By Joe Foy

 

I sat straight up in bed in a cold sweat. “Wow, that was a really weird nightmare,” I muttered to myself. My dream had started off fine enough. I’d been hiking in North Delta’s Burns Bog on an idyllic blue-sky day when suddenly the sky darkened and the pondwaters began to roil and froth. A forbidding figure slowly rose from the bog, draped in vines and weeds, stiffly walking toward me arms outstretched, eyes wide and staring, huge monstrous ears wiggling. It was... it was... Mickey Mouse??!!

 

I went to get a glass of milk and ponder the meaning of my dream.

 

Only that morning yet another plan for “developing” Burns Bog had hit the front page of the February 4 edition of the Vancouver Sun. The plan, announced by Small business and Tourism Minister Ian Waddell was for Western Delta Property Corp to receive B.C. government permission , and a $25 million B.C. government loan, to construct a massive commercial development including a new home for the PNE complete with a Disney-like theme-park and movie production facilities on 890 hectares of the 4,000 hectare bog. To sweeten the deal for the general public, an additional 1,200 hectares of the bog would be set aside as parkland. Waddell called it a win-win-win deal preserving the PNE, jobs and the environment in one swoop.

 

Eliza Olson, president of the Burns Bog Conservation Society begged to differ. She said if the deal were to go through it would be the death of the bog. Burying 890 hectares of the bog under meters of sand a and gravel would be a lose-lose-lose deal.

 

The only things apparently standing in the way of the gravel trucks was approval from Delta Council and a B.C. government environmental assessment process.

 

On the day the story broke my feelings alternated from shock to anger to disgust. The plan was only the latest in a series of ill conceived Burns Bog schemes that stretch back decades. Seems like everyone and their uncle have at one time or another had a plan to dig up, bury, or other-wise wreck Canada’s largest remaining urban green-space. Burns Bog is an incredible ecological treasure in our midst. Its the largest remaining freshwater tidal marsh in North America. It filters our salmon-rearing waters, and scrubs our air. Its complex of wetlands, fields and forests is so big and so wild it even harbors a population of black bears in the midst of Greater Vancouver’s two million people.

 

Sad to say, the bogs 4,000 hectares of privately and publicly owned lands have been grossly abused over the years. Vancouver’s huge garbage dump raises up from a corner of the bog like an obscene smoky mountain. Decades of peat mining have scarred and pitted the bog and continued cranberry farm development with its associated dredging and diking have 

pushed deeper into the wild bog destroying more wildlife habitat with each passing year. In the 1980s conservationists successfully beat back a plan to dredge 2,000 hectares of the bog for a deep-sea port. In the early 90’s a horse-racetrack proposal was narrowly defeated.

 

The latest development proposal sparked off a tidal wave of phone calls and letters from concerned citizens. They phoned the local newspapers, Delta council, Ian Waddell, Premier Clark, they phoned their friends and neighbors. It was the greatest upwelling of support for nature preservation since Clayoquot Sound.

 

Then on February 15, in the face of this massive public backlash , Delta Council announced their unanimous opposition to “development” in the bog. They called for the entire bog to be purchased or expropriated by the provincial government and turned into a park immediately. 

 

Finally, on February 17 Mr. Waddell announced that the B.C. government was no longer interested in putting the PNE in the bog.

 

Judging from the tidal wave of public opposition to the latest Bog development plan and the B.C. government’s quick reversal, Mickey Mouse and Goofy aren’t likely to be dancing in their new paved park any time soon. But the Bog is still endangered and will continued to be hacked away bit by bit until the Provincial government buys it and protects it -- all of it.

 

A small surcharge on garbage disposal , based on volume, for all Lower Mainland residents would encourage recycling and would pay off the debt incurred from the purchase of the entire bog in less than ten years. Please Mr. Waddell, no more goofy plans for Burns Bog. Buy it or expropriate it now, then park it and lets all get a good nights sleep.