posted by admin on Aug 14

Manufacturing our local landscapes

Published: August 03, 2010 1:00 PM

A native black-cap bush used to grow beside the road just along from my place. It yielded tasty berries unlike anything you can buy.

To me the bush seemed such a treasure that in a dry August I carried buckets to water it. So I was shocked to see one summer morning that a neighbourhood-improver had tidied the road margin by leveling the ground and rooting out all vegetation, including my valued black-cap, for a couple of square metres.

Walking past the patch of brown goat pasture where the black-cap used to grow, I am troubled by the sense of loss that bites me when someone spoils the local mini-landscape.

I felt that kind of dismay on a larger scale when I looked out the window of the No. 58 Langford Meadows bus and saw a tract of seasonal wetland at the foot of Langford Lake advertised for sale or lease — presumably to be developed and paved over, like other wetlands in this lake’s tiny watershed and flood plain.

The advertised stretch of land includes a trail bordered by a thick hedge of blackberry bushes — a trail which some of us simple-minded, unwary people imagined was public property. Linked to the trail that skirts the lake is a thin fringe of woodland screening off the general expanse of concrete.

People gather hundreds of pounds of blackberries on the auxiliary trail that lies on the land now advertised for sale. Couldn’t something be done to save this source of food close to home? Buy and keep the land as a public trust, maybe?

I know other people who feel a sense of loss in a variety of contexts. Along the stretch of Wishart Road that fronts on the federal woodland adjoining Royal Roads University, for example, some people are seriously bothered because Colwood municipality has filled in a grassy ditch or small valley which used to be the perfect place to walk a small dog.

Now it is just a flat, sterile stretch of gravel. Did the municipality really save money on cutting the grass within that miniature valley, by filling it in? Several residents of Wishart have been unable to get city hall to answer that question, or pay any attention to their complaints.

This issue may seem trivial. But it is a sign of the coarse texture of local politics, the insensitivity of local government to the feelings of citizens. This blurred connection is especially troublesome on the boundary between human settlement and wild nature — if those realms really are separate from one another.

One trend of thought suggests that wild areas are no longer truly wild, and the whole planet has become one zoological garden, destructively mismanaged by its human keepers.

The high fence that used to enclose that stretch of woodland on Wishart — too high for deer to jump over — has been replaced by a low barrier. It’s an easy jump, so deer routinely cross over and browse on the neighbourhood gardens.

Deer have become halfway domestic animals, as expanding residential development invades their habitat, and there are no cougars to thin their numbers. They are a pretty sight, grazing along the edges of golf courses and in our remaining tracts of woodland.

But they make trouble for themselves and humans when they crowd across roads and cause traffic crashes. What are we supposed to do about all that? Humane birth control may be the answer. For deer and rabbits you do it by capture; for people, by persuasion.

Zero growth — the steady-state economy — is strongly argued in the current issue of New Internationalist magazine. Population control is part of the design for reducing world poverty while cooling and reversing the doctrine of growth which, ecologists contend, is killing the planet.

—G.E. Mortimore is a Langford-based writer. Think About It runs every second week in the Gazette.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/goldstreamgazette/opinion/99837539.html

posted by admin on Jun 28

Connecting science and art

Focus Magazine July 2010

BRIAN GRISON

When the Garry oak meadows of Langford were threatened, naturalist Fran Benton turned to art and politics.

Considering that she is an artist, it is interesting that Fran Benton’s first passion is natural history, a branch of science. With a degree in biology and geography from the University of Victoria, her original career was field biology and park-naturalist. As a matter of fact, Fran Benton “discovered” art through the necessity to improve her drawing skills for her scientific research. As she explains: “Almost all field biologists have a bit of art training, as we often need to draw the plants, geography, and animals we work with. Because I already did a lot of fun art stuff as a kid, I enjoyed drawing for my fieldwork….[ For a time I had] a job at the Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary. Since we had no illustrations in the nature centre, I started to make drawings and paintings for the centre.” But with no art training, she says she found her work “unsatisfactory.”

Thinking like a scientist, and without a conscious decision to pursue an artistic practice, Fran Benton changed her work schedule so she could attend the two-year art program at Camosun College, to learn to draw plants properly. Even though Camosun College did not have botanical illustration courses, she says, “after two weeks I was hooked…I knew this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

After completing the Camosun College program, she earned a Batchelor of Fine Arts degree at the Emily Carr College of Art and a Masters in Fine Arts degree at UVic. She now teaches full-time in the Art and Design Department of Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo. While in a formal sense Fran Benton is no longer a field researcher in natural science, the spirit and intention of her art practice are the equivalent, and every bit as valuable to society and the local natural landscape.

