport minister Jean Marchand that Davis’s letter had jeopardized future negotiations between the two governments concerning integrated railway facilities, and therefore the federal government’s wish to have Prairie grain shipped through Squamish rather than the overcrowded North Vancouver port on Burrard Inlet. Davis simply replied that Squamish had only been discussed as a secondary outlet for grain in the event of tie ups on the cnr and Canadian Pacific Railway (cpr) lines in the Fraser Canyon and that there were no federal plans to build a major grain terminal there.34 Coming to Barrett’s defence, an editorial in the Squamish Citizen charged Davis with a conflict of interest, given Ottawa’s ownership of the cnr and subsidization of the cpr. Aside from “the loss of business that these national railways would receive from the B.C.R’s competitive, and better port,” the people of Roberts Bank and Delta would insist upon equal (and costly) treatment if a nonpolluting coal port were opened in Squamish. The newspaper editor stated, nevertheless, that in order for him to give the coal port its full endorsement, “It will have to be shown that the fish will survive, in numbers, and that Squamish will not become the Newcastle of the Pacific.”35 Such concerns spurred spec to organize a public protest in early January when it discovered fourteen bc Rail cars loaded with coal that was to be shipped to England for testing and evaluation. Despite the short notice, seventy-five Squamish residents took part in the protest at the local rail yard.36 Doug Fenton – president of the Squamish branch of spec – also launched a formal protest against the Mamquam site, reminding the mayor and aldermen that a coal port on the channel would border the Stawamus band’s reserve and that “Indians have been treated shabbily in Canada over the years, as second class citizens.” The thirteen local Squamish Nation families had clearly not been consulted, but the acting band manager did ask the minister of 106

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Indian affairs and northern development to intervene on their behalf.37 In addition, band councillor Chuck Billy appeared before a municipal council meeting where he stated that, “the rivers and the fish here are part of our livelihood now that we have destroyed the Capilano.” He also indicated his support for the Save Howe Sound Committee. When Mayor Brennan condescendingly asked Billy if he simply opposed progress, the answer was, “You guys can leave here and head for another climate where the air is clean. But I plan to live here.” And when asked further if his people would consider trading their Stawamus village site for one further up the valley, Billy replied with an emphatic “No!”38 Although the Vancouver Sun had rather cynically suggested that “No ecologist working for hire is going to tell Dave Barrett and Jack Davis that north country coal should go out of Roberts Bank or some other appropriate port, that the marginal and offensive pulp industry on Howe Sound should be phased out, that the B.C. Ferries should abandon their terminal in Horseshoe Bay, that this rarest of urban marine playgrounds should be reserved for the leisure of a growing, recreation-hungry Lower Mainland population,”39 the Paish report actually did reject the idea of a Squamish coal port. Noting that “estuaries are probably the richest natural zones on earth within which basic nutrient resources are converted into biological productivity,” the report estimated that of the remaining 315 acres of “the most important land for primary productivity on the delta – sedge-rush vegetative association,” recent developments such as the river training dike would eventually eliminate 155 acres. Furthermore, dredging, boat movement, and the potential spillage of oil and other contaminants would “increase disturbance of the aquatic and intertidal ecosystems.” As for Mamquam Blind Channel, 90 per cent of its herring spawning grounds had been destroyed by log booms in 1968, but it continued to support “the highest rate of primary productivity of any area of the Squamish estuary.” The report concluded, then, that “there is serious reason to doubt that the Squamish estuary and delta will be able to sustain further port and industrial development, including the proposed 107

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Mamquam coal terminal, without seriously impairing the biological contribution that the estuary and delta make to the total riverestuarine-Howe Sound complex.”40 Furthermore, contacts with the public had convinced Paish that “the major objections to a coal port located at Squamish do not lie only in the immediate quantifiable aspects of possible environmental damage. Rather, the main concern is that the scenic, aesthetic and recreational attributes of Howe Sound and the life-style associated with them will be impaired by further industrial development.”41 As elsewhere in the region, then, environmental consciousness was still very human-centred. As for recommendations, the Paish report advised that a moratorium be placed on new development in Squamish pending the drafting of a comprehensive land-use plan for the estuary. In the meantime, “serious consideration” should be given to relocation of the log handling activity in Mamquam Channel, as well as to the maximum use of coal-loading facilities in another location where environmental impact was already a “fait accompli.” The report also recommended the development of a federal–provincial policy on land and water use for Howe Sound “to take into account existing and potential industrial, recreational and aesthetic values associated with the sound.” More idealistically, it added that serious consideration should be taken of the Squamish delta and estuary as an area for “applied research on estuarine management problems,” and that there be a serious appraisal of the relative merits of all types of energy generation “from technical, economic and environmental standpoints” in order to provide “guidance on an overall coal resource development policy for the province.”42 Barrett had waited for the completion of the Paish report before releasing the more intensive one produced by the federal Department of the Environment, which had reached much the same conclusions. It stated that the Mamquam coal port would sacrifice seventy acres of intertidal land adjacent to a thirty-acre deep-sea berth, and that expansion of the railway marshalling yards to handle the ultimate annual capacity of 10 million tons of coal would occupy approximately fifty108

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five acres of the intertidal and flood channel area, ending the possibility of restoring the herring spawn. The fish food sources of Mamquam Channel, the report continued, supported juvenile chinook, coho, and chum salmon from the Squamish River system, as well as being extensively used by herring, smelt, perch, flounder, whiting, and needlefish, not to mention transient wildlife populations. Construction and maintenance dredging in the area would result in the release of sediment-bound mercurials and toxic sulphide gas, as well as increasing turbidity. Furthermore, the high intensity winds of the area would likely spread coal dust from uncovered emergency storage piles, resulting in the smothering of benthic invertebrates that the fish fed upon. The federal report concluded that Prince Rupert would be a better alternative because the harmful effects of a port at its Ridley Island site would be minimal.43 That conclusion provided Premier Barrett with the opportunity to charge that the federal report lacked credibility because no environmental studies had been done at the northern port.44

Britannia Beach Barrett’s ace-in-the-hole was the Paish Report’s suggestion of Britannia Beach as a possible alternative. Located 12.3 kilometres south of Squamish, Britannia Beach was far from being a pristine natural environment, for the polluting impact of the local underground copper mine is said to have been unmatched in Canada.45 A geotechnical report submitted in May 1973 claimed that development of a bulk port for vessels up to sixty feet in draft was feasible once forty-five feet of recently deposited mine tailings and waste from the site’s former gravel operation were excavated. The coal storage area would be located in the existing gravel pit, which would have to be expanded in the future.46 As for environmental concerns, a second Paish Report that was commissioned by bc Rail in 1973 claimed that there were none of significance. It estimated that by 1976 the port would serve 109

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fifty 40,000-ton vessels a year but concluded that this need cause no harm to migrating salmon or other fish. Furthermore, the impact on boating and sports angling would be minimal, given the number of gravel barges, tugs, and log booms that already operated in the Sound.47 This assessment must have pleased Barrett, whose government was planning to purchase a 40 per cent interest in the Sukunka coal field, but – echoing the conclusion of his previous report – Paish also suggested that technical feasibility was largely beside the point given that the concern expressed by the public “seems to hinge on broad value judgments on Howe Sound and industry rather than on the immediate quantifiable aspects of possible environmental damage.”48 For including such opinions, Paish had his knuckles rapped by Barrett who stated that he had contemplated returning the report in order to have the “gratuitous” remarks removed.49 Allan Williams argued, however, that a coal port at Britannia would pave the way for other ports on the Sound, thereby eliminating its characteristics as “an outstanding recreational waterway.” “I am left without any doubt,” the Liberal mla concluded, “that the government is prepared to sell out Howe Sound.” In a similar vein, the Capilano Rod and Gun Club’s Hugh Clifford – the perennial ndp candidate who chaired the Save Howe Sound Committee – had expressed surprise in January that a socialist government would place more importance on economic considerations than on recreational ones. Clifford added, “I think it’s as bad as turning Stanley Park over to land developers.”50 He then promised, “We are going to pursue the campaign not to have a coal port on Howe Sound with the utmost vigor.”51 And speaking for spec, Doug Fenton opposed “shuffling it off onto our neighbour’s door step,” adding, “Perhaps we should leave it [i.e. coal] in the ground till we need it ourselves. Then we can use it for producing power.”52 Finally, members of the Squamish Environmental Association, formed by a group of local high school teachers,53 had written in January to ndp and Liberal mlas, as well as the City of Vancouver, explaining their opposition to the development of a coal port anywhere in Howe Sound. According to association president Dave 110

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Colwell, even though Squamish’s mayor and several aldermen “remain ‘progress’ oriented … the majority of Squamish citizens, and several other lower mainland municipal councils polled by the committee to ‘Save Howe Sound’ do oppose the coal port.”54 Members of the Squamish municipal council, in turn, expressed outrage that adjoining municipalities had made statements against the port development without first contacting them, and Mayor Brennan instructed the city clerk to write letters asking those councils “politely to please mind their own business.”55 As for the press, the Province questioned whether it would make economic sense to expand the port at Britannia Beach in order to serve one coal ship a week. Consequently, the government might be tempted to expand the port further in order to enhance northern development and benefit bc Rail. And this raised the question as to “the relative value of industrial development in Howe Sound … compared with the economic value, not to say environmental worth, of preserving the sound as a recreational paradise close to an area where half the B.C. population lives.”56 The Vancouver Sun took a similar position, criticizing Barrett for stating that the only objections to a coal port at Britannia Beach were aesthetic ones. The Sun also insisted that the premier “look at the whole picture – weighing a Howe Sound preserved for recreation against narrow benefits to B.C. Rail.”57 In response, Barrett – who had as an opposition mla been outspoken in opposing big development at Cypress Bowl (see chapter 2) – stated that there would be a public hearing before a decision was reached. He added, however, that most of the coal passing through Britannia Beach would go to Britain, thereby placing the province in a better bargaining position with Japan. Barrett also promised that there would be no further industrial expansion in Howe Sound after the coal port was created, and he repeated his claim that “the matter is now confined to an evaluation of the aesthetics.”58 Ultimately, however, he did give in to the public pressure against the Howe Sound port. In July the press reported that the province had decided to pursue an agreement with the federal government for joint rail services 111

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between the cnr and bc Rail in northwestern British Columbia, thereby paving the way for Prince Rupert to become the outlet for Sukunka coal.59 Although the provincial government subsequently backed out of the Sukunka coal deal,60 a joint federal–provincial study reported in 1974 that Prince Rupert would be the most economical port for other coal deposits.61 The idea of a coal port in Howe Sound was revived two years later, however, when Denison Mines Ltd of Toronto announced the investment of $400 million to put its Quintette coal property near Chetwynd in northeastern British Columbia into production. Projected to produce five million tons of high-grade metallurgical coal per year, the operation would increase shipments of the mineral from the province by more than 50 per cent. The company favoured building a bulk shipping terminal at Prince Rupert, but the provincial government, which had returned to Social Credit control, reportedly favoured Britannia Beach even though a technical report had suggested it was too small for adequate storage and that costs for shipping northeast coal to Japan via a southern port would be as much as 50 per cent more than via Prince Rupert.62 Predictably, the Squamish mayor was enthusiastic about the prospect, claiming that industry could be developed in Howe Sound without adverse effects and noting that gravel had been shipped out of Britannia Beach for years. But consultant Howard Paish, whose 1972 and 1973 reports had suggested the location as a possible alternative to Squamish, now stated that the volume of coal to be shipped from the Chetwynd area was so great that “traffic would be backed up from Britannia and that would cause headaches.” Paish added that “We’ve already got power lines and God knows what coming down that (Pemberton) valley – and you have to remember the Whistler area; who wants to enjoy skiing against that backdrop?” Finally, Hugh Clifford – now identified as a retired West Vancouver businessman – promised that the Save Howe Sound Committee would be revived, adding, “The danger of a coal project was not just a matter of transport but the danger of attracting further industrial development to Howe Sound.”63 There was no need to organize, however, for the Social Credit 112

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government’s labour minister, Allan Williams (who had abandoned the Liberals), threw cold water on the Britannia idea, stating that he still opposed a coal port in Howe Sound. Finally, in September 1976, Premier Bill Bennett announced that Prince Rupert was to be the only choice for coal from the northeast.64 Controversy over Britannia Beach erupted yet again in 1979 when Dome Petroleum purchased 500 acres there in order to develop it, in the words of the company president, as “a servicing base for tankers moving oil from the Beaufort Sea or carrying natural gas derivatives from the port to world markets.” Another possibility was a port for liquefied natural gas from the Arctic to supply the South Korean market. Environmentalists were again quick to react, with Doreen Wakely – spokesperson for the Save Howe Sound Committee – promising “to fight this new port project in a big way.” Bowen Island’s John Rich, chair of Islands Trust, commented: “To think that anyone would contemplate putting an oil port in Howe Sound is crazy,” and he promised to fight the possible development “by any means possible.”65 Once again, however, the port proposal remained on the drawing board.

Conclusion Long dependent upon resource extraction and shipping, the people of Squamish were initially quite willing and even anxious to welcome industries such as the fmc chemical plant and the large woodproducts shipping facility, both built in the mid-to-late 1960s. In contrast to Vancouver, Bowen Island, and Hollyburn Ridge, there would be no questioning of the merits of local population growth or of large-scale development, in and of itself. But concerns about the health effects of pollution had begun to grow in Squamish by 1970, and, in contrast to what historian Mark Leeming has noted for rural Nova Scotia, the experience of personal environmental harm was not required to inspire those concerns.66 Thus, the municipal council pressured the nearby pulp and paper plant to reduce 113

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its discharge of air pollutants in 1970,67 and, at spec’s urging, it banned the spraying of Dow Chemical’s herbicide, Tourdon 101 (which is still marketed by the company), even before the local chemical plant’s spillage of chlorine gas in June 1971.68 That same year Squamish council also challenged the lower court’s decision that bc Hydro was exempt from municipal laws when it sprayed chemical defoliants along its power line right-of-way, and a year later council shut down a gravel and basalt mining operation on the west bank of the Squamish River where spec then lobbied for a large class A provincial park.69 On the other hand, despite opposition from spec, the same council in 1972 welcomed a second chemical plant that would produce sodium chlorate for the pulp industry.70 Furthermore, little concern was initially expressed about the potential environmental impact of a large-scale coal shipping facility, aside from the risk that coal dust might pose to human health. Once fisheries biologists reported on the importance of estuaries to Howe Sound’s salmon runs,71 however, sports fishery organizations and local environmentalists leapt into action. Ecological risks might have been mitigated to a considerable extent by turning instead to Britannia Beach, with its already polluted deep-water port. But members of the public in the Lower Mainland – including many in Squamish, itself – were beginning to question the price to be paid for unbridled exploitation of the province’s natural resources. As a result, the ndp government quickly dropped the Britannia proposal, and even its Social Credit successor was not prepared to face the public outrage that would have greeted the construction of a coal terminal located beside what is now known as the Sea to Sky Highway. Not surprisingly, subsequent proposals for large-scale shipping facilities at Britannia Beach went nowhere. Environmental mitigation steps at Squamish have now contributed to the return of herring, white-sided dolphins, and humpback whales to Howe Sound for the first time in decades.72 The Squamish River training dike has not been removed, however, despite its disastrous impact on the chinook run,73 and a liquefied “natural” (i.e. fracked) gas plant is slated for construction on the former 114

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pulp and paper mill site at nearby Woodfibre. Although it would be less polluting locally (not globally) than a coal port, the gas plant would be potentially catastrophic in the event of an earthquake or an accident in Howe Sound involving one of the giant ships transporting the product to Asia.74 As a result, the Squamish mayor and council have expressed major concerns about the project,75 thereby reflecting how reservations about industrial development have intensified in a town that is now heavily reliant on the tourism industry. Indeed, the role of spec aside, the organizations involved in the Squamish and Howe Sound environmental protests were entirely locally based. Furthermore, history is repeating itself with the resurrection of Save Howe Sound as well as the creation of My Sea to Sky and other local environmental organizations.

