Editor: It was an interesting night at the Southlands public hearing.
As housing developments go, the Century Group proposal may be one of the most generous and well crafted to be put forward by any developer in this province.
Yet you'd be forgiven if you came away from the hearing with the impression this was in truth a coalbelching,
nuclear-powered, pipeline-fed fracking operation on prime farmland. And if that wasn't chutzpah enough, they actually hope to make some money out of it! One Boundary Bay resident objected to, well, building on a floodplain. You know, like Boundary Bay. And Beach Grove.
Another seemed convinced that if this tiny development went ahead, then we'd all better pack our bags for the final, irretrievable slide into the hell-hole of global warming.
I won't go into the tasteless name-calling from one speaker, apart from saying it smacked of the kind of class envy you'd expect to hear at an Occupy protest.
In many ways, Southlands opposition is Tsawwassen's own interminable Occupy movement. It seems that no matter how conciliatory the offer, no matter how mitigated the impact, no matter how generous the gift, it will never be enough.
If a proposal with this great a contribution to the community fails, we'll know then that opposing has surpassed proposing as a societal aspiration, and stasis, not progress, is the new ideal.
When a man is bullied to offer 80 per cent of his private property to the community and that offer is rejected, we'll know there is little hope of future compromise, only a full and complete capitulation.
Like today's anti-pipeline and anti-fracking crusaders who would deny the same prosperity to their offspring that they themselves have enjoyed, Tsawwassen's Occupy movement seems intent on bringing up the drawbridge now they are safely ensconced behind the castle walls.
For evidence, look no further than the Orwellian slogan "No Houses" embroidered onto their red caps.
No doubt they're grateful their ideological predecessors didn't hold this backwards notion when survey stakes were being driven into their own piece of flood-plain heaven.
Doug Floer
