SUMMER is the silly season in the media world, but the tsunami of media hype that helped buy an election and that's now trying to lull B.C. voters into supporting a future here clogged by coal, natural gas and more dirty oil problems is as serious as a heart attack.
Not everyone wants to think about ethical responsibility regarding our children's future, but in preparation for upcoming fall election campaigns in Washington State, Seattle's KCTS public television has been airing outstanding civic issues programming lately. Its recent self-produced documentary on the export coal-port debate was superior reporting. Why couldn't we
have had something similar here addressing both sides of the pipeline expansion debate in B.C.? That would have meant airing some of the dirty laundry that the fossil fuel lobby prefers locked up.
Breaking the mould this past week was Knowledge Network's outstanding docufeature on the 2006 sinking of the Queen of the North ferry off Hartley Bay. That's a disaster Enbridge pipeline supporters don't want us thinking about. Shipping mega-cargoes of Alberta's dirty
oil through B.C.'s dangerous northern waters is supposed to be as safe as Thomas the Tank Engine. A big spill can't happen, right? But the marine disaster we dread already happened. First Nations residents in the region have had their ocean food sources contaminated by seepage from the sunken ferry: 220,000 litres of diesel and 23,000 litres of oil still lie 400 metres deep. That's not fear-mongering, just hideous fact.
Remember it when B.C. Liberals suddenly start thinking of good reasons to "reluctantly" support the Northern Gateway pipeline. You know that particular voting technique. It's the one that District of North Vancouver mayor and councillors have been perfecting while radically transforming the district landscape on behalf of big property developers and Metro Vancouver bureaucrats. It's called wanting jam on both sides of your bread. You vote for unpopular redevelopment proposals while talking about how bad it makes you feel.
Local history shows that
it's hard for a mayor not to support the big business boys. Few have that kind of moral courage. Councillors though are expected to represent local voters. In the district they'd like us to feel sorry for them while overpopulating and densifying neighbourhoods despite community resistance. There's Coun. Robin Hicks talking to the good people of Edgemont Village about why he's "reluctantly" voting for the latest big-money seniors living facility there. And there's Coun. Mike Little courageously voting against that same towering three-storey application. Too bad this hero didn't have the courage to speak out against the 33-storey highrise Godzilla at Seylynn where people don't vote in quite the same big numbers, or against the 11-storey seniors highrise at Parkgate. That's the one he joined in supporting against the wishes of more than 1,000 local residents protesting against it.
It's also the same highrise he now complains has only 34 per cent occupancy- essentially proving what the neighbourhood told him: that
there wasn't need for that kind of height here. A decent fourstorey job would have sufficed - exactly what the locals he ignored told him.
Big buildings, big sell-outs. If you know how the other votes on council will play out in advance, you can even vote against a project knowing it'll pass.
And there's "supersize me" Coun. Roger Bassam, who took it upon himself after a previous vote dropped the height of the biggest Seylynn tower down to only mid-20s level to ask for a vote of reconsideration. That way it could be inflated back to "the full Nanaimo" as these preposterous decisions used to be called in Alan Fotheringham's heyday.
It really hurt Mayor Richard Walton and some of the other councillors to vote in support of that towering monstrosity too. From their crocodile tears you'd have thought they were constructing a city as beautiful as Paris. Except classy Parisians have fought since their Revolution to keep the most
beautiful city on earth almost uniformly six-stories high throughout its vast central area. It's an ancient law supported by commoners and kings alike - "the right to sunlight." These district dullards need to travel more, hopefully at their own expense.
Unfortunately, they seem to invest too much time attending Metro Vancouver meetings in places like Burnaby Metrotown and Surrey. That's where the Stockholm Syndrome sets in. You start out with a conscience, maybe even a set of ethics. Before you know it, the unelected, overpaid bureaucrats who control your information flows, and who can influence who gets invited to serve on committees - and earn extra money - begin the transformation. Few resist the pressure and flattery. Soon you're another municipal council zombie, still dreaming of becoming premier or future federal cabinet material while voting the way the Metro bureaucrats coax you to. Bye-bye independent thinking. Suddenly 30-storey towers almost make sense in the District of North Vancouver, except that they don't. Never mind: the Metro Van bullies tell you it's the right thing to do. That's what becomes of the dream in municipal politics.
We're conditioned to believe that what we're given is the way life should be. What happened to freedom of thinking? Why, for example, have district mayor and council studiously avoided any discussion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal the corporate and federal heavies are trying to ram down our throats in Burrard Inlet? The biggest issue in the region and we get a herd of municipal ostriches, heads down with a few standard cop-outs about why they shouldn't have to speak. Why are the Tsleil-Waututh, a small First Nations people, having to lead public debate on this burning issue that everyone knows is coming down like the horsemen of the Apocalypse? Alas, Mayor Richard Walton and DNV council are only halfway through their mandate. There's plenty left for them to do and you have to feel for Lynn Valley, where the next big Frankenstein experiment in better highrise living is set to ignite.
Meanwhile, Cedar Cove has just premiered. Hope you caught it. It's a speciality channel program filmed in Deep Cove. Last week, I counted 46 hands on the job one morning beside the government dock with similar numbers in the lab editing post-production. Let's hope another updated, folksy series like The Beachcombers or Northern Exposure can still find an audience. For the sake of all those young people learning the ropes in the tough world of show business, it deserves a regular Sunday night slot.