In the early 1990s, Fran Benton and her husband moved from Saanich to their “first real home” in Langford, at the time, as she describes it, “a scruffy but charming suburb of Victoria with lots of beautiful wild areas.” Unfortunately, not long after their arrival in Langford, the recently-elected mayor embarked on huge land development projects that destroyed virtually all the beautiful and rare local Garry oak meadows; almost none of it was preserved as parks, bird sanctuaries or other natural spaces. Garry oak woodlands that had been cultivated by local First Nations people, as well as their spiritual sites, were bulldozed and replaced by all those “big box” stores surrounded by acres of parking lots that Langford is now infamous for.

Interestingly, but sadly, Fran Benton’s attempts to stop this destruction displayed the naiveté of the scientist who believes that simple rational argument must naturally change the mind of even the most crass politicians and developers. Thinking this was a “one-off kind of thing,” she organized presentations to council and the mayor. However, these government officials and politicians were “unconcerned with the voices of their constituents to slow down the development.” She then put up posters to educate her neighbours about the loss of wild places and natural landscape, trees, flowers and local animals in their community. Finally, because she realized that her mission was slowly driving her to despair, she turned to art as a more gentle tool of positive propaganda.

She developed projects to express and release her from the anguish she felt on behalf of the land where she lived. In one project she made little bags containing tiny ceramic claws as talismans accompanied by thank-you notes that she hung in trees she knew would soon be cut down. In the notes she explained to the trees that their services were no longer needed in the municipality of Langford; the tiny claws were the equivalent of the gold watch, that cheap symbol of forced retirement and arbitrary dismissal.

In another project, “Roving Meadows,” Benton set out to save some of the beautiful local plants. As an experienced and dedicated plant salvager and propagator— both as scientist and gardener—she had noted all the camas lilies and other plants in a 30- acre Garry oak meadow near her house that was being surveyed for a shopping mall. She received permission to explore the meadows. She was seeking a small plot that she could remove as a single block of earth, with all the flowers and plants in place. Once she found it, she carefully transplanted the whole block on a four-by-eight-foot trailer.

Several months later, when the shopping mall was complete, she drove the trailer-cumplanter to the exact spot where it had grown before the new parking lot smothered everything natural. She spent an afternoon giving away plants and cuttings, and handing out pamphlets that explained the necessity to save a small section of that meadow in a giant flower box. Later, the Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary agreed to plant the little section of homeless meadow in its own beautiful park.

Eventually Langford became so unwelcoming that Fran Benton and her husband sold their house and moved to a quiet street in a beautiful, naturally-landscaped neighbourhood in Mill Bay. Her whole high-ceilinged basement is a busy art and study centre where she continues to make art that honours both the beauty of the natural world and her scientific/political advocacy for it.

Brian Grison is a Victoria based artist, art teacher and writer.

posted by admin on Apr 26

anonymous wrote:

The following is a one-paragraph excerpt from the April issue of FOCUS Magazine by Gordon O’Connor p.15 who is the forest campaigner with the Dogwood Initiative. It just applies so beautifully to Langford that one cannot help but think of Langford while reading it.

“Vancouver Island is one of the crown jewels of this continent. It is widely considered to be among the most liveable places in the world. If offers the luxury of having urban centres in close proximity to temperate rain forests, bountiful farms and incredible recreation areas. This pristine environment has the ability to provide clean water, fresh air, local food and a stable economy for generations to come and these are the priorities for which our local representatives [read councillors] should be advocating.”

(bold emphasis and [comment] are mine)

posted by admin on Mar 16

Former agricultural land to become subdivision in Langford

BY BILL CLEVERLEY, TIMES COLONISTMARCH 16, 2010

A 501-unit subdivision on a 13.9 hectare parcel at 936 Flatman Ave. was given Langford council’s blessing Monday night following a low-key public hearing.

To be known as McCormick Meadows, the proposal made by architect Herbert Kwan for Sydney and Gay McCormick, is to create 102 single family lots, 61 townhouses and 338 apartment units in five buildings of up to six storeys on the formerly agricultural land.
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/travel/Former+agricultural+land+become+subdivision+Langford/2689931/story.html

RELATED: Houses planned for farmland

posted by admin on Mar 9

Happy Valley Lavender & Herbs | 3505 Happy Valley Road | Langford | Telephone: 250.474.5767

The Happy Valley Lavender Farm celebrates 100 years this March 23 2010! One wonders what Lynda Dowling’s grandfather was thinking during his humble start walking the E & N (now Galloping Goose) Railway line to check out this property in 1910 …

By 1925 he had married Lynda’s grandmother after meeting her at Witty’s Lagoon on a church picnic! At that time he was a gentleman farmer originally from England. He served on the local Metchosin Farmers Institute and School Board.

