The NOW COQUITLAM, PORT COQUITLAM, PORT MOODY, ANMORE AND BELCARRA
Letters
Still need to protect city’s urban forest Regarding the proposal to put a tree-top adventure area in Mundy Park, when I saw the information about this proposal in the local paper, my first thought was “Oh no. Not again!” As a 40-year resident of the Coquitlam area near the park, I know first-hand this is now the third proposal by private interests to develop Mundy Park. The first one, in 1972, was that the whole park become a golf course. Substantial public protest stopped this. The same thing occurred with the second golf course proposal of more recent date, and it was generally understood that the designation of “urban forest” would offer protection. And now this. Parks need to be available to all the citizens and taxpayers of the municipality. We pay taxes towards them. Parks are critically needed quiet green spaces for passive recreation by old and young walking, with or without dogs, jogging, watching wildlife, cycling and exploring nature with children. Five hectares is a large area to remove essentially from public access unless one can cough up $40 or more for a family excursion. What happens to the walkways and zip-lines at night? Will security be needed? Will the equipment
be removed in winter? What about noise (people scream quite loudly on zip-lines) and garbage produced? What about safety underneath the walkways or will the area be fenced off? What about liability? The idea of a forest canopy walkway is a good one. There is one in the UBC botanical To The garden, but that is not a public park already heavily used. Adding 35,000 to 40,000 more people? Where will they park? Use the bathroom? Any existing green space will be totally destroyed, to say nothing of the loss of areas for wildlife that currently exist in the park. Please, if you have to do this, find land somewhere other than in our valuable parks — and ensure sufficient time for adequate public input when most residents are not on holidays.
Park, nor am I in any way connected to it. That said, I don’t find it the least bit surprising that the very people who are opposing the adventure playground in one small part of Mundy Park are the same people who enjoy or use Mundy Park on a regular basis. I remember a few years back, people Editor on the North Shore camped out to prevent the Sea-to-Sky expansion under the guise of “natural protection,” which is the same argument used here. It turns out that most of the campers were rich folks, upset that their elite, expensive and fancy communities would be disturbed by the noise of the highway and potential increase in the commuters passing through their paradise on the bay, reserved only for super-rich eco-types wearing MEC Gortex. The argument about Mundy Park is the same: it is about elitism and taking ownership of something that belongs to all of us, so that only a few of us could enjoy it. Just think how many more people would get to enjoy Mundy Park if this adventure playground were built. Young people don’t go to the park — they found parks boring. This would not only make the park cool and exciting, but would provide summer and seasonal employ-
Letters
Elizabeth Thunstrom Coquitlam
New park visitors should be priority Re: “Olympic-sized anger over Mundy plan,” Friday, Aug. 20. Let me first say that I have no idea who is proposing to develop an adventure playground in Mundy
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ment opportunities, and the city could collect extra property taxes, which is good for all of us. Countless people would come to Coquitlam to see and walk the course, drawn to the idea of exploring the park below the tree canopy. But that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? It would bring more people. The people who enjoy the park right now don’t want more people; they want to keep the status quo so only they can enjoy their dog walks or runs, feed the ducks and don their wooshy $700 Gortex jackets. Welcome to the 21st century of eco-green-elitism, where the rich and privileged make nature as inaccessible to most people as possible so select few can enjoy it. Additionally, this park is simply unsafe. Any park so wild that it houses a population of bears is inappropriate for an urban setting. The total wilderness of this park will one day result in a huge fire which will burn the whole park down — the underbrush needs to be cleared out to prevent this from happening. I think encouraging more visitors to the park should be much more of a priority than keeping the total wilderness of the park so three Olympic runners can enjoy their Saturday morning jog.
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