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CHAPTER 5

“The best use of this island is for recreation”: Resisting the Gambier Island Copper Mine Proposal, 1979–85

Lying in Howe Sound to the north of Bowen Island, mountainous Gambier Island had only about sixty permanent residents by the late 1970s, and to reach Horseshoe Bay and Vancouver they first had to take the foot passenger ferry to Langdale on the Sunshine Coast. Gambier’s population swelled to 600 in the summer, however, and most were determined to preserve the small island (66.5 square kilometres) in as natural a state as possible.1 That goal was threatened in 1979 by the large copper and molybdenum mine envisioned for the north end of the island. The mine ultimately failed to materialize, but the opposition it stirred up from well beyond the island’s property owners ensured that Gambier would be reserved from future prospecting despite the considerable value of its metal deposits. Once again, broad-based environmental organizations were not the leading organizers of the opposition movement, for the campaign was principally orchestrated by a small number of middle-class women. And, rather than focusing primarily on the threat the mine posed to the natural environment, their campaign emphasized the recreational value of the island and the potential aesthetic impact of the open-pit mine as viewed from the Sea to Sky Highway. Inspired by the example of Bowen Island (see chapter 3), an eightmember committee of Gambier Island residents drafted a community

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5.1 Map of Gambier Island, 25 October 1979.

plan (albeit an unofficial one) in 1976 that, according to the Vancouver Sun, envisioned “a mixture of residential, nature preservation, farmland, private institutional, extractive industry, interior park, marine park and forest areas.” Though mentioned, industry would be strictly limited, for the plan called for a moratorium on Crown land timber licences; a ban on the extension of log booming, sorting, and storage; a limit on road construction; and a ban on commercial activity until approved by the residents. To prevent soil erosion, the community 117

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plan also suggested that logging be exclusively on a small scale, using selective cutting methods, and with vegetation retained on either side of designated creeks. Reforestation would be mandatory for areas larger than 2.0 hectares (4.9 acres). In addition, environmental assessment would be required for “proposals that would significantly change topography,” toxic agricultural chemicals would be discouraged, and discharge of effluent into any body of water would be prohibited. Covered as well were neighbouring Grace Islands, Alexandra Island, and “unnamed islets within 250 metres of the Gambier shoreline.” Finally, the plan opposed the introduction of a car ferry service while calling for a volunteer fire department, police protection during the recreation season, health centres, and housing for the elderly. Although the authors recognized that their plan would not be binding on federal or provincial agencies, senior levels of government were requested to regard its provisions “as in the best wishes of the community and use them as guidelines.”2 The provincial government approved this distinctly progressive community plan,3 which three years later became official as Gambier Island Zoning Bylaw, 1979, but that same year Vancouver’s recently established 20th Century Energy Corporation proposed a multimillion dollar, 480-million-ton copper, molybdenum, silver, and gold mine on the island. Preliminary drilling of twelve holes had revealed copper equivalent grade at 0.47 per cent, which – the Northern Miner reported – was “a tick better than that of Cominco’s Valley Copper Mine which is soon to be brought into production in B.C.’s Highland Valley.” Based on current metal prices, net payable value was estimated at about $5.50 per ton, made up of $2.50 per ton of copper, $2.00 per ton of molybdenum, and $1.00 per ton of silver and gold.4 At current prices, the company claimed in 1980, the mineral reserves would have a value of three billion dollars.5 It had staked three quarters of Gambier’s surface – more than 6,800 hectares (17,000 acres) – but its president, Leonard Zrnic, stated that this was to prevent the island from being overrun by “20 other Vancouver companies which might not be as concerned about the environment as we are.” Zrnic indicated that the mine would 118

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be hidden from view by mountains on the northwest part of the island and promised that a reclamation program would “put things back as nice as they were before, if not better.” The open-pit operation would, nevertheless, “require a mill, tailings pond, road, large dock and about 300 workers commuting daily by boat.”6 Spurred by Gambier’s representatives, Islands Trust chair John Rich asked the provincial government to impose a moratorium on Gambier mineral exploration, citing the Trust’s mandate to “preserve and protect, in cooperation with municipalities and the government of the Province, the trust area and its unique amenities and environment for the benefit of the residents of the trust area and of the Province generally.”7 Rich also sought public support by organizing an open meeting in Vancouver’s Devonshire Hotel. Of the more than 300 who attended, all but a dozen stood up in favour of the Trust’s stand.8 The response of R.H. McClelland, the Social Credit minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources, was that “Such a moratorium cannot be placed without special legal action, which in my opinion is inappropriate under present circumstances.”9 As for Environment Minister Rafe Mair – who would later become an outspoken environmentalist – he simply stated that there was no ban on “traditional resource uses such as mining” in Howe Sound.10 The Crown nevertheless held subsurface rights, Mair noted, so the Permanent Steering Committee, consisting of officials from various ministries, would examine the mine site and consider social, environmental, and economic impacts before making a recommendation to the cabinet’s Environmental and Land Use Committee, where the final decision would lie.11 Islands Trust had asked lawyer Terence O’Grady for advice concerning its legal position with respect to the banning of mining operations. O’Grady was not encouraging, for his report stated that in giving regional governments the same controls over land use that had been devised for urban communities, the Legislature “did not contemplate for a moment that they would be used to control and even prevent the kind of industrial activity that has always been associated with the more remote and underdeveloped areas of the 119

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province.” He added that with many of those areas now accessible for residential and recreational purposes “it seems evident that what was once taken for granted is no longer necessarily so and that priorities are going to have to be established at the provincial government level, no matter how unpopular the decisions involved may be.”12 The government failed to clarify the issue, however, leaving its Environmental and Land Use Committee to commission a recreation and visual analysis by the eikos Design Group. The report, released in February 1980, stated that the fact that Gambier was “virtually devoid of roads and commercial development,” and that 60 per cent of the island was Crown land, “suggests opportunities for an intensively managed ‘wilderness type’ recreational experience.” (The association of “wilderness” with the phrase “intensively managed” reflected the technocratic and bureaucratic side of environmentalism.) Aside from access to hiking and camping, the report’s author noted, “the sheltered waters of Howe Sound provide the only major protected boating area readily accessible to residents of Greater Vancouver.” More than 2,700 small crafts were moored in the Sound, approximately 30,000 individuals had rented 8,000 boats from Horseshoe Bay alone the previous year, and 40,000 households in the Lower Mainland owned a boat, yet only 18 per cent of the Sound’s shoreline was readily accessible for recreation and much of that had been taken for other uses.13 The eikos report also moved into new territory by paying particular attention to the mine’s potential visual impact, particularly along the island’s ridgelines. Claiming that “A benefit of the experience of natural appearing landscapes is that they provide a value free grounding for personal awareness,” and referring to “visual vulnerability ratings and sensitivity ratings,” the report’s author added that “Howe Sound is unquestionably one of the most spectacularly scenic and perhaps the most intentionally viewed landscape in the Lower Mainland area.” Finally, he concluded that the impact of the mine “should be considered in the context of the limited land base suitable for recreational use within the Howe Sound Region, the erosion of this land base through other established industrial uses and private property 120

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alienation, and the increasing demand for recreational opportunities.” In short, Gambier “could be to the Lower Mainland what Stanley Park is to Vancouver.”14 The government was, however, not moved to stop the mining company’s exploration, and another public meeting of approximately 300 people was held in Vancouver’s Devonshire Hotel in May 1980. The chief speaker was Andrew R. Thompson, law professor at the University of British Columbia as well as former chair of the bc Energy Commission and Commissioner of the West Coast Oil Port Enquiry. Thompson argued that the environmental assessment was pointless because cabinet was bound by the preserve and protect mandate of the Islands Trust and particularly by the section of the Islands Trust Act which stated “that lands owned by the province in the islands shall not be developed or disposed of unless the Crown or its agency first gives notice of the development or disposition to the trustees.” “Obviously,” he added, “this requirement is to ensure that any such disposition will conform to the trust objectives.” The question facing the cabinet, then, “is whether it is prepared to override the trust objectives in favour of mining. It is sophistry to pretend otherwise.”15 In addition, cabinet ministers were handed copies of an antimining petition with 4,500 signatures, a number that soon grew to 6,300 from throughout the Lower Mainland, the Gulf Islands, and Victoria.16 Furthermore, resolutions opposing the mine were passed by the municipal councils of Vancouver, North Vancouver, and West Vancouver, as well as the Lower Mainland Parks Association, the bc Recreation Association, the Bowen Island Improvement Association, and the Vancouver branch of the Sierra Club (it was the only major environmental organization to do so).17 New Democratic Party leader and former premier Dave Barrett also expressed his party’s opposition, but, more significantly, provincial Attorney General Allan Williams – who had been outspoken against the Britannia Beach coal port proposal (see chapter 4) – made it clear that he was aware of the “possibility” of a conflict between the Minerals Act, on the one hand, and the Environmental and Land Use Act and Islands Trust legislation, on the other.18 121

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The government nevertheless refused to make a decision before the company presented a stage-one report on the potential impact of the mine, leading opponents to charge that the many thousands of dollars that would thereby be invested in mineral exploration on Gambier ($433,000 by 31 March 1980) would increase pressure on the government to approve the project.19 The Vancouver Sun also suggested that the government might be “gambling on the company’s not finding a viable ore body, thus relieving it of a painful decision. But there is also the possibility that if there is a discovery the government will step over the Islands Trust and allow a mine.”20 Meanwhile, to ensure that no other mineral exploration took place on the Gulf Islands, the Islands Trust asked that a permanent moratorium be placed on mineral and coal exploration in the trust area, recognizing that it “would not apply to existing claims in good standing, and thus would have no bearing on the Gambier Island situation.”21 The mining project was still in limbo in 1981, yet the company’s explorations were sufficiently advanced for it to claim – based on a leaked prefeasibility report by Acres Consulting (“one of the top mining-consultant agencies in Canada,” according to Zrnic)22 – that the 202 million metric ton deposit would be processed at the rate of 40,000 metric tons a day. The mine would not only employ 690 workers around the clock and create 3,500 jobs in the province, it was projected to operate for fourteen years, with an additional two years at a reduced scale to process the low-grade stockpile. The Acres Report also revealed that Lost Lake and most of Gambier Creek as well as part of a recreational reserve would be eliminated, that shellfish and prawn beds in Douglas Bay would be affected, and that by-products would include a pit measuring 1,450 metres by 1,000 metres extending 90 metres below sea level. Furthermore, a 315-hectare tailings impoundment would necessitate the construction of several dams, the largest being 180 metres high. The mine would also consume 40 million litres of water a day, in addition to the 500,000 litres per day needed “for potable supplies,” most of which would be obtained via a ninekilometre submarine pipeline from the McNab Creek watershed on 122

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the nearby Sunshine Coast. The report concluded, nevertheless, that only 8.9 per cent of the island would be disturbed and that the impact on permanent and seasonal residents would be minimal because “virtually the entire population is concentrated in areas distant from the main site.” The company also promised to upgrade hiking trails that had not been eliminated, augment fishing, revegetate a vast area, and set up a publicly administered fund to expand recreational opportunities on Howe Sound.23 These promises did not impress Elspeth Armstrong, landscape artist and former Gambier trustee on the Islands Trust board. She told a Vancouver Sun reporter that she was not against mining as such (her husband was a geologist and they had lived in mining towns), “but the best use of this island is for recreation.”24 In fact, she had compiled a twenty-page unsolicited brief in 1976 calling for Howe Sound to be declared a national recreation area. Armstrong was also the founding director of the Gambier Island Preservation Society which had a signed membership of 2,200 and which distributed 12,000 pamphlets to the public in 1980.25 She told one reporter that commuting to the mine site from the mainland would be impracticable, and the result would be a sizeable settlement on the habitable south shore of the island, with automobiles, roads, a car ferry, and other amenities that would have a significant physical impact.26 But rather than focusing on the environmental argument that had little appeal in the eyes of the prodevelopment Social Credit government, Armstrong emphasized the economic case by pointing to two major studies in 1979 that had stressed the need for more small craft moorage in Howe Sound in order to bolster the tourism and recreation industry.27 The bc Parks Department did, in fact, propose a marine park at Gambier’s Halkett Bay in 1980, raising Armstrong’s concern that it would be considered a trade-off for the mine.28 In 1982, however, she claimed that the many sheltered bays around Gambier offered “easy accessibility and potential recreational use of 8,600 acres of Crown land.” Low-income boaters with no onboard sleeping accommodations would thereby have access to “a recreational opportunity similar 123

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5.2 Elspeth Armstrong, 1976.

to that presently enjoyed by owners of larger cruising boats.” Mines might mean jobs, Armstrong observed, but tourism was the province’s number two industry. In fact, facilities for 500 boats on Gambier would bring in roughly $463,000 in only twenty-five boating days, as124

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suming full occupancy, and merchants as well as marina owners in Horseshoe Bay and the town of Gibson’s on the Sunshine Coast would also benefit.29 Armstrong’s two main allies were also women from Vancouver, namely Beverley Baxter who was also a former Islands Trust trustee and Ann Rogers who was the current trustee. Rogers told a Toronto newspaper interviewer in 1981 that the permanent residents “think that if we would just shut up it would all go away,” but Armstrong claimed that only one or two of the residents supported the mine.30 Armstrong, Rogers, and Baxter were supported by West Vancouver’s municipal council and even Social Credit mla Jack Davis of North Vancouver– Seymour (who we encountered as federal fisheries minister and federal environment minister in chapters 1 and 4, respectively). Davis stated in the Legislature that “The public in the Lower Mainland area and across the Strait of Georgia on much of Vancouver Island will not tolerate the thought of tens of millions of tonnes of mineral wastes being discharged en masse into the recreational waters in Howe Sound.”31 The indefatigable Armstrong also claimed support from nine municipalities, twenty-eight “known” organizations, and thousands of Lower Mainland residents.32 She continued to keep the subject before the public eye as market conditions delayed 20th Century Energy’s attempt to find a resource company partner. Those attempts were not made easier by the resignation of company president Zrnic in the fall of 1981 as a result of his misappropriation of company funds in connection with a European equity financing proposal. The company assured its shareholders, however, that its underlying assets “are virtually unchanged and we are confident that we will be able to take advantage of this fact in the near future.”33 The following year, in 1982, the frustrated members of the Gambier Island Preservation Society took the radical step of filing with the Supreme Court a petition against Islands Trust for failing to enforce the island’s Official Community Plan by issuing a restraining order against the mining company.34 The provincial government announced in April, however, that the 3,480 hectares (8,600 acres) of Crown land 125

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would not be subject to the island’s ocp because the lands were covered by mineral claims in good legal standing.35 The fact that Minister of Municipal Affairs Bill Vander Zalm had proposed publicly that the Islands Trust be abolished led Armstrong to charge that his aim was to pressure her to withdraw from the court action that her organization had launched against the Trust.36 Not only did the Gambier Preservation Society refuse to drop the legal action, it added to the court petitioners’ list in October 1983 the names of several Gambier property owners as well as the Camp Artaban Society and the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, both of which had youth camps that would be destroyed by the mine.37 (According to the eikos report, 7,000 children and adolescents from ten area camps – three of which were based on Gambier – participated in programs on the island each summer.38) John Rich, who was by this time a second-year law student, was nevertheless able to show that he had been far from inactive as Islands Trust chair in attempting to stop the mineral exploration. Between 1978 and 1982 he had written nine letters to cabinet members as well as meeting with the minister of the environment, the cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, and, on numerous occasions, the staff of the Environment and Land Use Committee Secretariat. As we have seen, Rich had also organized two public meetings in the Devonshire Hotel.39 In dismissing the case against Islands Trust, the judge observed that “because of the unique legal situation associated with the rights of a free miner the remedies called for by the petitioners were neither ‘appropriate’ nor ‘available’ to the Islands Trust.” He added that evidence showed that the Island Trustees “bitterly oppose the proposed mining operation” and had made “very concerted efforts to influence the Government to put an end to them,” but there was “no suggestion that the mining company has committed or threatens to commit any wrong.” The judge added, however, that, “There is no doubt that if the project proceeds, it will largely destroy the existing environment of Gambier Island as a recreational resource and with it many of the amenities now enjoyed by the residents and visitors to the island.”40 Though it 126

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had lost the case, then, the judgment was ultimately a victory for the Gambier Island Preservation Society because the judge’s comments helped to ensure that the expiry of the exploration leases a year later would be followed by the passage of an order-in-council establishing a permanent mineral and placer reserve over the island.41

Conclusion Like the protest against developing the site that became Devonian Harbour Park in Vancouver, the Gambier protest was spearheaded by middle-class women. And like the Hollyburn Ridge and Bowen Island protests, the main focus was on preservation for outdoor recreation in a wilderness environment (and on preserving a semirural lifestyle for property owners) rather than on ecological protection, first and foremost. And, finally, like the Squamish and Britannia Beach coal port protest, a principal issue at stake on Gambier Island was heavy industrial development versus tourism. The protest organizers were able to collect a large number of signatures on their petitions, but the fact remains that there was little chance that the mine would materialize. The Social Credit government may have been distinctly in favour of free enterprise but the nearly two decades of antidevelopment protests in the Vancouver and Howe Sound area had presumably taught it that the well-heeled voters who were its natural constituency would not look kindly on the further despoliation of Howe Sound. As Elspeth Armstrong repeatedly reminded government officials, “The unassailable argument for keeping Gambier Island and much of Howe Sound rural in character is its location – 30 miles from a population centre approaching a million people.”42 Hence, the breaking of ranks by Social Credit mla Jack Davis. Hence, as well, the signals from provincial cabinet ministers beholden to big business that even though they were prepared to wait until the exploration licence had expired, thereby adhering to the rule book, they would prefer not to have a mine on Gambier. 127

Conclusion

“Here is what Lions Gate Bridge is: one last grand gesture of beauty, of charm, and of grace before we enter the hinterlands, before the air becomes too brittle and too cold to breathe, before we enter that place where life becomes harsh, where we must become animals in order to survive.”1 This evocative description in 1996 by Douglas Coupland, Vancouver spokesman for Generation X, reflects the passing of the previous generation’s antiurban sensibility, as does Vancouver observer Lance Berelowitz’s twenty-first century image of “a city that seems to have emerged out of its surrounding wilderness chrysalis-like.”2 There was no organized opposition, for example, to the massive high-rise development on the north shore of False Creek following Expo 86, a development that is a sharp contrast to the one that took place on False Creek’s opposite shore in the late 1970s, with its low-to-medium density housing, ample green spaces, artisanal shops, and public amenities.3 And the city’s current housing crisis is only adding to political pressure for increased densification. But the growing population density is also making undeveloped spaces within and beyond the city’s borders more highly valued as places for leisure and recreation, and vocal members of the public continue to press for more parks as well as for environmental protection, not excepting the clean up of polluted False Creek, itself.

