Campers with kids and coolers in tow may soon be streaming to the southwest tip of Bowen Island, where waterfront homes sell for as much as $18 million and real estate pitches hype “topographies” perfectly suited for tennis courts and patios, “carefully positioned between natural rock outcroppings, under the smooth-skinned arbutus trees.”
What could go wrong?
That’s the question locals are asking — not because they want to protect the interests of the privileged few that own property on Cape Roger Curtis or keep outsiders away from its pristine forest and dry coastal bluff, but because the island they call home is already under pressure.
Locals say gentrification, overloaded ferries and an affordability crisis are driving out renters and lower-income families and changing the feel of the place they describe as magical, unique, artistic, accessible and welcoming.
Welcoming, historically, except to overnight campers.
Now a $40-million proposal from Metro Vancouver to purchase almost a square kilometre of forested and waterfront land on Bowen to create a park with 100 walk or bike-in overnight camping spots has raised apprehensions among islanders about increased ferry and road traffic, and impacts on the intangible gifts of a place that offers peace, creative inspiration, nature, safety and community to those lucky enough to live there.
On a blisteringly hot summer day, the island’s tiny waterfront town is bustling. The lineup outside the Snug Café is packed with tourists clamouring for a table, trucks laden with construction supplies rumble up the two-lane road inland, and a long column of cars waiting for the ferry, noses pointed toward the water, clogs the other lane.
On the shade of a nearby patio, Peter Frinton observes the action.
“We’ve become Whistler light. Gentrification is already here.”
His voice is briefly drowned out while a power saw screams through a metal pipe across the street. Over 50 years on the island, Frinton, has seen a lot of construction, and a lot of change, both as a resident, a local councillor and a Metro Vancouver representative.
The proposed new parkland isn’t just for visitors, he explains. It’s for islanders, and “provides a stable land use that meshes well with the island’s mandate to create parks and trails.”
What worries Frinton is how the campground will be managed, and who will come.
“If it attracts yahoos who currently go to Cultus or Harrison or Shuswap, where they basically have to have a police detachment at the ready, it will change the complexion of the community.”
The proposal does have the potential to settle a long debate over Cape Roger Curtis.
“That land has probably been the most divisive thing on the island since I’ve been here, 29 years,” said musician Shari Ulrich, a resident of the island.
For decades, the acreage and waterfront on Cape Roger Curtis was undeveloped, privately owned and accessible to anyone. The forest is thick with fir, cedars and 400-year-old junipers, and its dry coastal bluffs rich with rare lichen and moss. Both locals and visitors used it as parkland.
When the site came onto the market in 2002, residents hoped to purchase the land on behalf of the community, but were unable to raise sufficient funds.
In 2004, the parcel of land and prized waterfront was sold to developers for $16 million. Although the Official Community Plan allowed for 10-acre lots, a poll showed that islanders wanted more than half the land protected from development and at least 60 per cent of the shoreline reserved for public access.
Developers Don Ho and Edwin Lee came up with a plan to preserve a large part of the coastline as park, but to make the surrender of prime waterfront economically viable, they insisted density had to be increased.
Among various proposals was a subdivision for 666 units including 114 affordable housing units, well over what the Official Community Plan allowed. The plan was rejected by council.
Ultimately the developers reverted to the original zoning, which allowed 59, 10-acre lots, suitable for “estate homes.” A subdivision for the wealthy.
Then came reports of locked gates set up to keep out local hikers, demands for cease-work orders on construction of private docks that one resident called a “sheer horror,” and concerns about preserving the delicate ecological balance of the area.
“It was very fracturing for the community,” said Ulrich.
A 20-minute ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay, the island has long been a refuge for artists and musicians like Ulrich, and for commuters who want to raise children outside the city, but still within Metro Vancouver and close enough to commute for work. Some 45 per cent of the island is public green space. The population is about 5,000.
