Between The Bridges – April 6

Shaloh Mitchell was home in New Zealand preparing for his traditional Maori marriage ceremony when the World Health Organization declared a worldwide pandemic. It was March 2020. His new wife was about to fly out of Vancouver when her employer put a ban on travel. The marriage ceremony was cancelled. Life was shutting down quickly. Shaloh could see his tourism business was about to lose all its customers. So, he caught the last plane to Vancouver and joined his wife in Creekview Co-op. He is still there finding ways to turn dreams into actions.
 
Shaloh’s wife, Zarah Martz, an established resident of Creekview, quickly had him involved. 
 
“Until moving here I had heard of co-ops but never really understood them,” Shaloh says. “My wife nominated me as a director and that certainly opened my eyes to what it takes to run a co-op. There is such a diverse group of people and diverse ages. It reminds me of home.”

‘Home’ for Shaloh is a 300-family Maori village in lakeside Rotorua. There, he says, family is the centre of community. The elderly are cared for within family settings. Shaloh sees those same values in Creekview, in part because he now has several new ‘aunties.’ 
 
Another activity Shaloh has embraced is turning False Creek South into a pollinator paradise. (See BTB Butterflyway project lands in False Creek South.) 

Shaloh is one of a group of Creekside residents launching a new non-profit called 3BHC (3 bridge habitat corridor). Others are Butterflyway Ranger Dolores Bzdel, Feng Shui teacher, artist, garden designer, and sustainability advisor Maureen Powers, elementary teacher Debby Meyer, and Shaloh’s wife, school administrator, adjunct professor, and ethnobotanist, Zarah Martz. 

The non-profit will oversee the False Creek South Butterflyway Project, beehives program and bat program. The group is considering adding two more programs: marine conservation, and food, and has already partnered with the Vancouver Park Board, David Suzuki Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, and the Native Bee Society. 

Away from False Creek, Shaloh is the relationship manager for the Indigenous Life Sport Academy. He is also co-founder, partner and general manager of a new Musqueam-based company of Indigenous consultants called sniw̓.

Helping turn dreams into action keeps life exciting, which, says Shaloh, is the way he likes it. 

SAVE THE DATE: COMMUNITY TOWN HALL ON APRIL 18 

You’re invited to join RePlan for a Community Town Hall on Thursday, April 18 from 7:00-8:30pm on Zoom. RePlan leadership will be providing an overview of recent activities, including:

Following the presentations there will be time for a Q&A.

This meeting will be held on Zoom. To receive a link, please register or email Robyn, Project Manager at *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*. Everyone in FCS is welcome to attend. You can also submit any questions in advance to Robyn. We look forward to seeing you there!

NEW WEBSITE NEWS CHANNEL

We’re introducing a one-stop, online location for all your Community, Municipal, Provincial (and sometimes Federal) Housing News on the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association’s website!

No need to sift through multiple news sources any longer. At falsecreeksouth.org/housing-news, you’ll find synopses of housing news that you need to know as a resident of False Creek South.

Visit the news page – and consider bookmarking it for easy access.

NATHAN'S BOOK CLUB - JUNE 1

If you’re interested in learning more about urban issues and planning, you’re invited to the next meeting of Nathan’s Book Club on Saturday, June 1. The next book the group will be discussing is Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State by Samuel Stein. Capital City details how city planners have shaped the way the state uses and is used by organized capital, and how they hold the solutions.

To be notified about meeting details, please email Sarah at *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*.

Or, if you’d like to read something else, check out the full Book Club lending library online. Books are available by request (email Sarah at *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*), and can be picked up and dropped off with Beth at Convivial Cafe in Leg-In-Boot Square.

Recently False Creek South Neighbourhood Association delegates agreed to ask RePlan, its planning committee, to establish a sub-committee of and for our strata residents. This has now been done and the Association’s delegates from stratas have been invited to an initial organizational meeting this coming week.