Conclusion

Still requiring examination are the public campaigns that led to the preservation of such open green spaces as Van Dusen Botanical Garden, Queen Elizabeth Park, Jericho Park, and Vanier Park, all of which are located in the city’s privileged west-side neighbourhoods.4 This geographical and class bias led the Vancouver Sun’s Randy Glover to comment in 1977 on “the tenacity of the ruling classes on the west side of the city.” He was referring to the municipal council’s decision not to sell a section of Harbour Park despite the result of the citywide plebiscite four years earlier. Glover added, somewhat sardonically, “Good, stout-hearted wasps that they are, they have the patience to stand firm over years and years. Ultimately, of course, they always win.”5 Certainly, as Richard Walker observes of the San Francisco antidevelopment movement, “The upper classes are prodigious consumers of space and nature.”6 But also as in the San Francisco campaigns, the Harbour Park controversy was not a clear-cut class conflict, for well-connected capitalist developers and their municipal government supporters were challenged by other members of the middle class. Furthermore, Harbour Park had strong support from left-wing politicians, trade unions, and young “antiestablishment” radicals. As for “race,” the antidevelopment movements certainly paid little attention to First Nations concerns, and the failure to build a First Nations interpretation centre in Harbour Park might well be viewed as a lost opportunity. There is nothing to suggest, however, that the proposal failed due to local hostility for it was directed only at the forestry education centre proposal. Furthermore, First Nations rights were raised by groups opposing the proposal for a coal port on Squamish’s Mamquam Channel. Finally, Glover’s newspaper article neglected to mention that women played a strong public role in the Harbour Park campaign at a time when their involvement with political parties was still mostly behind the scenes.7 The fact that sespc spokesperson Margaret Pigott was one such woman was at least recognized after her death in 1996 by the naming of a Point Grey minipark in her honour.8 Women also 129

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played an important role in the other development controversies we have examined, especially the one on Gambier Island. Like the campaign to preserve Harbour Park, those that were focused on Hollyburn Ridge, Bowen Island, Gambier Island, and the Squamish estuary had a wide base of support. In relation to Hollyburn Ridge, the well-heeled residents of West Vancouver certainly viewed the development of a large-scale ski resort as a threat to their water supply and tranquility, but opposition was quite broadly based geographically and many were from the left side of the political spectrum, including prominent members of the New Democratic Party. On Bowen Island, property developers complained that members of Vancouver’s elite were pulling the opposition strings behind the scenes, but there is no evidence that this was the case. They may have influenced the provincial government’s decisions, but support for the antidevelopment Bowen Island Improvement Association was too widespread for class cleavages to have been a significant factor. As a column in the Vancouver Sun noted in 1976, “The social composition of the island, like its fragile environment, is a delicate mixture. There are the filthy rich, the poor, the retired, the young, a tiny band of small businessmen. … Picking your way through this cast of characters is like walking on eggs – and [developer] Stan James has broken quite a few.”9 For neighbouring Gambier Island, three middle-class women who were seasonal residents formed the opposition vanguard to the mining proposal, but the very large number of names on their petitions, as well as resolutions by nearby municipal councils, indicates a broad base of support for their cause. Finally, the initiative to protect the Squamish estuary appears to have come from the federal fisheries bureau. While many in the town of Squamish resented the outside interference, the fish and game organizations that supported the protest undoubtedly had many working-class members. Furthermore, leading members of the Save Howe Sound Committee, Squamish Environmental Association, and Squamish branch of spec were not part of the wealthy elite but middle-class professionals as well as small busi130

Conclusion

ness interests who had a stake in the tourism industry. In short, these antidevelopment organizations were each an effective interest group, but that does not mean that most of the members were motivated by the prospect of material gain or by personal self interest, except insofar as they wanted to enjoy (along with the public in general) access to open green spaces, unspoiled wilderness, and unpolluted coastlines. Urban geographer David Ley refers to the protests led by such groups as “the political face of a resistant postmodernism,” namely the questioning of the assumption that unfettered growth and development held the key to an improved quality of life.10 That questioning was not entirely new, however, for the challenge to logging old-growth trees in the Lower Mainland dates to the early twentieth century, as we saw in the Hollyburn Ridge case.11 Nor did the antidevelopment protests represent a rejection of all aspects of modernity. After all, movement members demanded expert investigation and analysis, be it for calculating traffic volumes adjacent to Harbour Park, cutting ski trails in Cypress Bowl, measuring water resources on Bowen Island, biological analysis of the Squamish estuary, or preserving the view of Gambier Island from the Sea to Sky Highway.12 Whether or not their position can be labelled as postmodern, however, it certainly represented a challenge to the previously prevailing high modernist assumption in British Columbia that capital-intensive property and industrial development was invariably beneficial and that such decisions should be left in the hands of technical experts. Furthermore, as the foregoing chapters have shown, this increasingly critical stance was not confined to the young “countercultural” generation, for it was their parents and even grandparents who organized and participated in the community and antidevelopment groups that we have examined. That said, it is still significant that the questioning referred to by Ley intensified greatly in the 1960s, the decade when the baby-boom generation came of age. The 1960s has been referred to as “the age of ecology” but even at the end of that decade the concept was still largely confined to pollution concerns, at least in British Columbia.13 In fact, four of the 131

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antidevelopment movements studied here were not strictly environmentalist, as we now understand that term. They concerned the preservation of undeveloped spaces adjacent to Coal Harbour and on Hollyburn Ridge, Bowen Island, and Gambier Island for purposes of leisure, recreation, and, in the cases of Bowen and Gambier, the pursuit of a semirural lifestyle rather than protection primarily for ecological reasons. The public ignorance concerning the ecological value of the Squamish estuary and the failure of national or international environmental groups to play a significant role in the protest movement against the Gambier copper mine seem quite remarkable from today’s perspective.14 In fact, all the antidevelopment protests we have examined were truly grassroots movements and, even though they took place during the same twenty years or so, there was little connection between their respective organizers (see appendix). As examples of movements that succeeded, however, those campaigns left not only a material legacy at Coal Harbour, Hollyburn Ridge, Bowen Island, and in Howe Sound – with the creation of municipal, regional/metropolitan, and provincial parks – but a political legacy with the emergence of an environmentalist culture in Vancouver and its outlying region.15 That culture has intensified since then as reflected in the protests and court challenges against cutting large trees in order to widen the Stanley Park causeway in 2000, 16 against pushing the Sea to Sky Highway through the Eagleridge Bluffs in 2006,17 against large-scale clear-cut logging on Gambier Island in 2014, and, still more recently, against the construction of commercial-scale private docks on Bowen Island’s exposed southwest coast,18 not to mention the ongoing resistance to the government-approved lng plant and the industrial gravel mine in Howe Sound.19 These are not protests to protect a nonurban lifestyle, as in the Bowen Island case of the 1970s, but to defend the environment against rapacious capitalism and private greed. Most have either failed or face overwhelming odds, but the individuals involved should take some inspiration from the region’s antidevelopment legacy, for in the struggle to protect the environment the history of what did not develop 132

Conclusion

is as important to remember as the history of what did. In short, we should never forget – as Walker has observed of the San Francisco Bay area – that “every inch” of the open green spaces (and foreshore) that has been saved from development “vibrates with history and politics.”20

133

Appendix

Voluntary Societies Protesting Property/Industrial Development Harbour Park Apartment and Lodginghouse Association Canadian Daughters’ League Assembly 1 Central Council of Ratepayers Community Arts Council Community Planning Association of Canada Fairview Ratepayers’ Association Kitsilano Ratepayers’ Association Local Council of Women National Council of Jewish Women (Vancouver branch) Northwest Point Grey Home Owners’ Association Save Our Parks Association (Save Our Parkland Association) Save the Entrance to Stanley Park Committee Sierra Club of bc Society for Pollution and Environmental Control (later known as Society Promoting Environmental Conservation) (spec) Sunrise Ratepayers’ Association Vancouver Garden Club

APPENDIX

West End Community Council West End and Downtown Ratepayers’ Association West End Traffic Committee West Point Grey Civic Association Hollyburn Ridge/Cypress Bowl Alpine Club of Canada bc Mountaineering Club bc Natural Resources Conservation League Burnaby Field Naturalists’ Club North Shore Council of Women Save Cypress Bowl Committee University Outdoors Club Vancouver Council of Women Vancouver Natural History Society Vancouver Ski Club West Vancouver Liberal Association Bowen Island Bowen Island Improvement Association Squamish/Howe Sound bc Wildlife Federation Capilano Rod and Gun Club Save Howe Sound Committee Society Promoting Environmental Conservation (spec) Squamish Ecological Organization (Squamish Environmental Association) Steelhead Society of bc West Vancouver Rod and Gun Club

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APPENDIX

Gambier Island bc Recreation Association Camp Artaban Society Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Vancouver Gambier Island Preservation Society Lower Mainland Parks Association Sierra Club, Vancouver branch

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Notes

Introduction 1 See Little, Fashioning the Canadian Landscape. 2 https://www.destinationbc.ca/Resources/british-columbia-tourismbrand.aspx. Viewed 9 May 2018. 3 See Kenny, “Forgotten Pasts and Contested Futures.” 4 See Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., chapters 29–30; Mackenzie, “Freeway Planning;” and Ley, The New Middle Class, 20–1. 5 Hunter, The Greenpeace to Amchitka, 16. On the contemporary student movement, see Cleveland, “‘Berkeley North,’” and Milligan, “Coming Off the Mountain.” 6 See, for example, Aronsen, City of Love and Revolution, chapters 5 and 6; Boudreau, “‘The Struggle for a Different World’”; and Palmer, Canada’s 1960s. 7 The editors of a recent collection of essays on the 1960s argue, similarly, that “No single generational cohort was at the heart of the sixties experience.” Campbell, Clément, and Kealey, “Introduction: Time, Age, Myth,” 5. 8 Open space is defined by the US Environmental Protection Agency as “any open piece of land that is undeveloped (has no buildings or other built structures) and is accessible to the public.” Green space is defined more narrowly as “land that is partly or completely covered with grass, trees, shrubs, or other vegetation.” www3.epa.gov/region1/eco/uep/ openspace.html. Viewed 29 February 2016.

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9 The same was true of most of the environmental activism examined in Coates, Canadian Countercultures. In fact, Ryan O’Connor claims, pan-Canadian environmental organizations – unlike many in the United States – generally did not emerge until the 1980s. O’Connor, The First Green Wave, 8. 10 See MacDowell, An Environmental History, 243–6. Ryan O’Connor dates the rise of the environmental movement in Toronto to the airing of the cbc documentary, The Air of Death, in 1967. O’Connor The First Green Wave, 6. 11 See Leeming, In Defence of Home Places. 12 Schmitt, Back to Nature, xvii. 13 See, for example, Coates, Canadian Countercultures. 14 See Gambone, No Regrets; and Martin, “Burn it Down!” 15 Wynn, “‘Shall we linger along ambitionless?’” 28. 16 Wilson, Talk and Log, 80. 17 Wilson, Talk and Log, 79, 101. On the development of the province’s forest conservation movement to 1970, see Wilson, Talk and Log, chapter 5. 18 On the impact of what he refers to as the “world of consumption” versus the “world of production,” see Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 5. For examples of the impact of community dislocation in rural British Columbia, see Loo, “People in the Way”; and Parr, Sensing Changes, chapter 5. 19 See Mitchell, W.A.C. Bennett, 384. According to Mitchell (W.A.C. Bennett, 407), the Social Credit government “established the Environment and Land Use Committee in 1969, imposed stringent penalties for industrial pollution, established provincial parks and wildlife preserves and promoted tourism as the new, clean industry of the 1970s,” but these steps “were criticized as too little too late.” In fact, Martin Robin refers to the pollution control legislation as “cosmetic” and the government’s conservation record as “dismal.” Robin, Pillars of Profit, 292–4. For more details on the committee, see Wilson, Talk and Log, 107–9. 20 Murton, “What J.W. Clark Saw,” 152. 21 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 38. According to Wilson (Talk and Log, 112), the ndp’s “agenda for environmental reform was inchoate

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22

23 24

25

and disjointed” but while in office it nurtured “the growth of the environmental movement’s critical capacity.” Furthermore, Barrett did claim to be a conservationist on the basis that he recognized the need “to preserve something instead of rapaciously ripping out trees and minerals,” and his government did create the Islands Trust (see chapter 3) as well as the Agricultural Land Reserve. Barrett also claimed that, had his party been reelected, it would have taken “major steps in reforestation and the protection of forest land.” Barrett and Miller, Barrett, 59, 66, 94. On an earlier, somewhat isolated critic of high modernity’s impact on the bc environment, see Keeling and McDonald, “The Profligate Province.” Tina Loo makes a similar point when she writes that those who opposed bc Hydro’s Arrow Lakes resettlement scheme in the early 1960s “accepted many of the central values that underlay it, embracing rationality, efficiency, and standardization.” Loo, “People in the Way,” 195. And Adam Rome notes that ecologists played a less important role in shaping the campaigns to reform the suburban tract development process in the United States than did “the insights of architects, urban planners, landscape architects, hydrologists, geologists, soil scientists, public health officials, and geographers.” Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside, 9–10 See Sandquist, “The Giant Killers.” For the various definitions, see William Boei, “Just What Constitutes the Lower Mainland?” Vancouver Sun, 22 January 2009. www.vancouver sun.com/Just+what+constitutes+Lower+Mainland/1207993/story.html. Viewed 5 July 2016. The number of votes allowed each member is also based on population size. www.metrovancouver.org/boards/membership/board-members /Pages/default.aspx. Viewed 24 March 2017. The jurisdiction of Metro Vancouver and the province’s other regional districts includes hospital and regional planning, water supply and distribution, solid waste disposal, air pollution control, regional parks, capital financing, transportation, housing, and labour relations, but the regional districts have no taxation powers. Donald Gutstein, “Vancouver,” 212. The other

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26 27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

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member municipalities are Anmore, Belcarra, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Delta, Langley City, Langley Township, Lions Bay, Maple Ridge, New Westminster, North Vancouver City, North Vancouver District, Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Richmond, Surrey, Vancouver, and White Rock. Also included are the Tsawwassen First Nation and Electoral Area A. http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/Pages/default. aspx. Viewed 8 February 2017. See Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, chapter 8. Dummitt, Unbuttoned, 262–9. See Kheraj, Inventing Stanley Park. Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness.” For a discussion of the borderland concept in an urban environment, see Bonnell, Reclaiming the Don, xxvi. On what he refers as “the role of urbanization in environmental history,” see Hays, Explorations, 69–100. See, for example, Bower, “The Affordances of MacKenzie Ravine.” But much more attention has been paid to urban parks and antipollution crusades. See, for example, Nelles, “How Did Calgary Get Its River Parks?”; O’Connor, The First Green Wave; and the articles in Urban History Review, 44, no. 1–2 (Fall 2015/Spring 2016) published as a special issue titled “Environmental Nuisances and Political Contestation in Canadian Cities.” Penfold, “‘Are we to go literally to the hot dogs?’” Rome (Bulldozer in the Countryside) makes the same case for suburbs in the United States. Leeming stresses this point in his In Defence of Home Places, 6. Walker, The Country and the City, 12. See Forkey, Canadians and the Natural Environment, 94–101; and MacDowell, An Environmental History, 249–52. Quoted in Keeling, “The Effluent Society,” 319. See Bouchier and Cruickshank, The People and the Bay, chapter 7; Leeming, In Defence of Home Places, 23; and Walker, The Country and the City, 8–10. Hays, Explorations, 86–9. Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryide, 6–7. Walker, The Country and the City, 14.

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Chapter One

1

2 3

4

5 6

7 8

9

Square brackets on news clipping references indicate that the newspaper name and/or date was added by hand rather than being a part of the news clipping itself. Quoted in City of Vancouver Archives [hereafter cva], voc-S476, location 72-F-5, file 2, submission to city council by Vancouver Branch of the Community Planning Association, 1965, 2. The Georgia Auditorium was built in 1927 and demolished in 1959. http://www.vancouversun. com/sports/THIS+WEEK+HISTORY+Commodious+lounges+smok ing+rooms+both+sexes+Georgia+Auditorium+raised+roof/10302571/ story.html. Viewed 22 September 2016. Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 79. Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 79. Several acres at the north end of Denman Street were once known as Kanaka Ranch because of the Hawaiian families who had lived there from the 1860s until the early twentieth century. See Barman, Stanley Park’s Secret. Hardwick, Vancouver, 88; Roy, Vancouver, 140, 144–8, Appendix Table XII; “Demographics of Vancouver,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Demographics_of_Vancouver. Viewed 7 February 2016. See Kheraj, Inventing Stanley Park. Vancouver Public Library [hereafter vpl], Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping, Neale Adams, “11th-Hour Battle over Coal Harbour,” Vancouver Sun, 8 April 1971. Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 54–5. vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping, Vancouver Sun, 29 January 1971. According to Collier, the project designed for the company “was to have fourteen apartment buildings from 20 to 36 storeys high, combined with marina and other commercial activities.” Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 54. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Report and Recommendations by Civic Arts Committee to His Worship Mayor W.G. Rathie and Aldermen of the City of Vancouver, 26 April 1965, 1; Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 50, 54–5. Will Langford claims that, in establishing the

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10 11

12 13 14 15

16

17 18 19 20

21

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Technical Planning Board in 1951, the council “precipitated a shift in power from elected officials to professionalized experts.” Langford, “‘Is Sutton Brown God?’” 16. On the control of Vancouver’s city governance by appointed officials, see Tennant, “Vancouver Politics,” 21–2. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, City Planning Department to Board of Administration, City Hall, File Ref: C. 52. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, City Planning Department to Board of Administration, City Hall, File Ref: C. 52, Appendix A, Submission by Coal Harbour Investments, Ltd, Comprehensive High Rise Apartment Project. cva, cov-S476, location 72-E-7, file 5, “Brief on Coal Harbour Development,” 20 June 1963. Roy, Vancouver, 147, 152–6; Tennant, “Vancouver Politics,” 7–13, 17–20. The quotes are from Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 77, 79–80, 166. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, application to amend bylaw no. 4065, Appendix C, Brief of Vancouver Council of Women Re Lands Bounded by Stanley Park, Georgia St, the Harbour Headland and Denman Street, filed 28 August 1969. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, City of Vancouver, Special Council, Public Hearing, 24 June 1963; Resumé of Communications, Application to Rezone Coal Harbour Property; Submission by Communist Party of Canada (Greater Vancouver Committee), 24 June 1963; F.M. Ross, Secretary, Town Planning Commission, to R. Thompson, City Clerk, Vancouver, 17 May 1963. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners asked for a delay in considering the rezoning. J. Takach to Mayor Rathie, Vancouver, 25 June 1963. Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 166. Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 53–4. Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 55–6. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, City Planning Department, File Reference C.52.4, Re: Application to approve a Revised Scheme of Development, 1 April 1965, Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 80–1. The board’s chief concern was the relocation of the commercial facilities westward to border Georgia Street and Stanley Park because it would “attract more than local trade and thus there is a possibility that

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22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

there could be requests to enlarge it to a district or regional-type centre which would be poorly located to serve the West End, would detract from downtown retail trade, and compound the traffic and other local problems.” cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Planning Dept. Draft Minute, 1 April 1965, 5. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Report and Recommendations by Civic Arts Committee to His Worship Mayor W.G. Rathie and Aldermen of the City of Vancouver, 26 April 1965, 2–3; vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping, Vancouver Sun, 29 January 1971. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Brief of the West End and Downtown Ratepayers, filed 31 March 1965, 2–4, 11. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Brief of the West End and Downtown Ratepayers, filed 31 March 1965, 6–8. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Brief of the West End and Downtown Ratepayers re Coal Harbour – to the city council [no date]. The Ratepayers’ Association had suggested much the same amenities the previous year (22 March 1964) but also a large museum “capable of displaying all the treasures of the old Library, plus the valuable relics still in the hands of Major Matthews.” cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, City of Vancouver, Regular Council, 28 April 1964, Coal Harbour Development. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Planning Dept. Draft Minute, 4 June 1965. Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 60. Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 81; vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping, Vancouver Sun, 8 April 1971. vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping, Province, 4 March 1972. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, application to amend bylaw no. 4065, 3–4. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, Public Hearing Agenda, 28 August 1969; application to amend bylaw no. 4065, i–iii, 7–12. On the role and structure of the various municipal bodies involved with development, see Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 50. 145

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32 “George Puil,” University of British Columbia Faculty of Education website, educ.ubc.ca/person/george-puil/. Viewed 9 February 2017. 33 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, application to amend by-law no. 4065, Appendix C, Report to His Worship Mayor T.J. Campbell and members of city council, 27 August 1969; vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1970 news clipping, Vancouver Sun [4 November 1969]. 34 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, application to amend bylaw no. 4065, Appendix C, Association President to His Worship Mayor Campbell, Vancouver, 25 August 1969. 35 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, application to amend bylaw no. 4065, Appendix C, Brief to City of Vancouver, Planning Department – Special Committee on Zoning, 28 August 1969. 36 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, application to amend bylaw no. 4065, Appendix C, Brief of Vancouver Council of Women, filed 28 August 1969. 37 Phase one consisted of the hotel, one thirty-storey apartment building, and the three low-rise buildings. vpl, Four Seasons Project, December 1969 news clipping [Province, 23 December 1970]. 38 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1970 news clippings, Vancouver Sun [4 November 1969, 18 November 1969]; Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 81, 167. 39 See Roy, Vancouver, 152, 156–7; and Tennant, “Vancouver Politics,” 24–5. 40 Phillips did express interest in having the city purchase the block next to Stanley Park, but he claimed that Puil’s estimate of a $500,000 cost was much too low, noting that it was assessed at $1.15 million. vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1970 news clipping, Vancouver Sun [6 November 1969]. 41 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, H.A. Keizer (Miss) to city council, Vancouver, 6 November 1969. 42 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, (Mrs) G.M. Lang to Mayor and council, Vancouver, 6 November 1969. 43 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, Robert H. Heywood to Mayor and council, 5 November 1969. 44 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 12, T.M. Boomfield, Secretary, and Margaret M. Storey, President, to Mayor and council, Vancouver [received 10 November 1969].