Lynda’s grandmother, also from England, soon became famous for her Strawberry & Raspberry teas and cakes with the Woman’s Institute. Lynda remembers there always was an apple pie on the back of her grandmother’s black & silver wood stove…

Happy Valley Lavender’s current Herb & Lavender garden theme began in 1983. Lynda moved onto the family farm in 1986 with an English husband and 10 month old son. She felt like she had come home, with all the neighbours she knew from childhood times. Lynda’s grandmother would have loved her gardens, particularly all the Sweet Lavender like England.

If you remember Lynda Dowling’s grandparents, please share your memories with her as they celebrate the centennial of their family farm. It’s their 22nd year of harvesting Lavender as a crop, and a great time to come check out their secret sanctuary gardens and nursery behind Lynda’s grandfather’s daunting cedar hedge!

http://www.happyvalleylavender.com/lavender_harvest.html#grandfather

posted by admin on Feb 18

Farmland freeze needed now

G.E.Mortimore

From the Lower Island News, April/May 2010

B.C.’s Agricultural Land Commission has a moral duty to guard and improve the food supply. So why do the commissioners shirk their duty?

The law allows removal of pieces of land from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) for well-documented reasons, but its main purpose requires commissioners to safeguard food-producing capacity and encourage farming.

Commissioners ignore that order. They let builders pave over big chunks of foodland. The loss of land has become so painfully obvious, and the need for nailing down a close-to-home food-supply system in a changing world has become so urgent, that the commissioners now have only one honourable and practical choice: To freeze all applications for removal of land from the ALR province-wide, until food-growing policy is sorted out by a public enquiry and action plan. A three-year brainstorm-break seems reasonable.

Between 1975 and 2003 the commissioners approved a net decrease of 35,500 hectares, 87,720 acres, in the reserve farmland of the Okanagan, the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island. On the Island alone, the decrease was 12,797 hectares.

In the part of B.C. where most of the people are concentrated, the shrinkage of foodland has continued at a fast rate since 2003, and a thick file of convoluted arguments for ALR removal, couched in planning jargon, has accumulated in Langford, Cowichan and other Island places.

It’s time for commissioners to stand tall and really do their protective job, rather than just pretending to do it – a pretence that involves surrender to Premier Gordon Campbell. The Campbell government weakened the protection of foodland by splitting the commission into six regional agencies, each with the independent power to say yes or no to applications for removal.

The old province-wide solid group of land judges, or quasi-judges, stemmed the loss of prime farmland, which was bleeding away at 6,000 hectares a year when the Dave Barrett NDP government created the ALR in 1973. Premier Campbell sliced open six arteries and started the bleeding again.

Governments of all colours share some guilt for this disaster. “Liberals,” Socreds and NDP have all intervened at the top level, to curry favour with pave-it-over campaigners. But Premier Campbell, the present culprit, is the worst offender. His fragmented panels, which meet separately and do not consider removal applications as a united body, have shown how vulnerable they are to pressure from municipal councils and land-speculator/developer lobbyists.

Arguably the lobbyists could make more money if they waited and thought longer, resisted sprawl which causes long-term expense to taxpayers, and concentrated development in high-density mixed-use nodes where big buildings could be insulated by rooftop gardens. Developers and land speculators are impatient, but it’s the job of the ALC to cool and re-direct the natural quick-money impulse. The scattered ALC tribunals should now join in a united front to support the long-term provincial interest, which takes account of great-grandchildren as well as contemporary yearners for wealth and comfort.

Might commissioners be politically punished for doing their job too well? They have little to fear. Arm’s-length agencies now have power to shame governments if they commit blunders, arrogances and sneaky tricks. Auditor-General John Doyle skewered Campbell and colleagues for violating the public interest when they gifted a forest corporation with millions in taxpayers’ money and trashed land-use and forest-conservation planning on a large tract of southwestern Vancouver Island. Foodland guardians who show quiet courage are unlikely to get even a slap on the wrist from a government that seems headed for lame-duck status despite the long distance to next election.

“Food security” is a great slogan. It means growing food close to home. But unless we match actions to words, mouthing the slogan is a waste of breath. We need that three-year freeze on ALR removals, so we can feel our way into the evolving city-green design.

