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EDITORIAL: Lawn & order

We begin by congratulating District of North Vancouver council. Not the present council – the one that served in 1961. That bygone group drafted a parks bylaw that endured for 57 years.
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We begin by congratulating District of North Vancouver council. Not the present council – the one that served in 1961.

That bygone group drafted a parks bylaw that endured for 57 years. But after discovering ne'er-do-wells exploiting loopholes in the bylaw to enjoy themselves on municipal property, today’s council sprang to enact a swath of new rules.

Some seem audacious (though maybe understandable), like posting a park ranger to suppress the swarm of selfie-seeking Instagrammers on Quarry Rock.

Others, such as issuing $200 fines to swimmers who jump from Deep Cove Wharf, are ridiculous. The act of wharfare is particularly egregious when we consider the district has repeatedly declined to fine cliff jumpers who risk their lives and the lives of first responders at Lynn Creek.

The worst of the new bylaws seem  written not to protect victims but to mollify complainers. By voting for those bylaws on Monday, the district created a dilemma in which failure to enforce will cause residents to lose faith in the rule of law while regular enforcement will pit residents against their own government.

Potentially most conflict-inducing is a bylaw that allows for a $100 fine to be tossed at anyone who fails to abide by “all rules and regulations” while playing on a sports field. The vision of a bylaw officer chasing kids off a field seems both mean-spirited and antithetical to what the district should be doing.

Yes, there are risks to jumping off a wharf, climbing a tree or playing in a park. But at a time when most of us don’t exercise enough and heart disease remains a leading cause of death, the greatest risk may be a sedentary lifestyle.

It’s not time to chase kids off the field. It’s time to chase them onto one.

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