Juggernauts
Sunday October 30, 2005
Juggernauts crush their opposition
Our little municipality of Lake Country held a marathon public meeting Tuesday night that ran long past midnight.
20/20 Properties of Vancouver had already received rezoning approval for about 200 hectares (for the metrically challenged, that’s about 500 acres) on a ridge that rises above the rural community of Okanagan Centre, where I live. On that, they plan to build about 1300 housing units, a hotel, a small shopping centre, and a golf course.
Now they want to add an additional 40 hectares, with 400 more housing units, a 100-boat marina, restaurant, and boat storage on the waterfront.
Let’s put this into perspective. Lake Country currently has about 10,000 residents; Okanagan Centre itself, under 800. The total project will add some 7000 people, all within the Okanagan Centre ward. So the project as a whole will almost double the population of Lake Country. In tiny Okanagan Centre, the lakeshore addition alone will double the present population; the combined development will overwhelm the existing community almost ten to one.
Linda Diamond called it “a moral crime.”
“We deserve to have our identity protected,” said Felena Sigal.
It would “irretrievably change the character of Okanagan Centre and Lake Country as a whole,” argued teacher Sally McRoberts.
Multiple protests
Most of the protests focussed on the project’s effect on quality of life. The lakeshore road is narrow, and so congested in summer that emergency services have had trouble getting through. The single boat launch is already so overused that – if you get to the ramp at all—you have to park your trailer up to a kilometre away.
June Ireland asked, “The road through Okanagan Centre cannot handle the present traffic. How will it handle several hundred more cars, and boats?”
“How do we place a dollar value on the quality of life in one small community?” Rich Gibbons asked. “We are being asked to sell our rural character to this developer.”
Many pleaded for a slower pace. “We do not have to do everything quickly,” said Kate Gibson-Oswald. “Proceeding at a pace that fits the scale of this development would make more sense.”
Others cited practical concerns, like water. The municipality argues that its water licence entitles it to withdraw 10,000 acre/feet a year from Okanagan Lake. Builder Dan Pretty countered that if all Okanagan municipalities withdrew all the water they are legally entitled to, they would use 20 per cent more water than there is available.
Added Sally McRoberts: “Just because we have the right to take water from the lake doesn’t mean we should.”
By my admittedly biased count, 36 people spoke at the public forum. Of those, 27 opposed the development. Of the nine in favour, two worked for 20/20 Properties; two others owned property from which they expected to benefit.
Making no difference
The next morning, as I walked the dog, everyone asked the same question: “Do you think we made any difference?”
I doubt it. Despite recurring pleas to delay decisions until the new mayor and council can take office after the municipal elections November 19, administrator Randy Rose told the gathering, “The earliest we can get this back to council would probably not be next week’s meeting, but the one two weeks after that.”
I will be very surprised – indeed, I will be happy to offer a public apology for my pessimism – if this council doesn’t rubber stamp the developer’s application.
Because once such a proposal starts moving, it becomes a juggernaut.
Do you know the origin of that term “juggernaut”? It comes from a Hindu festival, Jagannath, held each summer in Puri, India. Three massive idols are taken from the temple where they spend most of each year, elaborately decorated, and placed on huge wooden-wheeled carts. Then those carts are dragged through the streets by thousands of devout believers hauling on ropes.
If someone slips, or falls, or even deliberately hurls himself under the wheels, nothing can stop the creaking progress of the idols. The survival of a mere individual is immaterial.
It’s easy to see that heavy objects—like a wooden cart or an ocean tanker—can develop momentum. It takes enormous energy to divert them; it’s almost impossible to stop them.
It’s harder to recognize that ideas can also develop momentum.
Invisible forces
Universal medicare was just an idea when Tommy Douglas first proposed it in Saskatchewan. Today, every poll puts medicare at the top of the Canadian agenda.
Reagonomics, opposition to the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement – all were ideas, concepts, causes. They had no objective existence, but they became irresistible forces.
Today, the Iraq war has become a juggernaut. Despite the flawed rationale for launching the war, despite the cost, despite the endless parade of coffins flown home for burial, the U.S. cannot now back down. Nor, apparently, can it back down on Star Wars, softwood lumber, homeland security, terrorism, mad cow disease, capital punishment, or the black hole of its penal and drug enforcement policies.
It’s not just a matter of saving face. The programs have involved so many people, so much time, that they have become virtually unstoppable.
Steve Rees commented on the Lake Country controversy: “Your process may be proper, it may be correct, it may be legal – but is it just?”
No going back
“No is only no until you change your mind,” said former mayor Bob McCoubrey at the meeting Wednesday night. “Yes is forever.”
Novelist Tom Wolfe wrote, “You can’t go home again.” He wasn’t writing just about going to a physical home. Some things, once lost, are irretrievable. Virginity, for example. Old growth forests. Or a quiet rural lifestyle.
Here in Lake Country, the 20/20 development is still just an idea. Not one tree has been bulldozed yet, not one rock face blasted.
But the juggernaut is rolling. Once construction starts, neither the environment nor a community’s way of life can ever be restored.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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