It isn’t just about commercial farms. Current eco-pressures – looming hikes in the cost of oil-driven long-distance food transport, climate change, economic hard times, numbers of fat couch-potato kids – challenge land commissioners and all of us to brainstorm varied food-production patterns.

These range from high-intensity urban organic farms to rooftop vegetable beds above shoppping-mall/condo complexes, and networks of neighbourhood gardens protected within the ALR.

Healthful food for two daughters was among Michelle Obama’s reasons for planting a vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House. This rerun of Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1943 Victory Garden was partly driven by Mrs. Obama’s experience as a working mother when she sought a nourishing menu for Malia and Sasha, Marian Burros reported in The New York Times.

“Eating out three times a week, ordering a pizza, having a sandwich for dinner all took their toll in added weight on the girls, whose pediatrician told Mrs. Obama that she needed to be thinking about nutrition.” Within months the girls shed weight.

Twenty-three fifth-graders from a nearby school will cultivate the garden, alongside the Obamas. The U.S. president will pull weeds. Sure, he has other things to do, but he needs his exercise.

Derelict car factories and abandoned houses and yards in the downsized automobile city of Detroit will be converted into mushroom sheds and urban farmland.

Hantz Farms will plant crops on 5,000 acres within Detroit’s city limits. The greening of Motown is one of many true stories about today’s trend toward growing food close to home.

City-green is maturing into a mainstream political force. Does this mean strong, decisive action, or gradual change in food habits, one family at a time? Both. One won’t work without the other.

We need to add to the ALR, not reduce it. Soil quality is not crucial. Refugees on the Aran Islands off Ireland’s West Coast made soil for crops and pasture by laying sand and seaweed on solid rock. Greenhouses and roof gardens must import soil. Roof gardens insulate buildings, conserve runoff rainwater, and reduce air pollution and energy costs.

Chicago has 2,500,000 square feet of green roofs, more than any other U.S. city. The green starts with a demonstration garden on the roof of Chicago City Hall. The city makes grants of $5,000 toward roof-gardens.

We need urban space dedicated to food-growing, from roof gardens to community garden-patches and plantations and orchards that supply food banks; and we need a political mindset that encourages such projects.

The rescue of 9.3 acres of endangered Saanich ALR food-land is a success story in the struggle to protect the food-production system from raids.

In 2001 the Capital Regional District, the owner of the Haliburton Road land, was going to push its removal from the reserve and sell it for building 24 to 26 houses; but the Land for Food Coalition and the Cordova Bay Association for Community Affairs persuaded Saanich to buy the tract for $400,000. and keep it green, with side-by-side commercial farms, gardening and cooking school and community organic farm staffed partly by volunteers.

A more loose-jointed but equally valid agricultural model is under threat in Happy Valley and Luxton, in the Victoria suburb of Langford, where developers have filed applications to take a number of food-land tracts out of the reserve and build hundreds of houses, hived away from a diminished array of food producers by “edge planning,” the currently fashionable Plannerspeak phrase.

Luxton Fair and Luxton Market are the show-windows for growers of herbs, garlic, tomatoes, strawberries and other crops in a district of mingled cottages, old farmhouses and horse barns – territory where a person used to be able to live in a garage while he built his dream-house.

Can this federation of small growers survive invasion by massed housing? ALC commissioners need the three-year time-out to find an honest answer.

Some people trust Langford city council to be the guardian that will purchase ALR farmland and keep it green, as Saanich municipality did for the Haliburton land. Hostile critics object that in view of Langford’s pro-development record, such a move would be equivalent to putting the fox in charge oi the henhouse.

This point can be argued out. If the commissioners observe a three-year freeze on ALR withdrawals, however, the argument won’t matter.

The current commissioners who will hear applications for removal of Island lands from the ALR, Lorne Seitz of the Okanagan, Jennifer Dyson of the Alberni Valley and Niels Erik Holbek of Black Creek, are all commercial farmers. Their background may incline them to judge ALR land on a narrow conventional-farm basis, and to regard municipal councils (some of whom were elected by less than 25 per cent of eligible voters) as representing public consensus.

Both these ideas are outdated. The public and the commissioners would benefit if people urged the commissioners by snail-mail to reconsider their approach. Why not look them up and give direct persuasion a try? Making a pitch through the commission’s office has proved itself to be mostly a waste of time. -30-

Both these ideas are outdated. The public and the commissioners would
benefit if people urged the commissioners by snail-mail to reconsider their
approach. Why not look them up and give direct persuasion a try? Making a
pitch through the commission’s office has proved itself to be mostly a waste
of time.

