Lakefront and the Blaylock Property

Lakefront and the Blaylock Property

Around the same time, a group of people bought a very nice lakeshore property. I almost bought

the same property because it was a nice piece of land, and it contained a house built by a

surveyor engineer from the turn of the century. His was the biggest survey firm in all BC, located

in Nelson at the time—the AAH Green Company. The man’s brother was the Surveyor General

of BC, who oversaw all the government survey work.

The new owners of the property decided to turn it into a mobile home park. It was one of the first

mobile home parks in the area, and it turned out well. It is on the beach, and the mobile homes

are substantial. I worked on the project and am quite pleased with how it turned out.

I also worked on a project for Mrs. Selwyn Blaylock. Her husband Selwyn Blaylock had created

the Cominco Smelter System in Trail and was behind the development of that city. Trail was

considered to be a poor place to live because of the impact of the smelter on the environment. In

the 1930s, Mr. Blaylock had built a magnificent house in Nelson on the lakeshore on an eighty-

acre piece of property. To this day, it is probably about the most impressive building in the

region. The grounds included tennis courts and a marina.

After Mr. Blaylock died, Mrs. Blaylock decided to sell the property. She sold it to a speculator

from California who was not very community oriented and was planning to subdivide the

property. We did the first title development on the place. The project was complicated. The water

system was adequate for the Blaylock estate, but not for the new housing that was planned.

The government officer allowed the first phase to go through, but the developer was told he

would have to rebuild the water system for the second phase. There was also confusion about the

ownership of the property. I concluded that the developer was not going to rebuild the water

system for the second phase. I also felt I could no longer work for him. This was one of the only

places where I have ever actually quit working for people because they would not do what I

figured was right—in this case, rebuild the water system. But I did not get dragged into any

lawsuit. I do not think the developer ever rebuilt the water system. The residents took it upon

themselves through their strata council to rebuild the water system for the new houses.

Lakefront property was sought after, even in those days. People from Nelson would camp on the

lakeshore or build cabins there. On weekends, they would drive to the lake or come across by

boat. A fellow in the region had some lakefront property that was in high demand. It was not,

however, usable. He had about twelve or more lots but had not sold any of them, likely because

they were in the middle of a road. I talked to the approving officer from Highways and indicated

that we would have to shift the road up the hill. For the owner of this property, to sell these

building sites for the profit he wanted, he would have to trade positions with the owners of the

road.

It was not profit à prendre, but it was another provision in the law that worked. You were

permitted to trade land if the government allowed it, especially in a municipality. In this case, we

moved the road by about 150 feet, 200 feet further up the mountainside. To this day, it is a public

road, but it is not maintained by the Highways Department, which doesn’t think it is quite up to

their standards. But the people that bought the properties said that the road was acceptable. There

are about eight houses there now, all worth well over a million dollars. Although they know the

road to their properties is legally a public road, they’ve erected a sign that reads “private

driveway.” I am proud of the way that we cooked up solutions to what seemed to be an

intractable problem. It took some wheeling and dealing to pull it off.

I faced another challenge in the Six Mile area. The government and the regional district took the

position that once you were beyond a property owner's boundary, you were on Crown land.

Anybody can occupy Crown land. I had to back up a fellow and go to court when he was fighting

with his neighbour about ownership and the use of the land.

This man owned a property on Six Mile, where the regional district placed concrete picnic tables

and benches. The whole neighbourhood of some hundred people used the picnic area. The man

came to me because the people were bothering him. They were sitting on his lawn. Sometimes

there were as many as a hundred people down there.

They were supposed to be staying on a sixty-six-foot-wide piece of land, but naturally they

spread out on the properties on both sides. One side was vacant, and the interlopers got away

with it. But the other side belonged to this chap who did not like the fact that youngsters would

come from Calgary and other cities. They would camp out on his beach and then use the upland

part of his property for an outhouse. Over the weekends, they would have a bonfire on his beach

and leave a mess there. He came to me one day and asked what he could do about it.

The first thing we had to do is determine where the edge of his property was. To that point, he

had not had the accretion done. I surveyed the accretion and discovered that the regional district

had placed its picnic tables on the man’s land. They had to remove their picnic tables and kick

the people off his beach area. They had to stay out beyond his property—what I had determined

he owned.

The regional district tried to get the accretion stopped. They issued a memorandum to control the

process, and they passed it on to the Organization of BC Municipalities, which pursued it further

with provincial government. The best way to solve property disputes is for property owners to

pay a surveyor so people can see where the boundary line is, instead of governments arguing

with the landowners. The people should own the land without having to fight for it. That is why

you need good marker posts. If you do not have survey markers, you do not have a leg to stand

on.