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45 vpl, Four Seasons Project, December 1970 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 1 December 1970]. Allan Fotheringham pointed out that Mrs Ross’s “luxurious Lost Lagoon apartment” overlooked the contested property. vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping, Vancouver Sun, 29 January 1971. 46 vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 30 January 1971]. 47 The name initially reported in the press was Save Stanley Park Entrance Committee. The member groups were the Community Arts Council, Community Planning Association, West End Community Council, West End and Downtown Ratepayers’ Association, Local Council of Women, Save Our Parks Association, Vancouver Garden Club, and the Central Council of Ratepayers. vpl, Four Seasons Project, January– March 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 13 March 1971]. 48 vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 17 March 1971]; Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 167–8. 49 Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 61. 50 cope had been established by union, tenant, and anti-poverty groups as a civic party in 1968. Ley, The New Middle, 4. 51 vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 31 March 1971]. 52 vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping, Vancouver Sun [25 March 1971]. 53 The rent was to be between fifteen and sixteen cents a square foot, or about $69,000 a year. vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clippings [Province, 1 April 1971, 2 April 1971; Vancouver Sun, 2 April 1971]. The Vancouver branch of the National Council of Jewish Women sent a telegram to Prime Minister Trudeau and Transport Minister Don Jamieson complaining that the nhb had violated democratic process by signing the leases before the city council’s scheduled meeting to discuss whether or not to hold a public plebiscite regarding the development. April 1971 news clipping [Province, 3 April 1971]. 54 vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March news clipping [Province, 11 March 1971]; April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 17 April 1971].

147

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55 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 15 April 1971]. 56 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 1 April 1971]. 57 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 15 April 1971]. 58 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping, Vancouver Sun, 17 April 1971, [26 April 1971]. 59 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 15 April 1971]. 60 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 1 May 1971]; April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 30 April 1971]. On Campbell, see Tenant, “Vancouver Politics,” 23. 61 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 20 April 1971, 30 April 1971]. 62 vpl, Four Seasons Project, May 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 3 May 1971, 4 May 1971]. 63 vpl, Four Seasons Project, May 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 8 May 1971]. 64 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 6 April 1971; Province, 17 April 1971]. 65 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 5 June 1971, 7 June 1971]. 66 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clippings [Province, 27 April 1971, 28 April 1971, 2 (following number illegible) April 1971; Vancouver Sun, 27 April 1971, 29 April 1971]; June 1971 news clippings [Province, 22 June 1971, 23 June 1971]. Fotheringham noted that Four Seasons was paying Harbour Park Developments $471,759 in annual rent, which – capitalized at 10 per cent in perpetuity – would indicate a worth of only $4,710,000. June 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 22 June 1971]. 67 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Province, 22 June 1971]. 68 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Province, 28 April 1971]. 148

N OT E S TO PAG E S 3 1 — 4

69 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 28 April 1971]. 70 vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 29 April 1971]; June 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 16 June 1971; Province, 22 June 1971]. 71 vpl, Four Seasons Project, May 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 20 May 1971, 27 May 1971, 29 May 1971] [Province, 29 May 1971]. The Vancouver Labour Council and twenty-six other groups had established a $2,500 defence fund in April to take the issue to court, if necessary, and Fotheringham claimed that some of the town’s “influential people” had created a trust fund for the court challenge. vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clipping [Province, 7 April 1971]; May 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 28 May 1971]. 72 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clippings [Province, 3 July 1971; Vancouver Sun, 3 July 1971]. 73 vpl, Four Seasons Project, May 1971 news clippings [Province, 1 June 1971; Vancouver Sun, 1 June 1971]. Provincial Liberal leader Pat McGeer also opposed the plebiscite. June news clipping, Vancouver Sun, 7 June 1971. 74 See “Hippies Made War For Love of City Park,” Vancouver Sun, 1 June 1983, B1. 75 Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 63; Zelko, Make It a Green Peace, 58. On the political activities of the city’s Yippies, see Boudreau, “‘The Struggle for a Different World.’” 76 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 1 June 1971, 5 June 1971]. 77 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 5 June 1971]; Vancouver Sun, 3 August 1983, B1; Zelko, “Making Greenpeace,” 226–7, 234–7. 78 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 2 June 1971, 8 June 1971]. For a lively description of the camp, though one that exaggerates its impact (claiming, for example, that the plebiscite was Marining’s idea), see Weyler, Greenpeace, 75–8. 79 vpl, Four Seasons Project, January–March 1971 news clipping, Vancouver Sun [6 February 1971]. 149

N OT E S TO PAG E S 3 4 — 5

80 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 21 June 1971, 22 June 1971]; Margaret Pigott to editor [Vancouver Sun, 30 June 1971]. 81 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 21 June 1971]. 82 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Province, 22 June 1971]. This point was made by Province columnist Gary Bannerman. June 1971 news clipping [Province, 25 June 1971]. 83 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clippings [Province, 24 June 1971; Vancouver Sun, 24 June 1971], April 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 15 September 1971]. 84 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Province, 24 June 1971]. 85 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Province, 25 June 1971]. 86 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 24 June 1971]. 87 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clippings [Province, 24 June 1971; Vancouver Sun, 24 June 1971]. 88 vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 5 June 1971]; September 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 23 July 1971; Province, 23 September 1971]. The quote is from July–August 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 11 August 1971]. 89 vpl, Four Seasons Project, July–August 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 30 July 1971]. Zelko states mistakenly that the protest ended when a father of one of the protestors “agreed to purchase the property for $4 million and promised not to develop it.” Zelko, Make It a Green Peace, 59. 90 vpl, Four Seasons Project, July–August 1971 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 10 July 1971; Province, 10 July 1971]. 91 With the new proposal, the hotel would be one storey lower (13 storeys) and the three remaining high-rises each one storey higher (thirty-four storeys). vpl, Four Seasons Project, April 1971 news clippings [Province, 15 September 1971; Vancouver Sun, 15 September 1971]; June 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 30 June 1971].

150

N OT E S TO PAG E S 3 6 — 8

92 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 12 February 1972]. 93 The Gilford water lot had originally been given to the city to ensure access to the inlet, but it had been deeded back to the federal government the previous fall. cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, news release, the Liberal Party of Canada, 11 February 1972. 94 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 10 February 1972]. 95 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 17 February 1972]. 96 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 20 April 1972]. 97 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 21 April 1972]. 98 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 15 March 1972]. 99 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 2 May 1972; Vancouver Sun, 2 May 1972]. 100 cva, cov-S20, location 22-D-4, file 13, Don Jamieson to C.S. Fleming, Corporation Counsel, Ottawa, 3 May 1972; Board of Administration memo to mayor and council, 12 June 1972. 101 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 29 April 1972]. The city’s legal counsel stated, however, that because the site to be built on was not the same as the one originally approved by the city, a new public hearing would be required. 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 29 April 1972]. 102 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 23 June 1972; Province, 24 June 1972, 26 June 1972]. 103 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 10 August 1972; Province, 22 August 1972]. 104 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clippings [Province, 23 August 1972; Vancouver Sun, 25 August 1972]. 105 Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 81, 168. 106 On the impact of the regime change, see Langford, “Is Sutton Brown God?” 38–9.

151

N OT E S TO PAG E S 3 8 — 4 0

107 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 29 May 1973]. On the results of the December 1972 election, see Tennant, “Vancouver Politics,” 27–8. 108 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 14 July 1973]. 109 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 13 July 1973; Province, 7 August 1973]. 110 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 1(illegible number) July 1973; Province, 20 July 1973]. 111 Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 168; vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 3 August 1973; Province, 4 August 1973, 10 August 1973]. 112 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 3 August 1973]. 113 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 15 August 1973]. 114 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 21 August 1973]. 115 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clippings [Province, 29 August 1973, 18 October 1973; Vancouver Sun, 17 September 1973]. 116 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 5 September 1973]. 117 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 5 June 1973]. 118 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 27 September 1973]. Jack Poole of Dawson Developments did claim, however, that he hoped voters would reject both options. 1972–75 news clipping, Province, 5 September 1973. 119 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75, news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 31 January 1974]. The plebiscite (printed in Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd., 167), which would have provided the option of acquiring only the larger tract or both, had been superseded. vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 12 September 1973]. 120 vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 11 September 1976].

152

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121 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 15 October 1973; Province, 16 October 1973]. 122 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Province, 16 October 1973]. 123 Collier, Contemporary Cathedrals, 65. 124 vpl, Four Seasons Project, 1972–75 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 16 November 1973]. 125 cva, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, Charles Kelley, Special Assistant, to Mrs J.V. Clyne, Ottawa, 27 June 1975. 126 vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Province, 28 May 1975]. 127 vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 3 October 1975]. See also [Province, 25 September 1975]. 128 cva, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, Warnett Kennedy, Proposal Call Competition. The photograph of the architect’s model can be viewed in vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 26 February 1976]. 129 cva, cov-S283, location 47-e-4, file 14, Mayor to Minister, Department of Housing, 30 December. 1975 [draft]. 130 cva, cov S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, S.W. Hamilton to Mayor Arthur Phillips and Members of city council, Vancouver, 3 October 1975; vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 29 May 1976]. 131 cva, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, Submission to His Worship the Mayor and Members of city council by J.S. Shakespeare for John KeithKing and Frank Stanzl, 18 November 1975; Memorandum to Press and Media from Alderman Warnett Kennedy, 19 September 1975. 132 cva, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, Subject: The Future of Block Two of the Former Four Seasons Site [no date]; The Community Arts Council of Vancouver re: Harbour Park Development, filed 7 October 1975; Frank Turnbull, President, to Mayor Phillips and Aldermen, Vancouver, 29 September 1975; cov-S483, location 47-e-4, file 14, Memorandum from Mayor Phillips to Alderman Volrich, 9 June 1976. Phillips did express a preference for Kennedy’s south side proposal over his suggestion that a density exchange could be arranged with the Bayshore Inn, which wanted to expand. Phillips felt that the public would oppose

153

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133 134 135 136

137 138 139 140

141 142

143 144 145 146 147

154

more waterfront development on the Bayshore property. vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clippings [Vancouver Sun, 20 September 1975; Province, 20 September 1975]. vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 29 May 1976]. vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Province, 8 October 1975]. vca, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, Petition by John Dunn and others to Mayor and Aldermen, Vancouver, 4 November 1975. cva, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, Michael F. Holt to city council, Vancouver, 29 September 1975. See also, cva, vpk-S82, location 96-G-1, Holt to Larry Foster, Vancouver, 3 March 1976. cva, cov-S483, location 47-E-4, file 14, Arthur Phillips to J.H. Lawson, 23 April 1976; Arthur Phillips to Louise Phillips, 15 March 1976. vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 10 April 1976]. cva, cov-S483, location 47-E-4, file 14, Memorandum to members of council, Vancouver, 14 June 1976. cva, cov-S483, location 47-E-4, file 14, Peter A. Allard to Mayor of Vancouver, 16 July 1976; vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clippings [Province, 21 July 1976; Vancouver Sun, 11 September 1976, 21 September 1976]. vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 21 September 1976]. vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 21 September 1976]; cva, cov-S483, location 47-e-4, file 14, [Phillips] to Frank Low-Beer, 27 September 1976. Hugh Bird was the only other alderman to vote against the mayor’s recommendation. Vancouver Sun, 22 September 1976, 47. cva, cov-S483, location 47-E-4, file 14, telegram, Grace McCarthy to Arthur Phillips, Victoria, 22 September 1976. cva, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 3, Task Force to Study Proposals on Stanley Park Entrance, 6 December 1977. Vancouver Sun, 14 December 1977, A9; 15 Dec. 1977, A4. vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 7 January 1977].

N OT E S TO PAG E S 4 4 — 6

148 vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 7 January 1977]. 149 vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 14 April 1978]. 150 cva, cov-S62-10, location 31G1, file 6, City Planning Department’s Report, 28 July 1978; Native Development Village Progress Report, 5 May 1978. A Native cultural and art centre had been one of the four proposals submitted for the 3.4-acre site in 1975. The idea was encouraged by the federal Secretary of State’s department, but the submission had not included the required $50,000 bond. Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Province, 25 September 1975]; cva, cov-S62-10, location 31G-1, file 3, W.D. Lightbown to R.J. Spaxman, Vancouver, 22 September 1975; Max Beck, Regional Director, Pacific Region, to Fred House, George Guerin, and Bill Lightbown, Vancouver, 22 September 1975. 151 cva, cov-S62-10, location 31G1, file 6, Manager’s Report, 28 July 1978. 152 Vancouver Sun, 29 July 1978, A6. For further details, see cva, cov-S62-10, location 31G1, file 6, “The British Columbia Forest Centre,” May 1978. 153 cva, cov-S62-10, location 31G1, file 6, “Address to City Council Regarding Harbor Park Development Proposal”; vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 31 May 1978]; Vancouver Sun, 29 July 1978, A6. 154 Province, 2 August 1978, 8; cva, vpk-S93-2, location 242-B-6, file 2, P.D. Leckie to F. Spoke, Vancouver, 6 October 1982. 155 Province, 29 September 1978, 12. 156 Vancouver Sun, 29 July 1978, A6. 157 vpl, Harbor Park Site – 1974–? news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 5 August 1978]. On Piggott, see Sandra Thomas, “Green Space Paved for Parking on Point Grey Bike Route,” Vancouver Courier, 4 March 2014, http:// www.vancourier.com/news/green-space-paved-for-parking-on-pointgrey-bike-route-1.875299. Viewed 25 March 2016. The West End and Downtown Ratepayers’ Community Association took the same oppositional stand. See its brief to Mayor Jack Volrich, dated 25 May 1978, in cva, cov-S62-10, location 31G1, file 6. 158 cva, cov-S62-11, location 88-G-5, file 2, Carole Walker to Mayor and city council, Vancouver, 3 August 1979. The West End and Downtown 155

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159

160

161 162 163

164

165 166 167 168 169

156

Ratepayers’ Community Association made much the same point. Chris J. Garside to Chairman, Standing Committee on Planning and Development, Vancouver, 9 July 1979. cva, voc-S62-11, location 88-G-5, file 2, Harbour Park – Heritage Designation. Kennedy referred to Harbour Park as a “limbo field,” arguing that the term “public use and enjoyment” implied “action areas as well as landscaping – ferries, extended marinas, some tourist-type shops, a civic restaurant together with transportation and parking.” Province, 3 November 1980, B1. Harbour Ferries had been operating there on a month-to-month lease at $1,700 a month. cva, cov-S62-10, location 31-G-1, file 4, City Manager’s Report, 15 October 1976. On the impact of the recession, see Patricia E. Roy and John Herd Thompson, British Columbia: Land of Promises, 168–9. Vancouver Sun, 24 July 1982, A3; 1 September 1982, A3. The riprap seawall originally envisioned at a cost of $1,236,250 was considered to be too expensive. cva, cov-S62-11, location 241-A-6, file 3, Manager’s Report, 3 August 1982. In addition to paying $50,000 to $55,000 in taxes, Harbour Ferries would take over the $69,166 per year lease from the nhb. The parks board planned to collect $66,000 from the new parking lot. cva, cov-S62-11, location 241-A-6, file 3, Manager’s Report, 27 April 1983; Extract from the minutes of the Vancouver city council meeting, 10 May 1983. cva, cov-S62-11, location 241-A-6, file 3, Margaret Pigott to Mayor Michael Harcourt and members of city council, Vancouver, 5 April 1983; Margaret Pigott to editor, Vancouver Sun, 1 June 1983, A5; Vancouver Sun, 3 August 1983, B1. Vancouver Sun, 3 August 1983, B1. Wilson, Talk and Log, 10–11. vpl, Four Seasons Project, June 1971 news clipping [Vancouver Sun, 22 June 1971]. McDonald, “‘Holy Retreat,’” 138, 146. Prior to World War I there was a movement to make the Coal Harbour property a large playground, featuring a stadium. McDonald, “‘Holy Retreat,’” 137.

