Subdivision Matters

Subdivision Matters

When planning a subdivision on a waterfront or even a river, developers and surveyors must pay

attention to the Land Registry Act. The act holds that when planning small lots, every 660 feet,

you have to leave a 66-foot-wide public roadway to the lake or river, so upland owners and

people on the other side of the road can access the water. I am sure this rule was created in the

old days when people had to get to the water to reach their canoe and paddle to town to buy

groceries, or sell apples or peaches, or get to the paddle wheeler on Kootenay Lake, for instance.

These access roads would quite often end in a wharf, where the paddle wheeler would pick up

the fruit. Today, there are no more paddle wheelers and not many fruit trees left, but the Land

Registry Act has not been changed. In my view, these rules impose hardship on the people who

own lakeshore property. In Kootenay Lake, there may be a hundred people living upland who

use a small stretch of beach. To create more space for themselves, they naturally encroach on the

land of waterfront landowners, often leading to quite an argument. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been

involved in many arguments while marking out the boundary line.

I did something at Moyie Lake thirty or so years ago that is not allowed anymore. I took three

prescribed accesses and put them together to make a mini park. This change meant that the

owner of the lakefront property being developed didn’t have to make a road to the lakeshore, but

he did have to leave the space for the mini park. I figured that the people from the twenty or so

properties upland from the lakeshore would use the mini park instead of the beach in front of the

lakefront owner’s property.

But subsequently, I got into an argument with the senior approving officer in Victoria. He would

not go along with this unofficial modification of the subdivision rules. He told me to do things

the way the act reads.

I created another mini park on Kootenay Lake, and it has since become a popular little park site.

It has a creek with a nice waterfall. My granddaughter loves to go to that park site. To create the

park, I put about five or so public accesses together. These accesses, as they were, ended at a

cliff, so nobody would have been able to make useful roads out of them. There was an existing

road that people used to get to the park. I said that creating a park was the right thing to do, but

nobody could be bothered to change the law or give the approving officer permission to do that.

But I have to say I was stubborn and determined enough to keep saying that the park needed to

be built. They allowed it and it's done and it is working. It is a feather in my cap.