Voices for the Islands: Thirty Years of Nature Conservation on the Salish Sea by Sheila Harrington (Heritage House) is a compendium of stories chronicling the creation of local nature conservancies, and the people behind them. This is an excerpt from Chapter 3: Salt Spring Island —Protests, Fundraising, and Generous Donations
I awoke to the sound of a motor. Peeking out my portlight window, I saw Sauv going by in a powerboat. I sold Sauv my previous wooden sailboat when I left Salt Spring Island years ago.
Opening the hatch, I was greeted by the familiar sight of Mount Maxwell and Burgoyne Bay. My senses were in rapture as I heard the awk-awk-awk of a great blue heron as it flew over and landed at the head of the bay, joining another five herons seeking food in the tidal waters of the estuary, now a provincial park.
After twelve years living on Lasqueti Island, further north, what a joy it was to be here again, in the calmer waters of the Southern Gulf Islands.
Looking north toward Maple Bay, I listened to the chirping purple martins at the dock, the trilling belted kingfishers, and then I saw an osprey! What an amazing place — still very much alive and full of the mystery and diversity of life.
Some of the biggest changes on the islands in the Salish Sea in the last fifty years have occurred on Salt Spring.
With its three ferries, the island draws a transient working population and more tourists than other islands.
It has a hospital and several doctors. It has the largest population of any island — the 2021 census counted 11,635 residents, a 10.2 percent increase from 2016.
Many wealthy people have moved to Salt Spring as the burgeoning Vancouver and Victoria populations have spilled over to the next island “paradise.”
The artist community has exploded, and with it a different type of community from the back-to-the land island I and many others sought when I first moved here in the 80s.
Maureen Milburn is one the island’s local heroes for her work in conservation. With six other women, she started the Salt Spring Island Conservancy (SSIC) in 1994, motivated to do something about the lands on the island that were being cleared and developed.
Maureen told me that the Conservancy’s formation came out of several streams. To their horror, MacMillan Bloedel sold 1,214 hectares (3,000 acres) of the island, very cheaply, to a local who came in and logged it.
Maureen said it was traumatic, with MacMillan Bloedel originally offering to save some areas for park land, in return for tremendous development.
Islanders lost that area, but it motivated these women to come up with ideas to stop it ever happening again.
The second stream came from a landowner, Martin Williams, who offered some of his land as a donation, and the rest at a reduced price in order to conserve it.
Maureen and Fiona Flook, another of the founding women, went to the Saturday market, raising money so they could purchase the property in partnership with the Islands Trust.
However, Martin wasn’t satisfied with the option of the land going to the regional government because they could not promise to protect it in perpetuity. He wanted to have a local organization protect his land, forever.
This is one of the reasons for working with a local conservancy or land trust.
Maureen and Fiona, together with another five women — Ann Richardson, Nancy Braithwaite, Heather Martin, Ailsa Pearse, and Mallory Pred — could see the threats and challenges that were coming and decided to do something that had rarely been done before — form a land trust to acquire and protect lands forever.
Maureen told me, “Sometimes you just have luck. We got lucky. The group of people just worked. People can do so much when they come together.”
They headed over to Galiano Island to visit the fledgling conservancy already started there. Ken Millard of the Galiano Conservancy showed them around, described their founding constitution, and generally encouraged their neighbouring island to form a land trust, so that they too could own land, manage it, and protect it themselves. Although Galiano’s purposes were more related to protecting land for community use, and practicing sustainable forestry, the SSIC’s founding women decided to focus on land conservation for habitat protection, specifically.
During their early years, the Conservancy housed itself in Maureen and her husband Sam Lightman’s home. Here they kept the records and started their own newsletter, The Acorn. Sam ran the communications for their first campaign, putting something informative in the local paper, the Gulf Islands Driftwood, every week. Sam was a communication professional, so he was ideal as the first editor of The Acorn.
The new Conservancy quickly became involved in a very dramatic campaign to conserve a piece of land that was owned collectively by ten partners.
Like a bad marriage, over time things were not turning out as planned for this group of landowners.
The Mill Farm is an area on the southwest side of the island with rare stands of old growth trees.
With the zoning at third reading, two of the owners repudiated the group’s internal bylaws. Bob Twaites, one of the “children of the divorce,” told me that, “with the help of Ian Clement, a very generous lawyer who donated his time, we attempted to reconstitute the group’s bylaws in a legally binding form.” Sadly, despite many extensions to give the group time to reform, the two aggrieved most-recent purchasers went to court, because they had no way to sell, use, or enjoy their shares.
All owners would be compelled to sell through the Partition Act. This is similar to a legal settlement for people co-owning a home when they can no longer live together.
Bob suggested that the Salt Spring Conservancy bid to buy the lands.
By now the Conservancy had acquired legal status. So, back to the market they went to raise more money, this time for the 65 hectare (160 acre) Mill Farm.
Because they decided to take pledges, in case the deal didn’t go through, they were sitting with money promised but nothing to take to the courthouse. Maureen explained how the drama unfolded:
“We had a snap decision by the court that it would be heard on Wednesday. They phoned me on the Friday before, and said ‘you have to turn up in court on Wednesday and your money has to be in the provincial government coffers by Monday.’
“We were sitting with hundreds of pledges, from $50 to $500, but we couldn’t get them in time. So I thought, oh my god, what are we going to do? Okay we need to put in $100,000 by Monday.
“All we need is ten people with $10,000, and call them and ask them to lend it to us. I got the list, and the first person I called was Gary Holman.
“He said don’t worry, I’ll lend you the money. I thought this is fantastic. The next person I called had a ton of money, I told the story to them and explained this is just a loan. This person turned me down.
“I thought, Oh, no, this is going to be hard. Then the phone rang, and a local woman, Gay Alkoff said, ‘Maureen, I understand you need $100,000. Come over this afternoon, and we’ll lend it you.’
“And we went over, and she and her husband said, ‘We just want to give you the money,’ and that was it! We had the money for court. Before Monday, someone else gave us an extra $50,000, ‘in case you need it.’ “
A second bidder was a Washington State logging company. They had the capacity to increase their offer to win title to the land, but the new Conservancy didn’t.
Bob offered to put his own share into the young Conservancy’s hands, but a surprising turn of events transpired. The owners all stood up in court and said they would take the lower bid.
And the judge? Justice Alan McEachern said, “This isn’t a democracy, but I’m inclined to accept the slightly lower offer.”
That was wonderful. Maureen said that the heroes on that day were the landowners, who accepted the lower offer.
The Conservancy worked with a number of other partners on the campaign to protect the Mill Farm, including the Capital Regional District (CRD).
Through diligent research, they learned that the CRD had a Parks & Recreation Reserve and realized that it had significant conservation provisions. They approached the chair and their local representative and joined forces.
In the end, the CRD took title to the land because the young Conservancy was concerned about long-term management.
The Mill Farm campaign had high media profile and it served to educate and energize the community toward land preservation.
The money they had raised went to the Mill Farm purchase.
Maureen finished her story by saying, “The outpouring of support was exceptional and the success of the campaign was an antidote to the unfortunate loss of MacMillan Bloedel lands. As an island we came to understand that we could work together to achieve great things in land conservation, and this set an example for future conservation successes on the island.”