N OT E S TO PA G E S 4 9 — 5 4

170 Berelowitz, Dream City, 245. Chapter Two 1 West Vancouver Archives [hereafter wva], 61.1.49, Hollyburn Ridge, folder 1, Pollough Pogue, “Hollyburn Ridge,” Province [undated news clipping], 2. On Pogue, see Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 24–7; and Iola Knight, “Pollough Pogue: A Hollyburn Original,” http://www.holly burnheritage.ca/cabins/pollough-pogue-hollyburn-original-iolaknight/. Viewed 10 January 2016. 2 wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [wvn (West Van News), 22 July 1927]. 3 wva, 61.1.49, folder 2, Ray Munro, “West Van Sits on Edge of Timber Powderkeg” [Province, 18 August 1952]. 4 The abandoned log flume and shingle bolts provided the materials. wva, 999.0084.dwv, Ted Russell, “Hollyburn Ridge,” Appendix 3, Hollyburn Ridge Committee Report, 3 May 1976; Appendix 4, Hollyburn Ridge Committee Report, Jack Rockandel, “Miscellaneous Notes on Hollyburn Ridge.” Information also acquired from history billboard outside Hollyburn Lodge. 5 wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [Unidentified news clipping, 17 November 1932]. 6 wva, J.B. Leyland Papers, 3.6.10, J.B. Leyland, Reeve, to Hon. Wells Gray, Minister of Lands, 1 May 1935. 7 wva, 3.6.10, A. Wells Gray to H.P. Wilson of the British Columbia Log Service Ltd, Victoria, 8 February 1938. 8 wva, 3.6.10, Secretary, West Vancouver Liberal Association, to Hon. A. Wells Gray, 15 June 1938; Henrietta C. Porter to Mrs H. Hooper, Vancouver, 22 June 1938; Edith J. Stevens to J.B. Leyland, 20 July 1938. 9 wva, 3.6.10, L.C. Rodgers, “Report Setting Forth the Accessibility and Logging Chance of the Heaps Holdings in the Cypress Creek Watershed,” 1938, 5. Although Heaps claimed that there was 100 million feet of timber on his leases, Rodgers reported that only 29.3 million feet was merchantable. Mansbridge, Cypress Bowl, 119. 10 wva, 3.6.10, Vancouver News-Herald, 25 July 193[8]. Lying to the east of Hollyburn Ridge, the Grouse Mountain Highway and Resort had been opened by private entrepreneurs in 1927. “The History of Metropolitan 157

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11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24

25

158

Vancouver,” http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_grouse.htm. Viewed 22 November 2015. wva, 3.6.10, “Shingle Crew on Hollyburn Next Week” [unidentified and undated news clipping]. wva, 3.6.10, JBL to Hon. Wells Gray, 2 August 1938. wva, 3.6.10, “Protect the Beauty Spots” [unidentified and undated news clipping]. On Green Timbers, see Sandquist, “The Giant Killers.” See Clayton, Bradley, and Wynn, “One Hundred Years of Struggle,” 7–8. Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 119; Vancouver Sun, 20 October 1938, 1; 22 October 1938, 1; Province, 21 October 1938, 5. For a map of the proposed development, including the Heaps timber limits, see Vancouver Sun, 20 October 1938, 2. wva, 3.6.10 [Province, December 1938]. Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 120. wva, 3.6.10, “Skiers Urge North Shore Development” [unidentified and undated news clipping]. Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 120–1. wva, 3.6.10, “First Logs Will Be Cut on Hollyburn Ridge Today” [unidentified and undated news clipping]; H.H. Stevens, “Hollyburn Ridge” [Province, 23 October 1943]. Quoted in Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 121–2. wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [Lions Gate Times, 13 June 1941]. wva, 61.1.49, folder 2, Acting municipal clerk, to the Honourable Wells Gray, Minister of Lands, 30 July 1941; A. Wells Gray to the municipal clerk, Victoria, 29 August 1941. Province, 21 October 1943, 6; 31 December 1943, 2; W.V.A., 3.6.10, H.H. Stevens, President, to His Worship the Reeve, and members of the Council of West Vancouver, 596 West Georgia Street, 24 June 1943; Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 122. Alan Morley reported in the News Herald on 20 November 1943 (1, 5) that loggers had informed him that between 500,000 and 600,000 feet, “mostly red and yellow cedar and hemlock,” had already been cut, and that they would be cutting a million feet a month by December. Stevens, “Hollyburn Ridge.” Stevens became known for his birthday

N OT E S TO PA G E S 5 7 — 6 0

26 27 28 29

30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40

41

walks around Stanley Park, which continued until his ninetieth birthday. Wilbur, H.H. Stevens, 213–14. News Herald, 27 April 1944, 1; Victoria Daily Times, 15 September 1944, 1; Rockandel, “Miscellaneous Notes”; Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 122. Appendix 2, Hollyburn Ridge Committee Report, Jack Wood, “Some Early History”; Russell, “Hollyburn Ridge.” Denning, Skiing into Modernity, 9–15. wva, 61.1.49, folder 2, Wood, “Some Early History”; Russell, “Hollyburn Ridge”; “Dream Finally Realized as Big Ski Lift Opened” [Province, 18 January 1951]; folder 1, “Mountain Playground,” Western Homes and Living, December–January, 1953–54, 12–13; Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 133–9. See Owram, Born at the Right Time, 142–4. wva, 61.1.49, folder 2, Lions Gate Times, 2 April 1953, 1, 8. On the longstanding concern with the “youth problem” in Canada, see Comacchio, The Dominion of Youth, 167–78, 199–201, 215–17. wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [Lions Gate Times, 8 January 1948]. See, for example, wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [Lions Gate Times, 26 October 1950]. See also, Mansbridge, Hollyburn, chapter 7. Munro, “West Van Sits.” wva, 61.1.49, folder 2, “Council Buys ‘Ridge’ Land” [unidentified newsclipping, 10 February 1955]. McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 135. Vancouver Sun, 29 February 1960, 10. Province, 11 June 1964, 11. Vancouver Public Library, Special Collections [hereafter vpl], Parks-BCypress Bowl-1965, Roland Wild, “Mighty Alpine Complex Looms for West Van” [Province, 24 February 1965]. The other principal figure in the Alpine company was Earl Pletsch, manager of Mount Seymour ski operations. Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 142 wva, 999.0141.dwv, “A Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee of the Council of the Corporation of the District of West Vancouver,” September 1970, 4,12. wva, Minutes of the Public Hearing Held by the Council of the Corporation of the District of West Vancouver, Monday, 19 July 1965.

159

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42 McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 136. 43 This left 8,100 acres as the Mountain Public Recreation and Natural Wilderness Zone, in which no commercial facilities would be permitted. “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 5-7, 12-13, 16; Schedule D, D. Borthwick, Superintendent of Lands, to R.A. Harrison, Municipal Clerk, Victoria, 11 July 1966. 44 wva, 7.7-2.P05, Parks – Cypress Provincial Park, folder 2, “Hollyburn Ridge Logging Survey Gets Go Ahead,” Vancouver Sun [9 October 1965]; McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 138–9. 45 Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 143. 46 McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 137. 47 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 13–15. 48 Forestry Progress Report, Valley Royal Development, by Gordon S. Charnell and Associates, 21 October 1968, “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” Schedule E. 49 On this theme, see Rajala, Clearcutting the Pacific, chapter 1. 50 wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1, Parks – Cypress Provincial Park [Citizen, 27 November 1968]. 51 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 17. 52 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 17–20; Vancouver Sun, 12 April 1969, 13; vpl, Parks-bc-Cypress Bowl, 1965–69 [Province, 29 April 1969]. 53 vpl, Parks-bc-Cypress Bowl, 1965–69 [Province, 20 November 1969]. The logs did reportedly include some valuable yellow cedar that was sold on world markets. wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1, Jacqueline Hooper, “Looking Back at the History of Cypress Bowl” [North Shore News, 13 December 2000]. The total breakdown was reported to be 45 per cent hemlock, 35 per cent balsam, 10 per cent cedar, and 10 per cent cypress (yellow cedar). “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 26. 54 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 20–1, 28–9. 55 wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1 [Citizen, 26 Aug. 1965, 1; 26 Jan. 1969]; Hooper, “Looking Back”; “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 39. 56 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 22; McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 142.

160

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57 wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1 [Citizen, 26 November 1969, 1]; [Province, 26 November 1969]. 58 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 22, 33; vpl, Parks-bcCypress Bowl, 1965–69 Alex Young, “Cypress Leases Attacked,” Province [2 December 1969]. 59 vpl, Parks-bc-Cypress Bowl, 1965–69 [Province, 28 November 1969]. 60 vpl, Parks-bc-Cypress Bowl, 1965–69 [Province, 20 November 1969]; Vancouver Sun, 30 January 1970, 1; McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 140–1. Benguet operated cruises up the Pacific West Coast and had recently merged with the Grand Bahama Port Authority, which received 10 per cent of its revenue from casinos. Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 144. 61 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 38. 62 Victoria Daily Times, 27 January 1970, 3; McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 143. 63 Vancouver Sun, 30 January 1970, 1; Victoria Daily Times, 24 April 1970, 1. Barrett later claimed that his experience with Cypress Bowl “ultimately led to my full support of saving farmland through the Agricultural Land Reserve.” Barrett and Miller, Barrett, 43. 64 Hooper, “Looking Back,” 39; “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 24, 38–40. 65 McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 139–40. 66 wva, 1.1.95, Rupert Harrison, Vancouver Express, 12 May 1970, 12; Victoria Daily Times, 24 December 1970, 1; wva, 7.7-2P05, folder 1 [North Shore News, 7 January 1971]; “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 34, 40; Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 146. 67 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 25. 68 Ibid., 26–7. 69 wva, 1.1.95, Vancouver Express, 12 May 1970. 70 Province, 28 January 1971, 1; Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 146; McGeer, Politics in Paradise, 144. 71 Province, 29 January 1971, 1, 2. 72 Province, 29 January 1971, 4. 73 “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” appendix, Cypress Bowl Community Plan, 12 July 1965, 1. 74 wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [Lions Gate Times, 2 March 1972].

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75 The municipality had gradually acquired 350 acres. wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [Lions Gate Times, 23 December 1971]. Land within the Municipal District of West Vancouver remained under Crown authority, as far as zoning regulations were concerned, until it was either leased or sold. “Report by the 1970 Fact Finding Committee,” 3. 76 wva, 61.1.49, folder 2 [Lions Gate Times, 23 March 1972]; Province, 21 March 1972, 36. The formal exchange took place a year later. wva, 1.1.95, folder 1, Province [2 March 1973]. Originally 2,100 hectares, by 2000 Cypress Provincial Park had been expanded to 3,000 hectares, including the Howe Sound Crest Trail. Hooper, “Looking Back,” 50. 77 Province, 26 October 1972, 1, 43. According to Jeremy Wilson, Williams guided all of the ndp government’s natural resource policy initiatives. Wilson, Talk and Log, 112–29. On the ndp’s responsiveness to local demands for protection from logging in the West Kootenays, see Clayton, “Human Beings Need Places,” 105, 116–18. 78 Province, 5 September 1973, 29; wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1 [Unidentified newsclipping, 5 September 1973]. 79 On the different park categories, see Clayton, Bradley, and Wynn, “One Hundred Years of Struggle,” 8, 12, 13. 80 wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1 [Citizen, 3 December 1975, 5]. 81 Vancouver Sun, 8 January 1976, 2; wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1 [Citizen, 9 January 1976, 3]; Vancouver Sun, 12 May 1997, B2; North Shore News, 16 April 1997, 24; Steven Threndyle, “Stalemate on the Slippery Slopes,” Georgia Straight, 5–12 March 1993. 82 The master plan did, however, allow the clearing of twenty-one hectares (fifty-three acres) of old-growth trees within that area. See Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 150–2. 83 Mansbridge, Hollyburn, 164–8; West Vancouver Report, 14, no. 2 (September 1993); 14, no. 3 (December 1993), http://archives.westvan couver.ca/PDFs/0230-02.0041.dwv.pdf; and http://archives.westvan couver.ca/PDFs/0230-02.0042.dwv.pdf. Viewed 10 February 2016. 84 Clayton, “A National Playground.” 85 See Denning, Skiing into Modernity; and Coleman, Ski Style. 86 wva, 7.7-2.P05, folder 1 [Citizen, 24 December 1969, 1].

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Chapter Three 1 Bowen Island Museum and Archives [hereafter bima], Bowen Island Improvement Association Fonds, Ms 21 [hereafter biia Fonds], Bowenian, March 1973, 4–5. 2 See Little, “Vancouver’s Playground.” 3 See Weller, “Living on ‘Scenery and Fresh Air.’” 4 This was a contrast to the leading antidevelopment role played by countercultural newcomers on Denman Island. See Weaver, “Back-tothe-Land Environmentalism.” 5 See Howard, Bowen Island, chapter 5. 6 Weller, “Living on ‘Scenery,’” 91, 98n32. 7 The biia originated in 1947 as the Bowen Ratepayers’ Association. It was registered as the Bowen Island Property Owners’ Association in 1963 and changed its name to the more inclusive Bowen Island Improvement Association in 1967. bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Minutes, Finance, Correspondence; Constitution, 1948–94, Georg Helenius to Alfred A. Nunweiler, mla, Bowen Island, 29 May 1973; Box 3, Society and Reference Materials, Reports, ocp, Bylaws. 8 bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Minutes of the first quarterly meeting of the 1973–74 year of the Bowen Island Improvement Association, 25 August 1973. 9 bima, Development and Sub-division, Box 2, Stan James File [hereafter sjf], Olivia Ward, “Bowen: A Place in the Sun,” Province, 17 August 1972. 10 Vancouver Sun, 14 September 1967. 11 bima, Bowen Island Trustees Newsletter, 10 February 1978, 1. 12 See Weller, “Living on ‘Scenery,’” 97–9. 13 Bowenian [1969], 5; December 1969, 1; May–June 1970, 1. 14 Bowenian, July–August 1970, 2. 15 Bowenian, November 1971, 2; Howard, Bowen Island, 140. 16 bima, sjf, Paul Knox, “Sechelt Plan Faltering,” Vancouver Sun, 19 April 1976. According to a document written in his support, “James has all the characteristics of a typical developer … He wears rough clothes, smokes continuously, drives a Cadillac, made his first big money in

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19 20 21 22

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Maui.” bima, sjf, “An Important Message to the Users of the Bowen Island Water System,” 24 March 1976, 1–2. bima, sjf, “B.C. Slams Door on Bowen Land Buyers,” Province, 10 December 1969; “Crown Land Use on Bowen Frozen,” Vancouver Sun, undated news clipping. A more detailed outline of the plan can be found in Howard, Bowen Island, 141. The Bowenian approved less reservedly of the land developments then being pursued by “The Naud’s, the Cromie’s, the Malkin’s, the Adams,” declaring that “we understand that this work is being done with the future of Bowen Island in mind. We tip our hat to these very nice people.” Bowenian, December 1969, 1–2. Bowenian, February–March 1970, 4. Bowenian, July–Aug. 1970, 2. Howard, Bowen Island, 142–3. bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, “Open Meeting Held in Collin’s Hall, January 22, 1972”; Bowenian, February 1972, 6–7. The gvrd bylaws decreased the densities proposed in the land-use plan drafted by the Department of Municipal Affairs earlier in 1971. Howard, Bowen Island, 142–3. The biia also pressed for an 18,000 square foot minimum for lots having a community water supply only, and one-acre minimum for those with neither water or sewer facilities. (The Official Community Plan would be still more restrictive.) bima, sjf, “Bowen Island Residents Organize to Fight Smaller Lot Size Proposal,” Vancouver Sun, 16 November 1972; Al Arnason, “Bowen Island Days of Peace Face Disruption,” Province, 25 November 1972; biia Fonds, Box 1, “Appendix. Transcript of Proceedings of Public Hearing Conducted at Collins Hall on Bowen Island, November 12, 1972,” 1–4. Bowenian, November 1972, 2. bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Georg Helenius to Daniel Campbell, Minister of Municipal Affairs, 3 July 1972; Box 3, “A Report to the Board of Directors of the Greater Vancouver Regional District on the Public Hearing of Bylaw no. 84 to Amend the Electoral Area Ac Zoning Bylaw,” 23 November 1972. Howard (Bowen Island, 144–5) states that the biia had originally supported the 7,500 square foot minimum.

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26 Howard, Bowen Island, 141. 27 bima, biia Fonds, Box 3, Stan James to Bowen Island Advisory Planning Commission, Vancouver, [nd]. 28 bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Appendix, Transcript of Proceedings of Public Hearing Conducted at Collins Hall on Bowen Island, 12 November 1972, 3. 29 bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Grahame M. Budge to Bowen Island Electors, gvrd News Letter, November 1972; gvrd By-Laws, Publications, Causeway, Stan James to Chairman and Board of Directors, Greater Vancouver Regional District, Bowen Island, 28 January 1976, 30 Bowenian, June 1973; bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, “The Bowen Island Improvement Association 1973 Annual General Meeting,” 4. 31 bima, Neighbourhoods, Box 5, DeeCee Projects Ltd, Donald Cromie to Grahame Budge, Vancouver, 22 December 1972; sjf, Julie Glover and Peter Chataway, “Bowen: Island Park or Island Suburb?” Vancouver Sun [24 July 1973]. 32 bima, sjf, Donald Cromie to the editor [Vancouver Sun, 21 July 1973]. The second phase of Cromie’s Tunstall Bay project was being held up by the freeze. Howard, Bowen Island, 138, 145. 33 Tunstall Bay Community Association Archives, Donald Cromie to Directors, gvrd and Trustees, Island Trust, Vancouver, 5 May 1976. My thanks to Katherine Gish and the tbca for making their documents available. 34 bima, Neighbourhoods, Box 5, Dee Cee Projects Ltd, Cromie to Dear Elector, Vancouver, 2 January 1973. 35 Cromie to Dear Elector, Vancouver, 2 January 1973. 36 See Weaver, “Back-to-the-Land Environmentalism,” 38. 37 bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, “A Brief Submitted to Mr. Alfred A. Nunweiler, M.L.A. by the Bowen Island Improvement Association.” 38 bima, sjf, Pat Moan, “Bowen Residents Express Concern,” Vancouver Sun [24 July 1973]. 39 bima, sjf, Moira Farrow, “Bowen Islanders Want Strict Controls to Provide Resident–Visitor ‘Refuge’” [Vancouver Sun, 22 February 1974]; Bowenian, March 1974, 16.

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40 Walker, The Country in the City, 133. 41 Farrow, “Bowen Islanders”; Bowenian, March 1974, 16. 42 bima, sjf, “Bowen Growth Hot Issue,” unidentified news clipping [7 August 1974]. 43 bima, sjf, “Bowen Growth Hot Issue”; “Bowen Island Boom Proposed,” Province, 27 July 1974; “Bowen Island Plan Sees Population of 50,000,” Vancouver Sun, 27 July 1974; “‘Some Ratepayers’ Oppose Development For Bowen” [Vancouver Sun, 3 August 1974]. The density, according to another press report, would be one and a half units per acre. “Bowen Island Boom Proposed.” 44 bima, Ms 23, Ross Carter fonds, Collected Reference Materials, Bowen Breeze, June 1975, 1. 45 Bowen Breeze, June 1975, 2. 46 “Bowen Growth Hot Issue.” 47 Quoted in Lamb, The Islands Trust Story, 4. 48 Lamb, The Islands Trust Story, 2; Porcher, “The Islands Trust,” 31. 49 Porcher, “The Islands Trust,” 32–3. 50 The Islands Trust as a whole was also expected to “make recommendations to the cabinet on the acquisition and use of Crown land in the area,” and to “co-ordinate and assist in the determination, implementation, and carrying out of municipal and provincial policies for the islands.” bima, sjf, Barbara McLintock, “Islands Trust Act Carries Big Stick,” Province, 25 April 1974; Marian Bruce, “Will Trust Make Them Coney Islands?” [Vancouver Sun, 4 May 1974]. 51 Lamb, The Islands Trust Story, 5. 52 Province, 26 February 1977, 41; Porcher, “The Islands Trust,” 36–7. The government did respond to its critics by making the three trustees who represented the province elected by and from among the twenty-six locally elected trustees. Lamb, The Islands Trust Story, 6–7. 53 Moan, “Bowen Residents Express Concern”; bima, sjf, “Islanders Vote For First Time,” unidentified and undated news clipping. Responsibility for appointing Advisory Planning Commissions was transferred in 1977 from the regional district councils to Islands Trust. Porcher, “The Islands Trust,” 36.

