Between The Bridges – June 3

ED NOTE: The City’s 2021 redevelopment plan for False Creek South, unanimously rejected by Council, still appears to be very alive among unelected, key powers in and outside City Hall. That plan calls for the demolition of Creekview Co-op to make way for a 50-storey market tower that would “speak to” the 49-floor Vancouver House across the Creek.

Neighbours from False Creek’s housing co-ops gathered at Creekview Co-op on Saturday May 27 for the Save Our Co-op Information BBQ. Organizers treated Creekview members and guests to freshly-grilled hot dogs and offered a space to come together as a mutually-supportive and informed community. 

Creekview co-op’s lease officially expires at the end of the year - a source of concern and stress for co-op members and allies alike. BBQ attendees learned more about neighbourhood demographics and the recent history of lease negotiations (including an update from Creekview’s Clara Salamanca). 

At survey stations, participants thoughtfully answered questions including “What is your wish for the future of False Creek South?” and “What is the greatest challenge we face?”. The answers showed a resounding commitment to improving our neighbourhood’s accessibility, affordability, inclusion, and connection. 

Some Creekview members have channeled the pressure of lease expiry into creative action. Shaloh Mitchell, Maureen Powers, and Dolores Bzdel introduced two new innovative and inspiring projects that are taking shape at Creekview co-op: the “Save our Co-op Short Film Project” and “The False Creek South 3BHC (Butterfly, Bee, Bat, Hummingbird & Culture) Project”. (Ed. note: See articles about both elsewhere in this issue).

Such moments of connection and solidarity serve as a reminder of the co-op community’s strength in the face of mounting pressures and lease negotiations. These may be uncertain times, but the strength and heart of False Creek South’s co-op community is alive and well.

There are still a few spaces left for Tuesday’s workshop (7-9 pm) for those who contribute to Between The Bridges – or would like to. If you haven’t already done so, drop us a line at *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*. (Please note venue: Convivial Café, Leg-In-Boot Square).

It’s spring and while our paths and lawns are home to a continuously growing population of resident geese, the Park Board has just released a new Canada Goose Management Plan designed to mitigate their impact. 

Our non-migratory goose populations are the offspring of a relocation program that brought them to southern British Columbia from outside the province over 40 years ago. Unfortunately, we can’t send them back!

The Park Board suggests a multi-faceted plan over several years, including landscape and water modification, hazing/scaring, egg addling and removal. Most of these action steps are already being taken. But to obtain a federal permit to allow lethal removal, it must demonstrate to the regulator that all other non-lethal management practices have been implemented and monitored and are not effective in controlling the goose population. 

This chart shows the population growth and control outcomes:

The status quo appears unacceptable. ALL of the mitigation steps in the plan, including lethal removal, will be required to stabilize the number of geese in our neighbourhood. 

False Creek South wasn’t the only community to sit up and take notice last month when City Council returned to major developers most of the Empty Home Tax they’d already paid ($3.8 million, to be exact). But it may be the one neighbourhood most attuned to forces that undermine existing affordable homes.

In a community where truly affordable housing actually exists – most of the land here is public, leased from the City, and two-thirds of the homes on that land are non-market – residents, especially co-op members, are acutely aware of pressure to change all that. 

Revenue generated by the Empty Home Tax is to support affordable housing initiatives. When it was introduced, a lawyer’s bulletin explained that the tax is to encourage “owners to reduce the asking rental cost until the unit is rented because they will not be exempt from the tax on the basis of being unable to find a tenant” (emphasis added).

Applicable to all property owners, the tax included developers whose units have been buit but not yet sold or rented. Development corportions paid the tax but later protested that “market conditions” made the units difficult to sell or rent and asked that Council refund the tax already paid. Council complied by majority vote.

ABC councillor Peter Meizner, defending the tax refund to developers, explained that “we don’t need to scare away builders, developers from building in Vancouver” because “we desperately need those units”.

Robert Renger (Heather Quay), investigating the $3.8 million tax refund, learned that two major development corporations received almost all of it ($3.2 million): https://vancouversun.com/.../dan-fumano-council-column

One of these, Brenhill Developments, he adds, “is selling condos in its 35-storey 8X ON THE PARK tower at Richards and Helmcken. Its acquisition of the site from the City was the subject of much controversy” when a land swap assigned the property to Brenhill. Valued at the time by City staff at $15 million and privately appraised at $80 million, it was assessed, four years later, at $130 million. https://www.pressreader.com/.../20170405/281616715218744

He identified the other developer as the Grosvenor Resource Corporation, “a 340-year-old company owned by the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, a young English aristocrat worth $15 billion”. 

Some details of the Duke’s company and its holdings are here: https://www.mylondon.news/news/uk-world-news/prince-george-godfather-duke-billionaire-23519856

Children’s perspectives are alive and well in a new project taking shape at Creekview Co-op: an independent short film about False Creek South’s children and the lengths they’ll go to in order to save the housing cooperatives they know and love. 

A collaboration between Creekview Co-op Board member/filmmaker Shaloh Mitchell and up-and-coming film director Mika Shigematsu, the film follows a storyline of co-op kids who wake up one day to learn that co-op leases have not been renewed and their homes are in jeopardy. Travelling along the Creek, sharing news and strategizing with other children, they stop along the way to hear the perspectives of neighbourhood elders who have lived in co-ops here for more than 40 years. 

Assisted by Creekview co-op member Maureen Powers, the film reflects her novel idea when she worked as a teacher and environmentalist in Portland, Oregon almost three decades ago. Hundreds of oil leaks were happening all over Oregon’s waterways, with corporations not held accountable. Maureen’s project viewed children as viable social actors with the capacity to  make things happen. Giving them their own cameras, children documented and photographed the environmental degradation they saw. 

