Editor:
Quite an admission by Metro Vancouver and a very worrying statement for all of us living in Tsawwassen.
Steve Shaffrick, the Division Manager for Metro Vancouver Parks was quoted in the Optimist this week; “For Centennial we do not have a [maximum] capacity and actually none of our parks do.”
Wow, just keep packing ‘em in!
While municipalities and provincial authorities have introduced many measures to restrict and manage the number of visitors to their parks, Metro does just the opposite.
He went on to talk about the large amount of “real estate” at Centennial and that somehow, despite the majority of its area being permanently off-limits to the public, (for example, those areas marked as “Sensitive habitat, stay out” as well as those mysterious, roped-off areas north of the washrooms), they have decided that the park will never be considered to be ‘full.’
The section of Boundary Bay Regional Park that lies to the south of Beach Grove has an area of less than two square kilometres. By way of comparison, at Golden Ears Provincial Park (which has an area of over 550 square kilometres) they have introduced a day-use reservation system for activities such as hiking and boating; even with that new system in place they remind people on their website that a reservation does not guarantee a parking spot!
At Centennial the local roads, the parking lots, the washrooms (half of which have been closed due to COVID-19 measures) and the beach itself have all experienced chaotic scenes this year due to the ever increasing numbers of beach goers being crammed into the area. In a recent letter that I wrote to the Optimist I joked that maybe Metro will try using some of its huge coaches to bring folks in from further afield. Instead of just shuttling the crowds in from the South Delta Rec. Centre they could be moving people in directly from, say, from Abbotsford or Coquitlam; but after Shaffrick’s comments I am now worried that they might well be planning to do exactly that!
Peter Malim