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54 Gerald William Dowell to Mrs Hilary Brown, Chairman, Islands Trust, 22 February 1975, in Bowenian, March 1975, 13. The Trust did succeed in obtaining commitments from Agriculture Canada to provide a soil type study and from the federal government’s Pacific Coast Forest Lab to produce a landscape analysis of Bowen, both to be considered when the Official Community Plan was reviewed in two or three years time. The provincial government finally committed $18,000 towards a terrain sustainability study in the summer of 1977. Bowenian, June 1975, 12, 14; June 1977, 4. 55 An ocp is defined as “a general statement of the broad objectives and policies of local government respecting the form and character of existing and proposed land use and servicing requirements in the area covered by the plan.” Municipal Act, R.S.C.B., 1987, ss. 945. Quoted in Weller, “Living on ‘Scenery,’” 113. 56 The biia officially endorsed the plan, with minor caveats. bima, biia Fonds, Box 3, Bowen Island Improvement Association, Brief to the Advisory Planning Commission in Answer to the Preliminary Policy Draft, 20 July 1975. 57 “The Community Plan,” 7. 58 “The Community Plan,” 9–11; Harvey Oberfeld, “Apartment Ban Urged For Bowen Island,” Vancouver Sun, 20 June 1975. According to gvrd representative Thomas, a “fairly wide degree of support was indicated” at the public meeting called to discuss the recommendations. bima, sjf, “Twenty Landowners Control 42% of Bowen Island Acres,” unidentified news clipping [30 July 1975]. 59 “The Community Plan,” 23. 60 Weller, “Living on ‘Scenery,’” 99. In the classical world, Arcadia was the border between tilled land and wilderness. Eisenberg, The Ecology of Eden, xxii, 164. 61 bima, sjf, Tom Walkom, “Development ok Urged by Bowen Landholder,” unidentified news clipping [30 June 1975]. 62 bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Stan James to Chairman and Board of Directors, gvrd, Bowen Island, 28 January 1976. 63 Bramwell, Wilderburbs, xvii.

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64 Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd, 212. 65 The proposed houses were modelled on those being built by the usc in Sechelt’s Seaside Village. bima, sjf, “These Are Real!” The brochure’s date was arrived at from internal evidence, but the plan to build 2,000 units was reportedly announced in June 1975. bima, sjf, “Hoverferries Proposed as Bowen Island Transport,” Vancouver Sun, 19 March 1976. On the ski hill proposal, see Howard, Bowen Island, 141; bima, sjf, Paul Knox, “Bowen ‘Firebreak’ Widens Split,” Vancouver Sun, 9 April 1976. 66 bima, sjf, Bill Forst, “The 19th Hole,” West Side Courier, 22 January 1976. Presumably, what James had in mind were two courses, as the two lakes are separated by steep terrain. 67 “An Important Message,” 3. 68 bima, sjf, Ed Keate, “How About That?” [Times, 25 February 1976]; “gvrd Delays Decision on Bowen Land Freeze,” Vancouver Sun, 11 March 1976. 69 “An Important Message,” 18; Tony Eberts, “Fast Sea Transit Key to Bowen Development,” Province, 18 March 1976. Fifty islanders picketed the site in April. Knox, “Bowen ‘Firebreak;’” bima, sjf, Vancouver Sun, 5 April 1976; “Land Clearing Brings Picketing on Bowen,” Province, 6 April 1976. James claimed that some insurance companies had informed him that the fire insurance rate on individual houses would increase by 38 per cent if the water delivery system were not improved. bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Stan James to Chairman and Board of Directors, gvrd, Bowen Island, 28 January 1976. 70 Knox, “Bowen ‘Firebreak.’” 71 bima, Bowen Island fonds, Report by Urban Programme Planners (R.E. Mann Ltd.), 7 October 1976. 72 Keate, “How About That?” The gvrd had recommended removing all of Bowen from the ALR in 1975, but the biia objected and the provincial government refused to do so. “An Important Message,” 7–8, 9; bima, biia Fonds, Box 3, “A Brief on the Proposed Agricultural Land Reserve on Bowen Island … to the Greater Vancouver Regional District Board of Directors” [nd]. 73 Keate, “How About That?” Donald Cromie, on the other hand, referred 168

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76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

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to the draft ocp as “a cunning piece of bullshit.” bima, sjf, Alex Young, “Growing Bowen” [Province, 1 May 1976]. bima, sjf, Bob Kingsmill to Editor, Times, 10 March 1976; Eberts, “Fast Sea Transit.” Knox, “Bowen ‘Firebreak.’” According to a document written to support James, the “prominent local consultants” Howard Paish and Associates (see chapter 4), had “outlined how his dream could be realized without adversely affecting the ecology.” “An Important Message,” 4. Eberts, “Fast Sea Transit”; bima, sjf, “Hovercraft Service from City to Sechelt Planned,” Vancouver Sun, 31 March 1976. bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, Bowen Island Improvement Association News Release [nd]. bima, sjf, Paul Knox, “Gov’t Halts Sechelt Development” [Vancouver Sun, 10 April 1976]. Knox, “Sechelt Plan Faltering.” Ibid. “An Important Message,” 16–17. Jamieson, “Bowen Island,” 78; Young, “Growing Bowen.” bima, sjf, “Bowen Island Plan Public Meeting Set” [Times, 10 March 1976]; “Large Crowd Hears 16 Bowen Proposals,” Province [29 March 1976]; “Bowen Island Plan Runs Into Opposition,” Vancouver Sun, 29 March 1976; Harvey Oberfeld, “Bowen Island Residents Sit on Their Stumps as a Way of Life” [Vancouver Sun, 3 April 1976]. Oberfeld, “Bowen Island Residents.” Tunstall Bay Community Association Archives, Donald Cromie to Gordon McGillivray, Vancouver, 27 February 1976; bima, sjf, “Bowen Plan Backed” [Vancouver Sun], undated newsclipping; “Petition Readied” [Vancouver Sun, 7 April 1976]. bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, biia Newsletter, April 1976. The gvrd informed a disgruntled prodevelopment resident in 1972 that there were 1,600 registered lots on Bowen, only 430 of which had dwelling units: “Therefore even if the present freeze on subdivision were to remain in force, a growth of 3 1/2 times the present development could be accommodated.” bima, biia Fonds, Box 1, J.F. Gilmour, Planning Consultant for Electoral Area C, to H.L. Moring, Vancouver, 14 June 1972. 169

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87 bima, sjf, “Andrews Walks Out – ‘Fed Up with Press’” [Vancouver Sun], undated news clipping; “Back to Square One” [Vancouver Sun], 13 April 1976. 88 Also opposed were the mayors of Port Coquitlam and Surrey. The one small amendment was that, in addition to septic tanks, other sewage disposal systems would be allowed if approved by the area’s medical health officer. bima, sjf, “gvrd Committee Okays Bowen Island Plan” [Vancouver Sun, 17 April 1976]. 89 Half-acre lots were permitted under group subdivisions, and there was no minimum lot size for cluster housing strata subdivision, provided that the maximum density in both cases was one dwelling unit per acre. bima, sjf, Jake van der Kamp, “Bowen Island Plan Adopted with Little Opposition,” unidentified news clipping [8 May 1976]; John Sbraga to editor, unidentified news clipping [7 May 1976]. 90 Jamieson, “Bowen Island,” 77–8; “gvrd Committee Okays Bowen”; bima, sjf, “Bowen Island Plan Heads for Crucial Test” [Province, 17 April 1976]. ocp approval was a still more controversial and protracted process on Denman, Hornby, and North Pender islands, among others. Weller, “Living on ‘Scenery,’” 113. 91 bima, John Rich fonds, Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing News Release, 24 December 1976; Trust newsletters file, Minutes of the Bowen Island Trust Committee, 14 January 1977. 92 bima, Bowen apc fonds, D.H. Macdonald, Chairman, gvrd Planning Committee, to the Honourable Hugh A. Curtis, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Vancouver, 15 November 1976. 93 Jamieson, “Bowen Island,” 78. 94 bima, sjf, Ted Rogers, “‘Unholy Alliance’ Stakes Out Bowen” [Vancouver Sun, 4 February 1977]. 95 bima, sjf, “Bowen Islanders ‘Lobbying Victoria’” [Vancouver Sun, 2 February 1977]; Bowenian, June 1977, 6; July 1977, 2; bima, Bowen Island Trustees Newsletter, 10 February 1978, 1. 96 The latter mortgage was held by Glenmont Holdings, owned by Glen Crippen. Crippen’s company also held the title to the unsold Seaside Village land in Sechelt, as well as a 25 per cent interest in that development project. In late April James agreed to sell three and a half acres at 170

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97 98 99

100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107 108

Snug Cove in order to bolster the faltering operation in Sechelt. Knox, “Sechelt Plan Faltering”; sjf, Harvey Oberfeld, “Company Agrees to Sell Land to Bolster Project,” Vancouver Sun [23 April 1976]; Harvey Oberfeld, “Union Steamships Attempting to Weather Financial Storm,” Vancouver Sun [1 May 1976]. bima, sjf, “Residents of Bowen Island Fight Golf Course Work” [Vancouver Sun, 10 February 1977]. bima, Minutes, Bowen Island Advisory Planning Commission, 9 February 1977, 1. Jamieson, “Bowen Island,” 80; bima, sjf, “Bowen Island Protesters Trigger Stop-Work Order,” Vancouver Sun [11 February 1977]; “Cabinet Order Halts Bowen Island Clearing” [The Province, 12 February 1977]. John Rich, who played a prominent role in the protest, claims that the government would most likely not have issued the order had it been aware of the altercation. John Rich interview by the author, Bowen Island, 24 November 2015, deposited in the bima. bima, sjf, “Bowen Guard Knocked Out” [Province, 15 February 1977]. John Rich claims that this was a fabrication. John Rich interview. MacDonald, MacFadyen, and Novaczek, “Introduction: Promise and Premise,” 14–15. Young, “Growing Bowen.” “Bowen Island Prepares For Change.” Glover and Chataway, “Bowen.” Ibid. bima, sjf, “Bowen Charges Called ‘Drivel’” [Province, 26 July 1973]. Ron Mann, a planning consultant for the gvrd who gave Bowen residents technical assistance, also argued that Bowen was “more valuable for recreation than for housing on a large scale.” Quoted in Knox, “Bowen ‘Firebreak.’” “Twenty Landowners Control 42%.” See Little, “The Recreation/Ecology/Heritage Triangle.” The initiative in 2011 to create a national park from Bowen’s scattered public parks and Crown land met with much support on the island, including from Bowen Eco-Alliance, the successor to the biia. Ultimately, however, the park initiative was defeated in a local plebiscite by a 10 per cent margin. 171

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“A National Park on Bowen Island,” http://bowenislandconservancy. org/news-and-events/newsevents-from-2011/a-national-park-onbowen-island/. Viewed 7 September 2015. 109 Personal communication, Murray Atherton, chair, Tourism Bowen Island, 8 January 2016. Chapter Four

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Except where noted, references to the Squamish Citizen are from the collection in the British Columbia Legislative Library. Squamish Times, 6 December 1972, 12. Watson, “Coal in Canada,” 239, 250n146; Arthur Weeks, “Squamish to Get Superport,” Squamish Citizen, 25 March 1971. “Half Million Dollar Project,” Squamish Citizen, 24 November 1971. Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside, 161–2. Vancouver Public Library [hereafter vpl], Special Collections, Ports– bc–Squamish, Paul Knox, “Squamish Takes First Steps for Its Own Harbor Board,” Vancouver Sun [10 August 1971]; “Port Leaders Say Development Is Coming,” [Squamish Citizen, 12 August 1971]; Squamish Times, 18 August 1971; Howard Paish and Associates, An Environmental Perspective on a Squamish Coal Port, vol. 2 (1972), 6–7, 15. According to Jeremy Wilson, “pollution issues led the list of environmental worries” in British Columbia during the mid-1960s. Wilson, Talk and Log, 101. By 1974 the terminal was handling 30,000 to 40,000 tons of pulp per month, as well as over 5 million board feet of lumber. “A Very Scenic Exit for B.C.’s Exports,” Supply Post, July–August 1974, http://www. sqterminals.com/wp-content/themes/squamish/about-us-documents /images/TheSupplyPost-Part1.jpg. Viewed 17 June 2016. The Kaiser Company was unable to make a profit from the price it had negotiated with Japan, and the coal was not of high enough quality for efficient steel production. “bc Coal Mining Troubles May Affect Squamish Port,” Squamish Citizen, 8 September 1971. “Let’s Be Something Special,” Squamish Citizen, 27 October 1971. Quoted in Hacking, “Squamish Joining,” 16.

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10 vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, Moira Farrow, “Railway Boss Explains: How Coal Dock Helps Salmon,” Vancouver Sun [10 August 1972]; Norman Hacking, “No Squamish Monopoly” [Province, 10 August 1972]; “All Candidates Meeting Packed,” Squamish Citizen, 23 August 1972; Rose Tatlow, “Facts Obscured by Emotions,” Squamish Times, 14 February 1973. The project would require construction of a thirty-seven-mile spur from Chetwynd to the mine site at a cost of $9 million and the purchase of 300 coal cars and seventeen locomotives valued at $15 million. “Railway Signs Multi-million Dollar Contract,” Squamish Times, 9 August 1972, 1. 11 “Railway Signs,” 1. 12 Farrow, “Railway Boss Explains.” 13 vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, “Squamish Superport Statement Rapped” [Vancouver Sun, 11 August 1972]. 14 Farrow, “Railway Boss Explains.” 15 David Anderson to Mr D. Morrison, Victoria, 23 October 1973. My thanks to John Buchanan for providing a copy of this letter. While a member of Parliament, Andersen had launched a crusade against the proposed American oil tanker route along the Canadian coast from Alaska to Washington. Robin, Pillars of Profit, 310–11. 16 Quoted in vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, Bill Bachop, “Brennan Says Squamish Could Delay Coal Port ok,” Vancouver Sun, 13 September 1972. Local Liberal Member of Parliament Paul St Pierre was also highly critical of the coal port. “Packed Meeting Opposes,” Squamish Citizen, 13 September 1972; “Not Everyone Is Against Coal Port,” Squamish Citizen, 20 September 1972. 17 spec, which reached a peak of 12,000 members in forty-five of the province’s communities by mid-1971, had become deeply split between moderates and radicals. For a useful history of the organization, see Keeling, “The Effluent Society,” 305–22. 18 Quoted in vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, Nate Smith, “Conservationists Alarmed over Proposed Squamish Port,” Province [13 September 1972], Clifford was also chairman of spec’s central branch Wildlife Committee, chair of the Save Howe Sound Committee, and, by 1974, chair of the

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20 21

22 23 24 25

26 27

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bc Wildlife Federation Environmental Committee. Huge [sic] Clifford, Chairman Save Howe Sound Committee, to Editor, Vancouver Sun, 20 December 1972, 5; Vancouver City Archives [hereafter vca], spec fonds, 19-G-4, folder 4, Annual General Meeting, 27–8 April 1974. Quoted in Bachop, “Brennan Says Squamish.” Sewell repeated these comments in 1979. vpl, Special Collections, Britannia Beach file, Moira Farrow, “Howe Sound Port Idea Comes Under Fire” [Vancouver Sun, 8 November 1979]. For a statement of the Save Howe Sound mission, see vca, spec fonds, Port, Bulk Coal Loading Proposed, Squamish, Save Howe Sound, Hugh Clifford Chairman. “Council Approval of Coal Terminal Held Up,” Squamish Citizen, 20 September 1972. vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, “Davis Threatens to Kill Plans for Squamish Port” [Vancouver Sun, 25 October 1972]; Norman Hacking, “Squamish Coal Terminal Killed,” Province [26 October 1972]; Tatlow, “Facts Obscured.” ”The Economics of Fish Over Coal,” Province, 27 October 1972, 1. vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, “Squamish Port New Look Eyed” [Vancouver Sun, 26 October 1972]. “Opinion Poll Shows Port Opposition,” Squamish Citizen, 1 November 1972. Rose Tatlow, “Coal Port Sparks Many Queries,” Squamish Times, 6 December 1972, 1. For responses to the questionnaire sent to candidates by the local branch of spec, see Squamish Times, 6 December 1972, 9. Ken Cain to Editor, Squamish Times, 6 December 1972. Peter McNelly, “Squamish Port Future Clouded,” Province [18 December 1972]; Arthur Weeks, “Information Crisis on the Coal Port Question,” Squamish Citizen, 3 January 1973. Davis replied that copies had been given to provincial government members of the task force. “Squamish Port New Look Eyed.” vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, Michael Finlay, “Barrett Says Environment Top Issue in Squamish Plans,” Vancouver Sun [5 December 1972]; “New Howe Sound Port Study Set” [Province, 6 December 1972]; Tatlow, “Facts Obscured.” vca, spec fonds, Doug Morrison to Dave Barrett, Squamish, 20 De-

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31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38

39 40

cember 1972; vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, “Barrett’s Coal Port Approach Criticized” [Vancouver Sun, 18 December 1972]. See also spec fonds, C.R. Ostergard, President, Squamish Valley Rod and Gun Club, to Mr Barrett, Squamish, 11 January 1973. Wilson, Talk and Log, 105–6. In 1975 Paish coordinated the North Island Study Group’s report recommending preservation of much of the Tsika River watershed as well as the area around nearby Schoen Lake. See Martin, “When Red Meets Green,” 162–5. “Howe Sound Full of Red Herrings,” Vancouver Sun, 9 December 1972, 4. Jack Davis, Minister of the Environment, House of Commons, to Editor, Vancouver Sun, 15 December 1972, 4. vpl, Ports–bc–Squamish, Marjorie Nichols, “Barrett Flays ‘Forked Tongue’ Davis,” Vancouver Sun [18 December 1972]; Peter McNelly, “Port Site Squabble Develops,” Province [19 December 1972]; “Davis Denies Squamish Push” [Vancouver Sun, 19 December 1972]. Mayor Brennan lobbied to have Squamish become a grain port by having a rail link built between Ashcroft and Clinton, a distance of only forty miles. He noted that the line between Prince George and Prince Rupert had been closed five weeks the previous winter, due to snow and rock slides, and that the one between Kamloops and Vancouver had been closed for four weeks during the same period. “Palliser Wheat Growers Support Proposed Rail Link,” Squamish Times, 31 January 1973, 2. Weeks, “Information Crisis.” Squamish Citizen, 3 January 1973. vca, spec fonds, Tom Findlay to the Honourable Jack Davies [sic], North Vancouver, 12 January 1973. “spec Formally Objects to Proposed Coal Port,” Squamish Times, 24 January 1973. See also vca, spec fonds, Charles F. Billy to Premier Dave Barrett, Squamish, 12 January 1973. “Howe Sound Full of Red Herrings.” Paish, An Environmental Perspective, vol. 1, 3, 5-8; vol. 2, 37, 44, 59. Nearly all the Squamish log dumps, where the logs were wet sorted and stored before being boomed to Vancouver sawmills, were located on Mamquam Blind Channel. The shift from rail to truck transportation was resulting in a shift to dry-land sorting, but the logs were then still 175

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48

49

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dumped into the water, requiring 160 acres of total area. Paish, An Environmental Perspective, vol. 2, 62–4. Paish, An Environmental Perspective, vol. 2, 98–9. Paish, An Environmental Perspective, vol. 1, 11–13; vpl, Ports–bc– Squamish, Marjorie Nichols and Michael Finlay, “Barrett Kills Coal Port at Squamish,” Vancouver Sun [29 January 1973]; “Squamish Coal Port Plan Killed,” Province [30 January 1973]. The Paish report (vol. 2, 104–5) suggested that in light of concerns being expressed about nuclear energy, as well as the resource losses and environmental damage caused by hydroelectric developments, there were sound environmental reasons for preserving the province’s coal resources for its own energy requirements. “Report Recommends More Study on Mamquam site,” Squamish Times, 31 January 1973, 5. Paish, An Environmental Perspective, vol. 2, 96; “Squamish Coal Port Plan Killed”; Nichols and Finlay, “Barrett Kills Coal Port.” McCandless, “Ending Pollution,” 14. ubc Rare Books and Special Collections, bc Railway Commission Collection, box 13, folder 16, “Geotechnical Investigation for Proposed Bulk Terminal at Britannia Beach, bc,” Report to Swan Wooster Engineering Co. Ltd by Thurber Consultants Ltd, 1 May 1973, synopsis, 1. Howard Paish and Associates, A Preliminary Assessment of the SiteSpecific Environmental Impact of a Proposed Bulk Terminal at Britannia Beach, bc, prepared for British Columbia Railway Company, April 1973, 10–11, 15. For the local sports fishery, Paish reported (9) 1,080 boat days during July 1972, and 400 during August, largely fishing for Squamishbound chinook salmon ranging from twenty to forty pounds in weight. Howard Paish to Gordon Ritchie, Chief of Real Estate and Industrial Development, British Columbia Railway, Vancouver, 24 April 1973, in Paish, A Preliminary Assessment. “Barrett on Ottawa’s Tracks,” Province, 27 February 1973, 12; Debates of the bc Legislative Assembly, 30th Parliament, 2nd session, 26 February 1973, 751, https://www.leg.bc.ca/documents-data/debate-transcripts/ 30th-parliament/2nd-session/30p_02s_730226p#00750. Viewed 13 July 2016.