Longtime resident Ron Woodall, 87, said when he arrived in 2002, Bowen was “a cheap place where you could find an existing shelter and do your art and do your music.” It was, he said, “hippie-outsider heaven and a cheap place to live.”
Not anymore.
“The most dramatic change has come in the last couple of years,” said Tim Rhodes, a Bowen realtor. “A lot of people in the tech industry and the movie industry have moved here, people with younger families and empty nesters.”
Home prices have increased 83 per cent in the past five years. Over the past two years, prices increased 64 per cent, the biggest jump in Metro Vancouver.
“We desperately need affordable housing and rental housing,” said Rhodes.
While rising real estate prices are a boon to people who want to sell and move off the island, the higher prices bring a different kind of person to the island.
The median household income on Bowen is $111,000, 31 per cent higher than the rest of B.C., and 55 per cent of families on Bowen have a household income over $100,000.
With higher incomes come different needs.
“The new people want amenities,” said Woodall. “They want doctors and dentists and community centres.”
Along with the new demographic come some advantages: “Wealthy people pay a lot of taxes and they don’t ask for a lot,” said Frinton, 72.
The new upscale young professionals don’t volunteer much, but they do give money: $1.29 million to a new community centre and theatre and $6 million toward the new community health centre, which will provide on-island primary care and a dentist.
“They care about green space and they are conservation-minded,” said Frinton.
Owen Plowman, chairman of the Bowen Island Conservancy, which manages a 13-hectare — about the size of Granville Island — nature refuge that was created when an anonymous buyer donated three of the Cape Rogers waterfront lots, said the area “needs to be protected at all costs.”
Although the pricey waterfront lots have sold, most of the inland Cape lots are unsold. Whether it is due to the downturn in real estate markets, or, as Plowman suggests, due to a “limit on what wealthy people will pay for non-waterfront property,” the sale to Metro will take them off the developers’ hands.
“Metro Vancouver is very good with parks — they know what they are doing, they will create trails, a lot of the land will be kept in pristine shape,” said Plowman. “It’s a win for the developer, a win for Metro and hopefully a win for the islanders.”
Helen Wallwork, who works at the local Phoenix bookstore, isn’t so sure whether it’s a win for islanders. Wallwork, who grew up on the island, has lived here since it was owned by the Union Steamship company, the roads were dirt and life was “magical.”
For her, the issue isn’t people. “People have always come to Bowen. There is nothing wrong with people.”
It’s how many people. “We were a little aghast at the size of the campground. What about the ferry?” said Wallwork.
Ferries to Bowen routinely run full and late. B.C. Ferries policy is to load larger ferries first, so in summer, Boweners routinely wait a half-hour or more after scheduled sailing times to get on their ferry.
According to B.C. Ferries, in June, 59,369 people travelled to Bowen. A campsite that services 100 could bring an additional 35,000 people to Bowen annually, an increase of five per cent a month.
David Hocking, a Bowen Island council member and director for Metro Vancouver Regional District, said Metro plans to address all of the practical concerns.
“It will be a supervised campground with someone on site 24 hours. Right now, fire has been of concern because of unsupervised camping, and we’ve had no way of monitoring that.”
“We need to work out the details well, and we plan to,” said Hocking.
Hocking said transportation solutions could include a foot ferry that leaves from downtown Vancouver, with a shuttle from Snug Cove to Cape Rogers Curtis so campers won’t be tempted to bring cars.
Even if the details haven’t been worked out, Ulrich said she is thrilled with the proposal — after all, a core value on the island is sharing the island.
“Just because we are here doesn’t give us the right to stop that kind of experience for other people that don’t live here.”
Every day, Ulrich steps outside her home and looks out over the sound to the North Shore mountains — it’s a view that feeds her soul, her writing and her music. She wants everyone to feel it, too, and she has no problem with visitors, whether they come for a day, an overnight camp-out, or a lifetime, like she did.
“It’s a spectacular place to be.”