This documentary yielded impressive results: a huge amount of media attention, more than $100,000 in fines charged to polluting corporations, and a U.S. President’s Sustainability Award in Education for Maureen. 

False Creek South children are invited to join the current project. For more information and updates, please make sure to share your email address with the film’s organizers at: saveourco-op.com. Filming will begin this month.

The tents are up for the Vancouver International Children’s Festival on Granville Island, now until June 4th. 

Bring the family and enjoy face painting, Indigenous Arts, a mystery maze, model trains, and much more. If you’re up for lots of laughs and hijinks, you can also register for one of the many international performances on until June 23rd. 

June ushers in the return of two popular recurring summer events: the Thursday Afternoon Tea and Social and Saturday Music in the Square 
 
Thursdays at 3pm (rain or shine) come along to Leg-in-Boot Square to Indulge in Convivial Café’s delightful Afternoon Tea. Indulge your inner Tea Granny with china cups, a silver tea service and an array of goodies. Enjoy the view, and engage in some quiet contemplation or pleasant conversation.  

Thanks to Convivial Café, the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association, and Vancouver Foundation’s Neighbourhood Small Grants and the hard work of volunteers this experience is FREE! (but donations are always welcome).

Saturdays from 2-4pm, it’s Music in the Square with an exciting line-up of diverse performers. This month’s  line-up features:

June 3 - singer/songwriter, specializing in French chansons whose extensive repertoire includes blues, Jazz, Brazilian, Reggae & Funk - Joshua Minsky; 

June 10 - story-teller, singer-guitarist-harmonica player with genres from pop, country, and folk - Shawn Bullshields;

June 17 - An 18-piece ensemble that plays a varied repertoire including classic tunes from Count Basie, Duke Ellington and others, Latin and jazz standards and big band arrangements of contemporary popular music.  Polkas and waltzes by request! - the Brock House Big Band;

June 24 – a return engagement by The Fox Hops – a mostly female, harmony-heavy, upbeat bluegrass band;

And just a reminder: all plaza programs are volunteer-run and donation-funded. More volunteers are always welcome!  Contact:  *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*.

The Butterflyway Project – a David Suzuki Foundation initiative that seeks to grow native-plant habitats for bees and butterflies in neighbourhoods throughout Canada – now has a presence in False Creek South.  

Appointed a Butterfly Ranger, Creekview co-op member Dolores Bzdel leads the project that aims for a minimum of 12 pollinator gardens of native plant species, all established in close proximity to each other, to support butterflies, bees, bats, hummingbirds, and other pollinators.

Dolores has been brainstorming with two other pollinator-allies at Creekview co-op - ethnobotanist Zarah Martz and Indigenous cultural consultant Shaloh Mitchell - about how to make the False Creek South Butterflyway into a sustainable and decolonizing project. 

Together, they’ve crafted plans for The False Creek South 3BHC (Butterfly, Bee, Bat, Hummingbird & Culture) Project, a three-kilometre habitat corridor of native-plant gardens supporting native butterflies, bees, bats, hummingbirds, and the local Indigenous culture.

With support from the local community, the Project would stretch from the Burrard to Cambie bridges. It would also be an exercise in reinscribing Indigenous knowledge and naming on the land, with gardens having scannable QR codes where passersby can learn the Indigenous names and significance of different plants.
 
Please stay tuned for more ways to support The False Creek South 3BHC Project. Organizers can be reached at: *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*.

Learn more at: https://davidsuzuki.org/take-action/act-locally/butterflyway/

ED NOTE:  Between The Bridges would like to revive Neighbour Profile, a popular series that started with our introductory issue in March, 2019, and ended with the pandemic onset a year later. By way of illustration, we are reprinting here our first Profile (and the photo that went with it) to encourage readers to suggest (or write about!) other neighbours we might profile – those  who positively contribute, one way or another, to our community.

When Beth Dempster wondered what to name her first coffee shop she received unequivocal advice: Find a short word that people will understand.

Instead, she chose Convivial because “it’s such a great word and I love it.” Conceding that “hardly anyone knows what it means”, she devotes half a wall in the café to the dictionary definition. If customers don’t know the word coming in, they certainly do going out.

Nothing could explain Beth better than that name choice. She doesn’t follow the beaten track, and she shares what she loves.

When you see Beth behind the counter in Leg-In-Boot Square’s Convivial Café, you wouldn’t know you’re watching a wilderness guide who worked almost 30 summers backpacking and canoeing in BC, primarily the West Coast Trail. Nor would you guess at her Forestry degree or her Master’s from the University of Waterloo’s School of Planning, nor her years as an Ontario researcher and journal editor.

You might, however, recognize the Beth who worked as a camp cook in northern BC. Born and raised in Vancouver, she came home for good in 2015, calling upon that experience to reconnect with the business of feeding people.

And she takes that seriously. Another half wall at Convivial sets out “pay it forward” sticky notes. Customers who can afford it pin up a donated amount for coffee or whatever, and customers who can’t, select what’s already paid for. Sunday dinners work on the same principle. Order a meal for yourself, or one for you and for someone else, or just for someone else.

Traditional Christmas dinners follow the same logic, though here neighbours also volunteer to help serve or provide home delivery.

Is all this worth it?

“It all works out somehow,” says Beth. “Community is important.”

Between The Bridges welcomes readers’ contributions of story ideas, events of interest, original photographs, and completed articles relevant to the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association’s goal to “promote an economically, social and culturally diverse neighbourhood with a friendly, positive and vibrant sense of community”. For details go to: