Dear editor:
West Vancouverites would be so much nicer if they dump the Cotswold complex and forget they don’t live in villages with green fields dotted with woolly sheep.
Even when I lived there some 60 years ago, Horseshoe Bay wasn’t a secret cove known best to smugglers and seagulls. Joe Troll didn’t dish up his fish and chips from a cute, quaint little shop named The Olde Fryery.
There are many sides to the B-Line bus extension proposal, but it grates to hear complaints that it would upset the quiet ambience of the “villages.”
We can only imagine the rousing of the smock-dressed rustics who snooze by the duck pond on the Dundarave green after a few flagons of good ale at the pub, The Realty Rip Off. They come to every now and again to watch some maypole or Morris dancing on the sward. Bus noises would keep them awake.
And it is only a true West Vancouverite – who has lived there two years or more – who can see Billy Bunter lumbering down Marine Drive and calling out to Christopher Robin – “...the church clock stands at ten to three and are there Big Macs still for tea?” But Christopher doesn’t hear him as he slips off down a lane to visit Winnie and Piglet at the now unfortunately named Clearcut Wood.
But it is evident that some - maybe even many - Amblesiders and Dundaravians will fight B-Day bravely under their fluttering NIMBY banners, refusing to lose the 15 or so parking spots destined to die under the wheels of the transit proposition. They will ring their village church bells to warn of the approach of marching developers and real estate agents singing their anthem, “Beloved Density.”
I suppose the rumpus could be quite inspirational to us urban dwellers. So fight on, fight on villagers, never, never surrender. Do not concede even one of the sacred spots in your sceptered suburbs set by shining sea. (Hey, how’s that for alliteration!)
In admiration we will forget temporarily that you are actually two affluent neighbourhoods in Greater Vancouver.
Ian Macdonald
North Vancouver
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