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50 Both quotes are from “Squamish Coal Port Plan Killed.” 51 Quoted in Rose Tatlow, “No Coal Port for Squamish,” Squamish Times, 31 January 1973, 1. Clifford approached the Vancouver City Council for support in February. vca, spec fonds, Port, Bulk Coal Loading Proposed, Squamish, D, Bennett (City Clerk) to Hugh Clifford, Vancouver, 16 February 1973; Hugh Clifford to Ronald Thompson (Vancouver City Clerk), West Vancouver, 20 February 1973. 52 Quoted in “Squamish Coal Port Plan Killed.” 53 Email from Doug Morrison to author, 10 July 2016. The grade 12 Environmental Studies class had spearheaded the creation of the twentyacre Squamish Ecology Sanctuary bordering the Mamquam River in the spring of 1971. Murray Galbraith, “Some Thoughts on the Squamish Ecology Sanctuary,” Squamish Citizen, 15 April 1971. 54 vca, spec fonds, Dave Colwell to Liberal and N.D.P. Mambers [sic] of the Legislative Assembly, Squamish, 15 January 1973; Jack Cooley, Dave Dawe, and Don Malcolm to Liberal and ndp Members of the Legislative Assembly, Squamish, 19 January 1973. My thanks to John Buchanan for providing copies of the latter letter. See also Dr. B.L. Funt to Editor, Vancouver Sun, 6 February 1973, 5. Vancouver’s Standing Committee on the Environment recommended that council advise the provincial government that it was opposed to a coal port in Howe Sound. City of Vancouver, Regular Council Meeting minutes, 13 February 1973, 305. In response to a request from the Squamish Environmental Association (then identified as the Squamish Ecological Organization), the Vancouver Standing Committee had made the same recommendation in October. http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/uploads/r/null/a/c/ac08c43ecc 2921ee7cbbc115a64f7883006878d050263d02ee8b7af28497e00f/66790a2e9a68-4ae8-bed5-c84682ab366b-1973-02-13.pdf. Viewed 13 July 2016. 55 “Alderman Incensed About Development Comments,” Squamish Times, 21 March 1973, 1. 56 “A Sound Decision?” Province, 7 February 1973, 4. 57 “An Assured Travesty,” Vancouver Sun, 22 February 1973, 4. 58 Debates, 26 February 1973, 748, 762, https://www.leg.bc.ca/documentsdata/debate-transcripts/30th-parliament/2nd-session/30p_02s_730 226p#00748. Viewed 13 July 2016; “Barrett Promises Hearing on 177

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59

60

61

62

63 64

65

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Britannia Coal Port Site,” Squamish Citizen, 14 February 1973; “Barrett Wants $27 Million to Integrate; Promises Only Coal Port for Britannia,” Squamish Citizen, 28 February 1973. Peter McNelly, “Port for Rupert a ‘sure thing,’” Province, 16 July 1973, 25. The province had been pressured by Coalition Mining, which had laid off more than half its workforce in February and postponed its decision about whether or not to put the Sukunka mine into full production. “Port Dispute Halts Mining Project,” Montreal Gazette, 16 February 1973. My thanks to John Buchanan for a copy of this article. “bc Drops Out of Sukunka Coal Project,” Squamish Citizen, 5 August 1974. Kavic and Nixon are mistaken, then, when they claim that the ndp government purchased a 30 per cent interest. See their The 1200 Days, 115. “Coal Study Release Sought by Rupert,” Victoria Times, 21 August 1974, 4th section, 37. Barrett had demanded $27 million as the price for negotiating an integrated railway system in the province’s North. “Barrett on Ottawa’s Tracks,” 1. “Coal Operation Could See New Port Site at Britannia Beach,” Squamish Times, 29 April 1976; “Britannia Use as Coal Port under Study,” Vancouver Sun, 21 May 1976, 32; The Coal Task Force, Report of the Technical Committee, “Coal in British Columbia: A Technical Appraisal,” February 1976, 96, 100. David Baines, “Howe Sound Controversy Starts Up Again,” Vancouver Sun, 26 April 1976, 8. “Who’s Starting Up Controversy?” Squamish Times, 6 May 1976, 3; “Prince Rupert Confirmed Major Coal Port,” Province, 24 September 1976, 4th section, 33; Ruppenthal and Keast, The British Columbia Railway, 21. After spending more than $14 million on exploration, Brascan Resources dropped its Sukunka development option in May 1976, but Teck Mining stated that its studies would continue, and Denison’s proposed operation would have twice the production. Alan Wilson, “Sukunka Option Dropped,” Vancouver Sun, 28 May 1976, 30; Bob McMurray, “Coal Project Alive and Well,” Province, 29 May 1976, 12. Farrow, “Howe Sound Port Idea”; vpl, Britannia Beach file, “Howe

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66 67

68

69

70

71

72

Sound Oil Port Feared,” Victoria Times, 8 November 1979, 1, 12; Ken Bell and Basil Jackson, “Britannia Plant May Process Gas for South Korea” [Province, 9 November 1979]. Leeming, In Defence of Home Places, 23. “Municipality Should Get Tough with Rayonier,” Squamish Citizen, 13 October 1971; “Brennan ‘Really Burning’ over Rayonnier’s Manner,” Squamish Citizen, 15 December 1971; “Brennan Tells Rayonier ‘Eat Press Releases’ About Woodfibre Smoke End,” Squamish Citizen, 19 July 1972. Squamish Citizen, 8 October 1970, letters to the editor; Arthur Weeks, “Chlorine Gas Spill Damages Local Flora,” Squamish Citizen, 24 June 1971. No one was hospitalized as a result of the spill, but the large green cloud killed plants and trees in the lower part of the town. Responding to pressure from spec, the municipality appointed an independent investigator to inspect the chemical plant. Arthur Weeks, “Municipality to Investigate fmc Safety,” Squamish Citizen, 8 July 1971; Doug Fenton, Squamish spec President, to Editor, Squamish Citizen, 27 July 1971. “spec Shows Hydro How to Clear Right-of-Ways,” Squamish Citizen, 19 August 1971; Arthur Weeks, “Council Will Contest Hydro’s Exemption From Municipal Law,” 26 August 1971; “Squamish Loses in Supreme Court,” Squamish Citizen, 29 September 1971; “‘No Change’ a Good Thing for Estuary,” Squamish Citizen, 22 March 1972; “West Bank Gravel Pit Gets Eviction Notice,” Squamish Citizen, 21 June 1972; “Boundaries for West Bank Park,” Squamish Citizen, 15 November 1972; “Court Case Threatened over West Bank Gravel Pit?” Squamish Citizen, 13 June 1973. On the attempts in the 1980s to ban large-scale herbicide and pesticide spraying in the Kootenays, see Rodgers, Welcome to Resisterville, 138–43. “Construction of Chemical Plant to Begin in 3 Weeks,” Squamish Citizen, 12 January 1972; “spec Questions Chemical Application,” Squamish Citizen, 19 July 1972. As in the United States, it would appear that Canadian historians should pay more attention to the role played by federal scientific agencies in the rise of environmentalism. See Rome, The Bulldozer, 10. On the recent “renewal” of Howe Sound, see LeBel, Whale in the Door, 72–95.

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73 The average yearly number of chinook salmon in the Squamish River declined from 19,000 between 1951 and 1970 to approximately 6,000 between 1971 (the year the training dike was built) and 1980. Numbers have not been recorded since then, presumably because they are so low. Jennifer Thuncher, “Dismantle the Squamish Spit to Save Fish: Conservationist,” Squamish Chief, 8 September 2016, http://www.squamish chief.com/news/local-news/dismantle-the-squamish-spit-to-save-fishconservationist-1.2338715. Viewed 6 November 2016. 74 My Sea to Sky website, www.myseatosky.org. Viewed 6 November 2016. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates that operating a power plant in China with British Columbia liquid natural gas for twenty years would cause 27 per cent more damage to the climate than one fuelled by coal. Peter McCartney, “Revitalizing Howe Sound Means Rejecting Woodfibre lng,” Georgia Straight, 4 March 2016, http://www. straight.com/news/652341/revitalizing-howe-sound-means-rejectingwoodfibre-lng. Viewed 6 November 2016. 75 Bob Mackin, “Squamish Mayor Says No to lng Plant, with Strings Attached,” The Tyee, 7 May 2015, thetyee.ca/News/2015/05/07/SquamishMayor-Says-No-to-LNG-Plant/. Viewed 16 January 2018. Chapter Five 1 Vancouver Public Library, news clippings file, Gambier Island [hereafter vpl file], 1976, 1979, Vancouver Sun, Moira Farrow, “Gambier Open Pit Mine Project Draws Opposition,” Vancouver Sun, 25 September 1979. 2 vpl file, 1976, 1979, Vancouver Sun, 6 May 1976. 3 vpl file, 1976, 1979, Vancouver Sun, 8 December 1976. 4 Bowen Island Museum and Archives [hereafter bima], John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, John A. Miller, “Major Discovery Made by 20th Century,” Northern Miner, 30 August 1979; Ray Norman, “Gambier Conflict,” Influential Business (March/April 1980): 46. My thanks to Elspeth Armstrong for providing a copy of this article. 5 The company was also involved in oil and gas exploration in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nevada, as well as planning a gold mine 180 miles 180

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6

7

8

9 10 11

12 13

14 15

north of Vancouver. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine – correspondence, report by Diane M. Balcom, Vice President, Research and Corporate Finance, 20th Century Energy Corporation, 4 August 1980. vpl file, Mining – British Columbia – Gambier Island, Chris Gainor, “Mine Promoter Fails to Win Islanders,” Vancouver Sun, 8 October 1979. The three main stockholders of 20th Century Energy were Jeanette Zrnic of Vancouver, Raymond G. Boulton of Delta, and Louis Miklovic of Vancouver. Most of the shares were held in escrow by Guaranty Trust of Canada. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, Vancouver Stock Exchange, Filing Statement 54/80, 26 March 1980. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, James J. Hewitt, Minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources, to John Rich, 16 July 1979; Rich to Hewitt, 2 August 1979. Gainor, “Mine Promoter”; bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, John Rich to William N. Vander Zalm, Minister of Municipal Affairs, 8 November 1979. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, R.H. McClelland to John Rich, 4 February 1980. Farrow, “Gambier Open Pit Mine”; vpl file, 1976, 1979, Vancouver Sun, 11 October 1979, 22 November 1979. vpl file, 1976, 1979, Province, 28 October 1979; Wendy Ouston, “Moratorium Hard to Impose,” Province, 23 November 1979; bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier 81–2, Dave Morris, Chief Planner, to Gambier Island Trust Committee, 17 March 1981. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine – 2, T.P. O’Grady to Dave Morris, Chief Planner, Islands Trust, 18 September 1979. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Studies, “Gambier Island Recreation and Visual Analyses,” prepared for the Environment and Land Use Committee Secretariat by Roger Horner for eikos Design Group, February 1980, 1–3, 7–8. “Gambier Island Recreation,” 8, 16–28. Underlining in the original. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine – correspondence, John Rich to Gambier Island residents and property owners [nd]; Andrew R. Thompson, “The Public’s Commitment of the Islands Trust,” Public Meeting, Vancouver, 26 May 1980. 181

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16 Norman, “Gambier Conflict,” 50. 17 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier 22 February 1983, Supreme Court of British Columbia, affidavit, Victoria Registry no. 83,0374, Gambier Island Preservation Society vs Islands Trust, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of the Province of British Columbia, 20th Century Energy Corporation, 15, 16, 21, 25, 26, 27, 32. 18 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Studies, David Barrett to John Rich, 30 October 1979; vpl file, 1980-1, Vancouver Sun, 1 February 1980. 19 vpl file, 1980-1, Province, 8[?] May 1980; vpl file, Mining – British Columbia – Gambier Island, John Clarke, “Develop an Island and Ruin a Real Gem,” Globe and Mail, 5 July 1980; bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, Elspeth J. Armstrong and Beverley A. Baxter, local trustees, to Stephen Rogers, Minister of Environment, 29 March 1980; 20th Century Energy Corporation, Statement of Source and Application of Funds for the Six Months Ended March 31, 1980. 20 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, [Vancouver Sun, 7 May 1980]. 21 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine, John Rich to R.H. McClelland, Minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources, 21 February 1980. In November, however, Islands Trust signed a joint declaration with the Gambier Island Trust Committee asking the Minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources to declare a restriction “on the use of surface rights by all persons holding mineral claims, first, on Gambier Island, and later within the Islands Trust area as a whole.” John Rich fonds, Gambier 81–2, Resolution of the Islands Trust and the Gambier Island Trust Committee, appended to Farris, Vaughan, Wills and Murphy per David Lunny to Elspeth Armstrong, 28 November 1980. 22 Norman, “Gambier Conflict,” 46. 23 The Acres Report Introduction and Summary is appended to bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier 81–2, Notice to Shareholders, 20th Century Energy Corporation, 9 November 1981. See also vpl file, 1980–1, Moira Farrow, “Dams Needed For Gambier Mine,” Vancouver Sun, 15 July 1981; Ann Rogers to editor, Vancouver Sun, 4 August 1981; Andrea Maitland, “Rugged, Slightly Soiled Isle Sought for Open-Pit Mine Not Far From Cottagers,” Globe and Mail, 7 September 1981; vpl file, Mining –

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24 25

26 27 28

29 30 31

32 33

34

35

British Columbia – Gambier Island, “Island for Sale,” Vancouver Sun, 16 July 1981. Farrow, “Gambier Open Pit Mine.” Elspeth Armstrong email to author, 2 May 2017; vpl file, 1980–1, Vancouver Sun, 7 July 1980; Province, 13 October 1981; Rob Dykstra, “Who Is Elspeth Armstrong?” Sunshine Coast News, 24 February 1976 [news clipping kindly forwarded by Ruth Simons of the Future of Howe Sound Society]. Norman, “Gambier Conflict,” 50, 53. vpl file, 1982–3, Elspeth J. Armstrong to editor, Province, 5 February 1982. vpl file, 1980–1, Suzanne Fournier, ”Proposed Park Plan Feared to Be a Gambier Is. Trade-Off,” Province, 30 April 1980; Elspeth J. Armstrong and Beverley A. Baxter to editor, Vancouver Sun, 3 May 1980. Elspeth J. Armstrong to editor, Province, 5 February 1982. Maitland, “Rugged, Slightly Soiled Isle”; Norman, “Gambier Conflict,” 50. vpl file, Mining – British Columbia – Gambier Island, Edie Austin and Tom Barrett, “Minister Asked to Ban Gambier Mine,” Vancouver Sun, 6 June 1981. Davis clearly felt free to express his mind for he had been dismissed from cabinet by Premier Bill Vander Zalm in 1978 after being convicted of fraud for converting government-paid first-class airline tickets to economy class and keeping the refund. “Jack Davis (Canadian Politician),” Wikipedia, viewed 1 May 2017. Elspeth J. Armstrong to editor, Province, 5 February 1982. After spending “a considerable amount of time” in Germany,” Zrnic had failed in his efforts to sell a million shares a $7 a share. Notice to Shareholders, 20th Century Energy Corporation, 1, 3–4; vpl file, 1980– 1, “Pit Mine Still Sought on Gambier,” Vancouver Sun, 22 October 1981. Named as well were the province and 20th Century Energy. bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier 81–2, Kirchner and Company, per C.J. (Kip) Wilson, to Chairman, Islands Trust, 11 February 1982; Gambier Island Preservation Society vs Islands Trust. vpl file, Mining – British Columbia – Gambier Island, 9 April 1983, Elspeth J. Armstrong to editor, Vancouver Sun, 13 April 1982.

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36 Gambier Island Preservation Society vs Islands Trust, 39. 37 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier 84, Supreme Court of British Columbia, Vancouver Registry no. A833586, Petition of Gambier Island Preservation Society, Camp Artaban Society, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, Joyce Roots, Elspeth Armstrong, Muriel Smith, and Jack Hush. 38 “Gambier Island Recreation,” 9; bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Mine – correspondence, Islands Trust press release, 12 May 1980. 39 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier 84, Vancouver Registry no. A833586, affidavit of John Rich. 40 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier 84, Vancouver Registry no. A833586, Reasons for Judgment of the Honourable Mr Justice Meredity; Islands Trust Press Release. 41 A number of mineral claims were made in the short interim between the expiry of the lease and the declaration of the order-in-council but there was clearly little concern that they would be developed. vpl file, Mining – British Columbia – Gambier Island, Elspeth Armstrong to editor, Vancouver Sun, 25 November 1985. 42 bima, John Rich fonds, Gambier Trust 79–80, Elspeth Armstrong to Rafe Mair, Vancouver, 19 February 1979. Conclusion 1 Coupland, Polaroids from the Dead, 75. 2 Berelowitz, Dream City, 4. Antiurbanism is, of course, intimately linked to antimodernism, which emerged as early as the 1880s. See Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace. On the more recent antiurban theme in Canada, see Rodgers, Welcome to Resisterville; and Coates, ed., Canadian Countercultures. 3 See Ley, Hiebert, and Pratt, “Time to Grow Up?” 238–9, 262–4. 4 See Bottomley and Holdsworth, “A Consideration of Attitudes,” 68–9. 5 Vancouver Sun, 2 August 1977, 4. 6 Walker, The Country in the City, 11. 7 Erickson, “Political Women,” 96–100.

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8 Sandra Thomas, “Green Space Paved for Parking on Point Grey Bike Route,” Vancouver Courier, 4 March 2014, http://www.vancourier.com/ news/green-space-paved-for-parking-on-point-grey-bike-route1.875299. Viewed 25 March 2016. The article’s title is misleading, as the park still exists. 9 Bowen Island Museum and Archives, Development and Sub-division, Box 2, Stan James File, Stan Knox, “Bowen ‘Firebreak’ Widens Split,” Vancouver Sun, 9 April 1976. 10 Ley, The New Middle Class, 21. 11 See also, Sandquist, “The Giant Killers.” 12 Christopher Dummitt argues, on a similar note, that Vancouver’s postWorld War II mountaineers “sought to escape from, yet were inherently part of, a modernist ethos of risk management, rationality, and ‘newness.’” Dummitt, The Manly Modern, 78. 13 Keeling, “The Effluent Society,” 302–6; Weyler, Greenpeace, 52–4. On the antipollution movement in British Columbia, see Forkey, Canadians and the Natural Environment, 94–5; and Keeling, “Sink or Swim.” 14 It was not until the late 1980s, however, that the province’s environmentalists began to emphasize the importance of biodiversity in relation to old-growth forests. Wilson, Talk and Log, 14–15. 15 Colin Coates makes the same argument for the countercultural movement of the same era. Coates, “Canadian Countercultures,” 10, 20. 16 “Stanley Park Tree-Cutting Gets Green Light,” www.cbc.ca/news/ canada/stanley-park-tree-cutting-gets-green-light-1.225917. Viewed 21 September 2016. 17 Mark Hume, “bc Court Orders Protesters Off Bluffs,” Globe and Mail, 16 May 2006, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/bccourt-orders-protesters-off-bluffs/article1099665. Viewed 21 September 2016. 18 Amy Judd, “Gambier Island Residents Gearing Up to Fight Logging Plans,” Global News, 23 April 2014 (viewed 2 May 2017); Jeremy Shepherd, “Gambier Woodlot Logging Put on Hold,” North Shore News, 23 November 2104 (viewed 3 May 2017); Richard Wiefelspuett, “Protest against the Dock at Pebble Beach Continues,” Stop the Docks,

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http://stopthedocks.ca/protest-against-the-dock-at-pebble-beachcontinues. Viewed 21 September 2016. 19 Rafe Mair, “A bc Gravel Mine Sound Off,” Tyee, 8 July 2013, http://the tyee.ca/Opinion/2013/07/08/Gravel-Mine-Sound-Off; Save Howe Sound Facebook page, www.facebook.com/savehowesound. Viewed 21 September 2016. 20 Walker, The Country and the City, 8.

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Index

20th Century Energy Corp., 118, 125, 180–1nn5–6, 183n34 Acres Consulting, 122 Advisory Planning Commission, Bowen Island, 77, 78, 81, 83–4, 88–92, 166n53 Agricultural Land Reserve, 92 Alberta, 18, 43. See also Calgary; Edmonton All Seasons Park, 32, 35, 36–7 Allard, Dr Charles, 42 Alpine Club of Canada, 56 alpine modernism, 57, 59 Alpine Outdoor Recreation Resources Ltd, 58–66, 70 Andersen, David, 173n15 Andrews, Ronald, 91 antifreeway movement, 3, 11 antimodernism, 184n2, 184n12 antiurbanism, 184–5n2 Apartment and Lodginghouse Association, 20 arcadian myth, 5, 167n60 Armstrong, Elspeth, 123–5, 127 Bainbridge Island, 82 Bannerman, Gary, 34 Barrett, Dave, 59, 60, 66, 67, 105–9, 111, 121, 140–1n21, 161n63, 178n61

Basford, Ron, 29, 35–6 Baxter, Beverley, 125 Bayshore Inn, 23, 26, 27–8, 43 bc Hydro, 114 bc Mountaineering Club, 56, 57 bc Natural Resources Conservation League, 56 bc Parks Department, 123 bc Railway, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 106, 109, 111, 112 bc Recreation Association, 121 bc Steelhead Society, 102 bc University Liberal Federation, 29 bc Wildlife Federation, 102, 105 Benguet Consolidated, 64–5, 66, 161n60 Bennett, Bill, 113 Bennett, W.A.C., 100, 105 Berelowitz, Lance, 49, 128 Billy, Chuck, 107 Black Mountain, 62, 67, 68 borderlands, 11, 142n30 Borgersen, Mel, 62–3, 67 Bowen Breeze, 82 Bowen Island Estates, 95 Bowen Island Improvement Association (biia), 72–84, 88–91, 95, 121, 130, 163n7, 164n23, 167n56 Bowen Ratepayers’ Association (bra), 81–2, 92

INDEX

Bowenian, 72, 74–7 Brameda Resources, 100 Bramwell, Lincoln, 85 Brascan Resources, 100, 178n61 Brennan, Pat, 97–101, 103–4, 107, 111, 175n34 Britannia Beach, 10, 98, 109–13 British Pacific Properties, 50, 58 Broadbent, J.S., 100–1 Budge, Grahame, 74, 78, 95 Burrard Inlet, 106 cabins on Hollyburn Ridge, 58 Calgary, 41, 42, 46 Camp Artaban Society, 126 Campbell, Tom, 18, 26, 30–5, 37 Canadian Amateur Ski Association, 71 Canadian Daughters’ League Assembly, 27 Canadian National Railway, 106, 112 Canadian Pacific Railway, 106 Capilano Rod and Gun Club, 102, 104, 110 Capilano Timber Company, 53 Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, 126 C.D. Schultz and Co., 62 Central Council of Ratepayers, 20 Chataway, Peter, 95 Chetwynd, 100, 112, 173n10 Chinatown, 3 Citizens’ Council for Civic Development, 30 class, role of, 18 Clayton, Jenny, 70 Clifford, Hugh, 102, 110, 112, 173n18 Coal Harbour Investments, 18–21 Coalition Mining, 100, 178n59 Colwell, Dave, 110–11 Committee of Progressive Electors (cope), 28 Communist Party of Canada, 20, 28 Community Arts Council, Vancouver, 19–22, 41 Community Planning Association of Canada, 20 conservation, 7. See also environmentalism 196

Constable, Tom, 90 Coupland, Douglas, 128 Crippen, Glen, 170n96 Crippen Park, 96 Cromie, Donald, 78, 87, 90, 92, 168n73 Cronon, William, 11 Culp, Jim, 102 Curtis, Hugh, 91 Cypress Bowl, 8–9, 50, 51, 58, 60, 62, 64, 67–70 Cypress Bowl Provincial Park, 69, 162n76 Cypress Bowl Recreation Zone, 59, 60 Dafoe, Christopher, 44 Daon Developments. See Dawson Developments Davis, Jack, 27, 103–7, 125, 127, 183n31 Dawson Developments, 38–40 Denison Mines Ltd, 112, 178n64 Denman Island, 163n4 Denning, Andrew, 57 Devonian Foundation, 46, 48 Devonian Harbour Park, 15, 46–9, 128 Devonshire Hotel, 119, 121, 126 Dome Petroleum, 113 Downtown Business Association, 19–20 Dummitt, Christopher, 8 Eadie, Chuck, 58–9, 64 ecology, 131–2 economic growth, 5, 17 Edmonton, 42 eikos Design Group, report of, 120–1, 126 Electors’ Action Movement (team), 6, 26, 38–40, 49 England (Britain), 106, 111 Environmental and Land Use Act, 121 Environmental and Land Use Committee, 119, 120, 140n19 environmentalism, 4–5, 12, 13, 132 Erickson, Arthur, 29 Fact Finding Committee, West Vancouver, 67 Fairview Ratepayers’ Association, 20

INDEX

False Creek, 128 Farquharson, Ken, 64 federal government, role of, 22. See also National Harbours Board Fenton, Doug, 106, 110 First Nations, 128. See also Squamish First Nation; Stawamus band fmc chemical plant, 113, 114 Forest Foundation, 44–5 Fotheringham, Allan, 28, 31, 36 Four Seasons Hotels, 24–9 Friends of Cypress Provincial Park Society, 70 Gambier Island Preservation Society, 123, 125, 126, 127 Gastown, 3 Gibson, Gordon, 59 Glover, Julie, 95 Glover, Randy, 12 golf course: Bowen Island, 76, 85, 86, 92; Hollyburn, 68, 70 Grafton Lake, 79, 86 Gray, Wells, 56 Greater Vancouver Regional District (gvrd), 7–8, 16, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 90, 91, 95, 169n86 green space, definition, 139n8 Green Timbers, 54 Greenpeace, 3–4, 12, 32 Grouse Mountain, 54, 59, 69 Gulf Islands, 8 Gunderson, Einar, 66 Gutstein, Donald, 15–16 Halkett Bay, 123 Hamilton, 12 Harbour Ferries, 46, 47, 156n160, 156n163 Harbour Park. See Devonian Harbour Park Harbour Park Developments, 20–4, 26 Harcourt, Mike, 43–4, 47 Harcourt Development, 41–3 Hardwick, Walter, 31 Harvey, David, 6

Hays, Samuel, 12 Heaps Timber Company, 52, 55, 157n9 Hollyburn Mountain, 69 Hollyburn Ridge Ski Promotion Committee, 55 Hollyburn Ski Club, 51–2 Holt, Michael F., 42 Hood Point, 87 Horseshoe Bay, 102, 104, 107, 120 Hotel Vancouver, 55 Hourston, Rob, 100, 101 hoverferries, 88–9 Howe Sound, 10, 97, 98, 100, 102, 105, 108, 110–15, 119, 120, 123, 132 Hunter, Bob, 32–3 Hutchison, Bruce, 54–5 Islands Trust, 8, 82–3, 84, 91, 92, 113, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126, 166n50, 167n54, 182n21 James, Stan, 76, 78, 79, 85–9, 91, 92, 94, 163n16 Japan, 98, 99, 106, 112, 172n7 Jericho Park, 128 Kanaka Ranch, 143n3 Keate, Ed, 87–8 Kennedy, Warnett, 41, 42, 46, 47, 49, 156n159 Killarney Lake, 79, 86, 92, 96 Kingsmill, Bob, 88, 89, 93 Kitsilano Ratepayers’ Association, 20 Lakeland Base Metals, 64 land freeze, 74–6, 78, 92 Langley, Art, 68 Lanskail, Donald, 64 Ley, David, 131 Leyland, J.B., 54 Lions Gate Bridge, 19, 50, 53, 95, 128 localism, 12 Lorimer, James, 83 Lower Mainland, 7 Lower Mainland Park Advisory Committee, 58 197

INDEX

Lower Mainland Parks Association, 121

open space, definition, 139n8

MacInnis, Grace, 29 Mair, Rafe, 119 Mamquam Blind Channel, 104–9, 128 Mann, Ron, 172n106 Marchand, Jean, 106 Marining, Rod, 32 Marwest Hotel Company, 23 Maui Holding Ltd, 76, 78 McCarthy, Grace, 25–6, 31, 37, 44 McClelland, R.H., 119 McGeer, Gerry, 56 McGeer, Pat, 65, 149n73 modernity, 5–6 Morton, W.L., 3 Mount Collins, 82 Mount Gardner, 82 Mount Seymour, 59, 67, 68 Mountain Public Recreation Zone, 59, 160n43 Mountain Timber Ltd, 62, 63, 64, 66, 69

Pacific Great Eastern Railway. See bc Railway Paish (Howard) reports, 105, 107–10, 112, 169n75, 175n31, 176n42, 176n47 Parks Board, Vancouver, 19, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30, 35, 46, 55 Pendakur, Setty, 38, 39–40 Penfold, Steve, 11 Permanent Steering Committee, provincial, 119 Perrault, Ray, 59 Phillips, Art, 6, 26, 39–44, 95, 154n132 Pigott, Margaret, 46, 47–8, 129 plebiscites: Bowen Island, 171n108; Vancouver, 29, 30–1, 34, 40, 43 Pletsch, Earl, 160n39 Pogue, Pollogh, 50 population numbers: Bowen Island, 74; Gambier Island, 116; Vancouver, 16 postmodernism, 131 Power Corporation, 20 Prince Rupert, 106, 109, 112, 113 protest demonstrations, 93, 106 Puil, George, 24–5, 30, 31, 35, 45, 47, 49

National Council of Jewish Women, 148n53 National Harbours Board (nhb), 19, 22, 25, 27, 29, 37, 45 Native Cultural and Art Centre, 155n150 New Democratic Party/government (ndp), 6, 28, 39, 66, 68, 78, 79, 82, 104–5, 110, 114 Non-Partisan Association (npa), 6, 9, 20, 26, 30, 31, 49 North Shore Local Council of Women, 52 Northern Miner, 118 Northwest Point Grey Home Owners’ Association, 20 Nova Scotia, 5, 12, 113 Nunweiler Committee, 79, 80, 82 Official Community Plan (ocp): Bowen Island, 9, 73, 84, 85, 89–92, 94, 167n55, 170n89; Gambier Island, 115–18, 125–6 O’Grady, Terrence, 119–20

198

Queen Elizabeth Park, 128 Rankin, Harry, 20, 28–9, 31, 39, 42 Rathie, Bill, 20, 37 Redford, Dr Hamish, 102 Revelstoke, 70 Rich, John, 113, 119, 126, 171nn99–100 Ritchie, Gordon, 101 Roberts Bank, 99–100, 106, 107 Rodgers, L.C., 53 Rogers, Ann, 125 Rogers, Ted, 91 Rogers/Touchstone Investments, 95 Rome, Adam, 13 Ross, Frank M., 28 Ross, Phyllis, 27

INDEX

San Francisco, 12, 23, 81, 128, 133 Save Cypress Bowl Committee, 62, 64 Save Howe Sound Committee, 102, 107, 110, 112, 113, 115, 130 Save Our Parkland Association, 25, 41 Save the Entrance to Stanley Park Committee (sespc), 28, 35, 41, 46, 48, 147n47 Scandinavians, 51, 70 Schmitt, Peter J., 5 Sea to Sky Highway, 114, 116, 131, 132 Seaside Village, Sechelt, 168n65, 170n96 Sechelt, 88, 89 Sewell, Tom, 102 Sierra Club, 12, 28, 121 Sinclair, James, 55 Snug Cove, 72, 74, 85, 86, 87, 92, 96, 171n96 Social Credit party/government, 6, 10, 44, 65, 66, 69, 71, 74, 79, 91, 100, 104, 112, 114, 119, 120, 123, 125–6, 127 spec, 12, 28, 102, 105, 106, 110, 114, 115, 130, 173n17, 174n25 Squamish, chlorine gas spill, 179n68 Squamish Citizen, 103, 106 Squamish Ecology Sanctuary, 177n53 Squamish Environmental (Ecological) Association, 110, 130, 177n54 Squamish First Nation, 106–7 Squamish log dumps, 175n40 Squamish municipal council, 101, 102, 111, 113–14, 115 Squamish River: chinook salmon runs, 180n73; estuary, 97, 98, 100, 102–3, 107–9, 131; training dyke, 98, 114 Squamish Terminal, 172n6 Squamish Times, 104 St Pierre, Paul, 98, 173n16 Stanton, John, 28 Stawamus band, 106 Stevens, H.H., 56, 159n25 Strachan, Robert, 67 Strathcona, 3 Sukunka coal field, 100, 106, 110, 112, 178n59 Sunrise Ratepayers’ Association, 20

Sunshine Coast, 88, 116, 122–3 Surrey, 6–7 Technical Planning Board, Vancouver, 19, 20, 21, 24, 144n9 Teck Mining, 178n64 Thomas, Patrick, 84 Thompson, Andrew R., 121 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 27, 55 Tunstall Bay, 79, 87, 165n32 Union Steamship Company (usc), 9, 73, 74, 76, 85–9, 95 United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, 39 University Outdoors Club, 56 Valley Copper Mine (Cominco), 118 Valley Royal Road Control, 63 Van Dusen Botanical Garden, 128 Vancouver, Standing Committee on the Environment, 177n54 Vancouver and District Labour Council, 28, 35, 39 Vancouver Board of Trade, 20 Vancouver Council of Women, 26, 52 Vancouver Liberation Front, 32 Vancouver Natural History Society, 56 Vancouver Planning Department, 23 Vancouver Port Authority, 37 Vancouver School Board, 30 Vancouver Ski Club, 52, 55, 58 Vancouver Town Planning Commission, 20–1, 24, 41 Vander Zalm, Bill, 126 Vanier Park, 128 Victoria, 27 Volrich, Jack, 44 Wakeley, Doreen, 113 Walker, Richard, 12, 13, 81, 128, 133 Wasserman, Jack, 36, 48 water (foreshore) lot leases, 21, 24, 26, 28, 37, 38, 45

199

INDEX

Waterfront Committee (Vancouver), 38–9 Watson, Paul, 32 Webb and Knapp Canada, 18, 21 Webster, Jack, 64 West End, 17–20, 22 West End and Downtown Ratepayers’ Association, 20, 22–3, 156nn157–8 West End Community Council, 20, 23 West End Traffic Committee, 46 West Point Grey Civic Association, 25 West Vancouver, 10 West Vancouver Liberal Association, 52 West Vancouver Municipal Council, 56, 58–60, 64, 125 West Vancouver Rod and Gun Club, 104 Whistler Mountain resort, 69, 71, 112 wilderburb, definition of, 85 Williams, Allan, 78, 98, 102, 110, 112–13, 121

200

Williams, Bob, 64, 68–9, 104, 162n77 Williston, Ray, 63, 67, 68 Wilson, Jeremy, 5, 48 women, role of, 12, 18, 26–7, 52, 116, 123–5, 127, 129–30, 148n53 Wood, Daniel, 45 Wood, Jack, 60 Woodfibre, 99, 115 Woods, Cal, 102 Wynn, Graeme, 5 yippies, 8, 32, 48 Young, Alex, 94 Youth International Party. See yippies Zeckendorf, William, 18 Zrnic, Leonard, 118–19, 122, 125, 183n33