Well over a decade ago, RePlan established a Strata Leasehold Sub-committee known as SLS, parallel to its Co-op Authorized Working Group (AWG). Very active for some time, including many meetings with city staff, it eventually morphed into a different SLS - the Strata Leaseholders Society. Formed as a legal entity separate from the FCSNA and focused on lease negotiations, the SLS is now dissolved. 

The Association itself has no individual members. Its actual membership is the Creek’s residential enclaves, represented by named delegates to its monthly meetings. But unlike its member co-ops, stratas have not had direct participation in the “re-planning” of the False Creek South neighbourhood for some time. As well, there are issues particularly relevant to the strata form of home ownership that is both individual and shared. Recognizing this, the new strata residents group will include all FCSNA strata member enclaves, both leasehold and freehold.

The Association continues its intense involvement with all matters affecting the False Creek South neighbourhood in line with its ARC principles: Affordability, Resilience, Community. The new strata residents group promises to be a welcome addition to that work.

Monica Franz (Discovery Quay) writes:

I have been walking around False Creek for many years now, and last night was the first time I spotted several starfish! They were seen just below the low tide mark at the Spruce Harbour Marina. I take it as a sign that not only is the water in False Creek slowly getting cleaner, but the starfish seem to be recovering from the wasting disease that devastated their populations a number of years ago. I took a photo with my iPhone at dusk so it's not great quality ~ note the Dungeness crab photobomb. Thought your readers might enjoy knowing this.

Keep up the excellent work!

*

From Mariam Habib (Alder Bay Co-op):

The last issue of Between The Bridges was delightful and an excellent read! Thanks to your team and our wonderful neighbours between the bridges for keeping our neighborhood vibrant, safe, caring and beautiful.
 
I just wanted to update you on the ongoing seawall pavement construction status past Anderson Street. After raising concerns with the City that half the seawall walk was closed off with the signs for construction and signaling to cyclists to dismount (which the majority of them ignore), we witnessed cyclists zoom by, nearly knocking down a frail senior! There remains a very narrow walkway to be shared by pedestrians, dogs on leashes, kids, cyclists, and boarders. 

After my call to City Council, the contractor created the fence around the work site and widened the pedestrian walk a little. Again the signs for cyclists to dismount and walk their bikes went up and again they are ignored, as in the attached photo.

Residents might recall the mammoth Biennale artwork, Acoustic Anvil (A Small Weight to Forge the Sea), occupying much of Leg-In-Boot Square from 2018 to 2020. 

Kathryn Woodward (Market Hill) sent us the photo below from the Langley Advance Times with the headline, “World’s Largest Acoustic Anvil found a new home in Fort Langley”. 

Good to know it’s safe and sound outside the BC Farm Museum. 

https://www.langleyadvancetimes.com/local-news/video-worlds-largest-sculptured-acoustic-anvil-found-new-home-in-fort-langley-7329297

In 2020, the first year of COVID, when people were worried and depressed and couldn’t go anywhere, a handful of music events were held in front of the Convivial Café.  

The intent was to bring a little cheer. But remember those restrictions? Sixty people max and 2-meter separation outside your bubble. Music was not advertised – to avoid too many people! “Spies” in the crowd monitored social distancing. Musicians faced away from the café, making it feel transitory: a lucky happenstance (allowed), definitely not a “concert” (not allowed).   

Three years later: Fourteen events/series from May to December at Leg-In-Boot: Garden-ing Party; Thursday Afternoon Tea and Social; Saturday Afternoon Music; Buy, Sell, Gift; Art and Craft Fair; Intimacy and the Poetry of Place; Chair Yoga; Community Conversations; Truth and Reconciliation Day; Plaza Pedal Parade; Write For Rights; Peace Tree; WinterFest; and Winter Solstice Lantern Festival. All of these are carried out by volunteers, whether individuals or teams, supported by the Leg-In-Boot Reboot Working Group.   

Participants would like all events to repeat! To make this happen we need more people to join in the fun. Yes – planning and volunteering is fun!!

