THURSDAY NOV 30, 2017 VOL. 43, NO. 45
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Watch for more online at: WWW.BOWENISLANDUNDERCURRENT.COM
Giving on Bowen
Celebrating our community’s generosity
Light Up the Cove
A seasonal tune
Coming this weekend, schedule inside
Marcus Hondro takes a deep listen to Christie Grace’s new Christmas track
A senior on the edge of homelessness MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
LEFT: Carol Fancy after shaving her head, to donate for the creation of wigs for women with cancer. Right, Carol walking up Eaglecliff Road (2016).
Bowen Island Undercurrent, photos
Every face that whisks by brings a memory, says Carol Fancy. At the bank she sees adults who she knew as babies and small children. At the Village Baker she sits in “Carol Cram’s chair,” and then she recalls her 77th birthday, on November 10. “I told them it was my birthday up at the pharmacy and they said, double digits! That’s good luck, so they sent me straight to the General Store to buy a lottery ticket,” says Carol. “I got there and saw Michael Epp, I said Michael, I have no one to sing me happy birthday, so he sang it for me right then and there.” Carol Fancy says she has been on Bowen Island for 31 years, living either as a renter or a house-sitter. Currently, the place she calls home is a very small space that she rents for $550 per month. “John, my support worker, came to see me and said I can’t live there, it’s not meant to be a permanent living space,” says Fancy. “Well, I know that but it’s what I’ve got. Well, he is taking me for an interview somewhere on the North Shore where maybe I could live. Well, I’ll do the interview but I’ve found out that the place he is taking me costs more than $2,000 per month for a room and I can’t afford that anyways.” When asked what she needs she says: A place to live here on Bowen Island, and love. If you can help Carol out, you can contact her through Silvaine Zimmerman.
Metro chooses “Heritage Coho carry hope for Option” for Davies Orchard 2017 salmon returns MERIBETH DEEN
EDITOR
On Friday November 24, the board of Metro Parks voted unanimously to support the second of the two options it offered to Bowen Islanders for the “revitalization” of Davies Orchard. This Heritage Plan means six of the existing cottages (two of which are in need of major renovations) will remain standing and four will be demolished, as opposed to
the Open Space plan which would have seen more cottages torn down. Members of Bowen Island Heritage say this plan still fails to honour the important history of the area and is being forced upon a large group of Islanders who want more cottages restored. “This is rot by design,” says Bowen Heritage member Hans Behm. “We have tried very hard over 26 years to save those cottages, but in the past decade progress was stalled. Their study stated
they were not beyond repair, but their sorry state is the doing of Metro Parks. As for the designs they are choosing for us, well, we never had any input on them.” Behm, other Bowen Islanders and a representative of the Vancouver Marine Museum attended a Metro Parks meeting on November 8, where Behm intended to present a petition with the signatures of more than 500 Bowen Islanders supporting a plan to keep all cottages standing.
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MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
According to Bowen Island Fish and Wildlife Club President Tim Pardee 10 coho salmon have been spotted swimming into Bowen’s lagoon in the past week. This is very good news, he adds, because other than a few spotted last year, coho have not been seen coming into Bowen waters in a decade, and a strong return of them would mean that at least one kind of salmon has returned to our fresh water streams this season. Pardee says members of the Fish and Wildlife Club were anticipating a return or
pink salmon towards the end of August, but they did not come. “We released 100,000 pink eggs for the first time two years ago,” says Pardee. “They spend two years in the ocean before spawning, so this was the year for them to return. Unfortunately, the number of pink that returned to Squamish was also low, so low that we will not get more eggs to release this year.” After last year’s record return of roughly 1,200 chum to Bowen’s lagoon, salmon-watchers had their eyes on the waters of Mannion Bay hoping for another strong return this October and November.
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