-30-

G.E. Mortimore, Ph.D., is a writer and social anthropologist based in
Victoria. Portions of this article have previously apperared as comment columns in
The Goldstream News Gazette.

posted by admin on Jan 25

http://timescolonist.com/business/Houses+planned+Langford+farmland/2479162/story.htm

TIMES COLONIST
JANUARY 24, 2010

Langford council is considering a proposal for a 501-unit housing development on land now zoned for agriculture.

The municipality’s planning committee will consider a staff report tomorrow on a development calling for 102 single-family lots, 61 townhouses and 338 apartments on the approximately 14 hectares at 936 Flatman Ave.

At least part of the property is in the Agricultural Land Reserve, which means the land use can’t be changed without approval from the provincial Agricultural Land Commission. The approval is critical for the development’s road access.

The report suggests councillors hold off until the Agricultural Land Commission weighs in.

posted by admin on Jan 25

Langford’s plans to sell parks

A very small area of Langford is facing the disposition of two portions of parkland on Florence Lake. A counter-petition is ongoing and if you are eligible to vote in elections, please download the 2 petition forms, sign them, and return to City hall by Dec. 30th

Elector Multi-Response Form, Bylaw No. 1252 (Shaw Avenue Tot Lot)

Elector Multi-Response Form, Bylaw No. 1253 (lot adjacent to 918 Gade Road)

More info: Guest editorial: Langford’s plans to sell parks

posted by admin on Dec 14

By Edward Hill – Goldstream News Gazette

Published: December 03, 2009 1:00 PM

Langford is looking to buff up breathing room between urban development and remaining farmland as part of an agricultural strategy released in November.

A key provision of the strategy is establishing an agricultural development permit area, which would prescribe setbacks and buffer areas between farmland and residential development.

“We want to make the most of what we have,” said Coun. Lillian Szpak, chair of planning and zoning. “It’s about edge planning to ensure the optimal use of urban and agricultural boundaries. It’s so they can live side by side.”

Agricultural DP areas would span 100 metres from existing provincial agricultural land reserve and would require a professional plan for landscaping, stormwater management and building setback, among other requirements.

Langford has about 118 hectares of ALR land in 83 parcels. Eight parcels totalling 7.2 hectares are seeking exclusion from the ALR through the provincial agricultural land commission.

“Once adopted, every development next to agricultural land will be a (development permit) area,” said Matthew Baldwin, Langford’s city planner. “We want to protect land in the ALR by determining how land adjacent to land in the ALR develops.”

The strategy outlines a broad series of initiatives, such as establishing a “public trust” of secured agricultural land, either donated or purchased by the City, and then leased to farmers. Langford has had a developer amenity fee for ALR land acquisition since 2006, but is yet to buy farmland.

Langford also plans to amend its landscaping policy to require edible plant species, allow all commercial and industrial zones to host farmers markets and require developments with at least 100 units per hectare to provide community gardens.

Langford still needs to draft and pass a number of bylaws to bring these initiatives into force. Baldwin doesn’t expect a bylaw for the agricultural DP area to come before council until early next year.

Ultimately, the City’s goal is to promote awareness about food security, farm markets and small-scale farming, Szpak said. The strategy report admits Langford has “very little farmland,” but Szpak said through the public trust, the City wants to preserve what viable soil remains.

“We’re at a time in the world and in the community were food self-reliance is an issue with a lot of interest,” she said. “We are an urban area with rural lands that we’re looking to live in concert with.”

Residents’ anxiety in the Happy Valley area has risen as some properties look to escape the ALR, while others transition from large-lot to higher-density developments. Szpak agreed people should be concerned about preserving farmland, but noted that landowners have a right to try and subdivide and that not all land is farmable.

“Agricultural land is precious. That is the whole reason behind this initiative,” she said. “But we need a balanced approach. If the land is viable we want to keep it for farming.”

A group of Langford green-thumbs, coined Green Langford working group, are helping put on a CR-Fair roundtable next week to talk about Langford’s agricultural strategy.

Bea McKenzie, an avid garlic gardener, said local food producers have plenty of questions about the strategy, which they hope to put to Langford politicians and staff.

McKenzie said she wants to make sure the land acquisition fund doesn’t alienate small farmers.

The CR-Fair roundtable is Monday, Dec. 7, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Langford legion, 761 Station Ave.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/goldstreamgazette/news/78375837.html