Procter

Procter

There was another property dispute in the Procter area. A chap had a property right behind a

thousand feet of lakefront, part of which was almost a wilderness area. The property had a cabin

on it, which the man used as a summer home. Another fellow lived back from the beach on a

hillside, further from the West Arm of Kootenay Lake and across the railway tracks and road.

The chap who lived on the hillside liked to go fishing. For two years, he had left his boat on this

other fellow’s property. As he drove by, the boat owner used to check to see if his boat was still

there, but the trees grew, and he could no longer see the boat. To solve his problem, he cut down

some of the trees. Well, that annoyed the fellow who owned the property. He asked me, “What in

God's name does this guy think he's doing?” When he confronted the man with the boat, they got

in an argument. The boat owner had all kinds of funny excuses and suggested that the other

fellow did not own the property.

So, naturally, the property owner asked me to do a survey to show that he had ownership. He

wanted to be sure about it. He owned a business in town and had a little money. He was willing

to spend a few hundred dollars to get the survey done. He presented my survey to the boat

owner, who still argued and told him off, suggesting that he had the right to park his boat there as

he was the true owner of that frontage.

The fellow I was working for decided he had enough of arguing with this guy. We went to court

to see if the boat owner had any right to be there and argued that this fellow should pay damages

for having cut down the trees. I knew the judge when we were kids, before he got to be a lawyer

and a judge working out of Trail. I liked him. He was curt, no nonsense. He made it clear that the

fellow with the boat did not have the right to go on the other fellow’s property. Then he made a

bigger decision. He said that boat owner did not even have the right to occupy the lakeshore in

front of somebody else's property. The judge said that a person had the right to trespass, but not

to occupy the land. The boat owner could go out on the water, but the judge ruled that the guy

could not leave his boat there.

The boat owner was so arrogant that he continued to leave his boat there, but he no longer went

through the fellow’s property to get to the beach. He went through a neighbour's property but

still docked his boat in the same place. So, the owner took him to court again. Boy, I loved this

judge. Waving his finger, he said, “Sir, you did not understand what I told you. I told you that

you could not occupy that area. And if you come to court again, it's straight to jail.” Problem

solved, or so I thought.

A while later, I went to a seminar in Nelson where a Ministry of the Environment employee was

speaking to about sixty people. She told them that anyone could occupy the beach. I could not

believe it. This person thought she knew what she was talking about. I went up to her afterwards

and said, “You could almost be sued about what you said. If somebody does that you will be in

big trouble because you have got witnesses. They will quote you.”

I did another easement involving the layout of a property that did not meet all the subdivision

rules and regulations. Two property owners—neighbours—ended up in a conflict about a garden.

One of the two had put in a garden on his neighbour’s property. The dispute could not be settled

with only an easement because an easement is just about control. I created a simple little

subdivision, so that the garden was now located on the gardener’s property. But this raised

questions about taxes.

The question was simple: Should the person with the new subdivision and garden pay additional

taxes? I thought that the tax people would take the situation into consideration. But they paid no

attention. I still figure that the taxation should have changed because the one owner got to use a

good size garden that had initially been on someone else’s property. That didn't really make

sense.