There are many opportunities: Some from a computer (update the website) or phone (call someone to water planters); some in person in the quiet of early morning (unlocking tables and chairs) or in the buzz of social interaction (pouring tea). Some require little time (print and post announcements in your enclave once a month); some a bit more (setting up canopies on Saturdays). Some require more work now and less later (contacting musicians); some are once only (clean-up after Buy-Sell-Gift).

We especially need people in key coordinating positions to contact and schedule musicians or stewardship volunteers and to re-establish a strong working group (primarily a sounding board for issues and ideas.)   

To learn more, come to a volunteer information session at Convivial Café (in the rain) or at Leg-In-Boot (in sunshine). There will be goodies! 

Drop-in Thursday, April 11, 4-5:30 or Sunday, April 14, 2-3:30
General meeting: Wednesday, April 17, at 7 pm

E-mail the Reboot Working Group (Susan Dehnel, Beth Dempster and others) *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*, drop into the Convivial Café, or check out convivialcafe.ca/leginboot.

Hey False Creek nature lovers…from April 26–29 we will, for the first time, be participating in an international competition between cities. This friendly competition is to see who can make the most observations of nature, find the most species, and engage the most people. 

It’s easy. The False Creek Friends Society will organize walks so you can be with others who have done this before, or you can choose to ramble on your own and capture observations using the iNaturalist app. 

Join others throughout the Metro Vancouver Regional District who are participating in the 2024 City Nature Challenge (CNC). The challenge is a global event to observe and record the biodiversity of living things. Help us explore and share the incredible biodiversity of our area by observing nature around us: birds, bats, butterflies, mollusks, trees, ferns and more.

We’ll be looking for ALL life - marine, terrestrial, animal and plant.

For the first time, we will be organizing a CNC event covering False Creek’s entire watershed in partnership with Nature Vancouver, which is leading a metro-wide challenge.

The City Nature Challenge for the Metro Vancouver Regional District area is a partnership of 21 municipalities, one electoral area, and one treaty First Nation. 

Join Nature Vancouver and all its partners in using the iNaturalist app to record as many wild plants and animals on land, in the air, and in our marine environments throughout the district.

All you need to do is:

• Download iNaturalist to your iPhone or Android phone or your home computer
• Make an observation using photos or sound recordings from April 26 to April 29, and
• Upload your observations to iNaturalist using your phone or computer by May 4.

New to iNaturalist? Follow this link for tips on getting started and becoming a better identifier: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started
Scan this code and fill out the form at the bottom of the page to volunteer, or write Zaida, *email is hidden, JavaScript is required*

Judging from raging comments on various social platforms, a lot of people have set their hair on fire over the seawall closure from Cambie Bridge east to Hinge Park in Olympic Village. And a few have taken what some say is “direct action” and others call “selfish entitlement”. Both refer to such goings-on as bolt-cutting the chains preventing access, tearing out large holes through fencing, and digging out surface-supporting rocks. For starters. 

But a conversation on-site Thursday with a surveyor from the City of Vancouver's Engineering Department shed some light on the exact problem and what’s being done about it.

What happened is that relentless exposure to rain, seawater, tidal action, and other elements (including a sewage outfall) has eroded the Cambie sheet pile wall (metal sheets supporting the seawall) near Hinge Park. After monitoring the sheets annually for the past two decades, Engineering this year concluded that action is needed no later than Now, before the structure becomes completely compromised.

The surveyor also said that the City has identified this repair as the “top priority”. Asked if that refers to projects involving the seawall, or those within this particular area, or….?  the surveyor said that it means top priority, city-wide.

As part of this work, a new and apparently permanent re-routing of this part of the seawall is to be built on city land parallel to the existing section, set back a few meters south from the water’s edge. Given past practice, he anticipates that the area between this new section and the shoreline will become parkland.

Work has begun and completion is expected “within the month”. Perhaps what we need now is the faith that it will indeed reopen by then – if, as the song goes, the Good Lord is willing and the Creek don’t rise. 

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”. Signed articles reflect the views of their authors. For details go to: