Here is a great article from Canadian Geographic that describes many different approaches small communities are taking to addressing the impact of tourism in their communities. When I look at the examples of the small towns in this article I see some commonalities and some differences with our own little island.
The small communities in this article are Rossland, BC, Manitoulin Island in Ontario and Fogo Island in Newfoundland and Labrador. They are all small communities quite far from larger cities and they are all quite self-contained. Every community has a chance to take control of their local economy because unless they do so there is very little activity that comes from outside. in the traditional tourist model, people come and visit, perhaps stay a while and local business compete and collaborate for the tourist dollars. Typically these kinds of communities close up shop in the off season and folks try to stretch their summer dollars over the lean years.
What is different about Rossland, Manitoulin and Fogo Island is that they are able to build a year round local economy as well because, unlike Bowen Island, people don’t leave every day for work. If the local economy cannot sustain jobs and enterprises throughout the year, it cannot sustain a diverse business sector that has a chance to work its regenerative magic.
Here on Bowen Island, we live very close to a major city and the vast majority of our residents either commute physically or virtually into that city to do their work. People like Caitlin and I, who run small consulting businesses typically don’t serve local clients in the same way that our restaurants, builders and services do. In the cases of Fogo and Rossland, some of the key attractors in the communities attracted other businesses around them to provide specialized services. With very little money coming in from outside the community, a strong attractor like a ski hill or a boutique hotel can generate businesses around itself and people can create a local livelihood. Those folks will need to spend money locally on services like food and drugs and home repair and so a contained virtuous cycle can be triggered. The key is to diversify the economy as quickly as possible, so that everything does not hinge on the single big attractor in the system. Rossland seems acutely aware of this, having been a boom town in the past.
I don’t know what the pathway is for Bowen Island, but we face a number of challenges to making our tourism regenerative rather than extractive. Currently we get inundated with day trippers who like to wander through the village and do some shopping or hike the trails on the island. Most don’t stay but those that do use AirBnBs and VRBOs as well as traditional B&Bs and our four or so retreat centres. There is no hotel or inn that can serve people the way they are served on Fogo Island and there is isn’t much intention put behind hosting people in our natural spaces, although that may be changing with a new park proposal from Metro Vancouver that, for the first time, would ask our community to allow supervised camping in a primarily walk/bike-in campground.
What makes things very challenging on Bowen Island is that local residents can be very vocal about the impact of tourism,much to the negative. The village is too busy, visitors are rightfully confused by the implicit culture of the place, including how ferry etiquette works, and how tolerant local neighbourhoods are of parties in AirBnBs or on the boats moored in Mannion Bay. Most residents, if asked, would tell you that we have to address the tourism situation, but few could tell you how. ALmost everyone would say that bringing in more people is not desirable, although we can’t do much about being a 20 minute ferry ride from an urban area of 2.5 million people, many of whom love having easy access to the natural landscape of our forests and seas.
One thing that seems to stop us taking a regenerative approach and creating anchor enterprises locally is the fact that Bowen islanders seem to enjoy privacy and quiet and sustained high real estate values. Creating a new local enterprise is an absolute exhausting endeavour that often requires special kinds of permits and changes to zoning. In some cases the opposition to these proposal has resulted in lawsuits, hostile neighbourhood relations and a kind of general appeal to the fear of noise, traffic, overcrowding and diminished real estate prices and quality of life. The chance to develop a key tourism asset like the Fogo Island Inn or an Indigenous Park or something like a destination downhill mountain biking trail system, all of which COULD be possible here, faces a huge uphill battle from people who live close to where these things could be built and who doubt the ability of any government or organization to effectively manage the use and impact.
Additionally, these anchor enterprises are unlikely to generate much in the way of local services. We live merely 20 minutes from the Metro Vancouver area. Already huge numbers of services come from contractors who come over on morning ferries and leave in the evening. Many of these services used to be provided by local people, but the housing affordability crisis (partly but not completely driven by AirBnBs, VRBOs and other short term rentals) have made living on Bowen a near impossibility for service industry workers and those who are trying to start up a business. If you need $2500 or $3000 a month just to house yourself, it’s tricky to raise the capital to start a business, nor is it easy to develop a market on island where already the cost of goods and services is subject to a ferry premium.
Our local economy is incredibly leaky. Most of the money people earn here is spent off-island, and that’s just a reality of location.
At one point when I was on the Community Economic Development Committee I scoped out a concept for hosting tourism on Bowen called “Village as a Venue,” based on an idea developed by my friend Tim Merry and his mates in Mahone Bay Nova Scotia, a community very much like ours. The idea was to organize the hospitality industry here through shared services like housekeeping, booking and events planning to create essentially a big distributed hotel that could host events like arts festivals, Ultimate tournaments, theatre and music, golf camps, marine biology conferences and leadership retreats. I prototyped this idea more than 25 times through week long retreats we offered between 2004 and 2019 and it has efficacy. We even started organizing some of the services in some early conversations.
Post-pandemic, I’m not sure now. I have seen local entrepreneurs create new businesses doing cool things, such a cidery or a distributed education program and I have seen them face fierce opposition by neighbours and legal challenges to the very idea that they could use temporary use permits to establish their businesses and services. In order to make something like this happen here, we would need to revisit our community plan – which is long overdue – and I would be very interested to see where we are as a community. I think folks like the idea of regenerative tourism in theory, but my suspicion is that we all carry many unexamined ideas about how it would affect us and there are very vocal folks who are very quick to pounce on ideas that would bring more people to our little island paradise.
But this article DOES inspire and as I have no plans to leave here any time soon, I await and observe these ideas and the conversation around them with curiosity.
For thousands of years, the island I live on has been called Nexwlélexwm. It has always been an important part of the Squamish Nation territory, and as it juts out out the moth of Howe Sound into the Strait of Georgia, it represents the edge of the world for Squamish people, beyond which are the relatives and strangers of the rest of the Nations of the Salish Sea and beyond. The southern shore of our island is called Ni7cháych Nexwlélexwm which means “the outer edge of Nexwlélexwm” and refers to that place where the dry cliffs and rocky points meet the sea. You can find a little more at the Squamish Atlas if you are interested in learning the historical names of places in this territory.
When I first came here in 2001 I read about the story of the how the deer were created here and last year in a conversation with two friends who are Squamish Nation councillors I heard that story again with a little teaching.
It goes like this. In Squamish history there is a period before memory in which everything was in flux and could change. This is called Sxwexwiyam. This was followed by a time of transformation to the land in it’s present state, called Xaay Xaays. In this time, four supernatural beings called Xaays travelled through out the territory fixing things in the form, changing people and animals into rocks and islands and creatures and in every place leaving a teaching. The territory is literally soaked in these stories and they provide guidance to the present day.
Upon arriving on Nexwlélexwm at a place called Kwemshenám, which is a reef that connects Finnesterre Island to Bowen Island in low tides, Xaays found a hunter. This hunter prided himself on being the fastest runner, the most accurate shot, just the very best hunter in the world. When the Transformers found him he was making a spearpoint and bragging about his abilities. He is said to have declared “I have heard there are people coming to change us and I aim to kill them.” Xaays were amused by his boasting and so they began to tease him and change him, by stretching out his legs and embedding two branches of Cceanspray in his head, and turning him into a deer. They chased him off and he WAS fast! But realizing that he would make good food for the people, they decided to slow him down by clapping his legs together and burying the spear point in his leg so that he could be caught and provide food for people. As he took off into the forest, his hoofs made a sound on the ground and so the place where this happened was named Kwemshenám, which means “stomping feet.”
My take on this story is that Xaays took a man who thought he was above everybody else and transformed him to become something that provides nourishment for all. When I see deer around on our island – and they are literally EVERYWHERE – I am always reminded of this story. I think often about how the best of what we have here should be shared with others to nourish them too. Many who have visited our island in workshops with us have heard this story and invitation to become changed by being here, and many people do have that experience.
When I was on the Economic Development Committee we engaged in a branding exercise for our municipal government and to my secret delight the primary icon that was chosen to represent our island community was the deer. I’d like to think that is stands for a community in which we can find ways to transform the smallness of our individual egos in service of nourishing the greater whole. Can we take what we have, as individuals, as families, and as a community, and share it? In a world and a region that is swelling with people who need more access to natural beauty, places of awe, and transformation for our individual and collective mental health, how can we best use what we have to help serve that need?
Finished a lovely week with my brother and niece visiting from Ontario. We’ve been in a wicked heat wave here, with temperatures in the mid to high thirties and the humidity increasing every day. It’s still not Ontario muggy and the sea is lovely for swimming in, but in a place where air conditioning is less common and extreme heat is usually unplanned for, it’s been a lugubrious week for sure.
The smog from the city and some small traces of wildfire smoke filter the light so there is some ironic beauty in it all.
… i search for a form of reconciliation ecology … inventing, establishing and maintaining a new habitat designed for a diversity of living, working and playing … a place which possesses anima meaning breath, spirit and soul … at first, in the leaving, i imagined a radical break … on arrival have learned to accept a certain amount of conservation of the past needs preservation … perhaps even restoration … the challenge is to generate a creative coexistence between the old and new territories … to comprehend the mysteries of place a cultivation of morals & purpose are required … i consciously accept the self-organizing complexity of this odyssey …
… i once dreamed of a place for a vibrant exchange of active creation and researching ingenuity … my formative experiences in Wroclaw & Vienna helped grow roots in my beloved prairie … the dream was transformed in a beautiful way yet in time a restless disquiet emerged … even discontent & disconnect … rootlessly committed to this place accompanied with my dearest companion i wander the communities …
He is writing here on a reflection about moving to Korea. And his reflections prompted some reflections from me too, about what is essential to preserve, what we see, what choices we make.
Here in Canada there is an interesting phenomena of preserving “heritage” buildings for some level of posterity. It’s interesting to think about what “heritage” means, and whose heritage we are talking about. In the urban environment it usually refers to examples of historical architecture but, as is the case here in Vancouver, that is largely settler architecture from a certain time period, usually between 100 and 150 years ago. There is an underlying assumption that we should protect these buildings, which means really restricting their uses. There is an underlying assumption about what “heritage” means and whose heritage we are talking about.
Where I live, on a small island, there is a heritage group that works to protect structures and the character of the place dating back to the period of the early 1900-1960s. This is a period folks call “the Union SteamShip Company era” in which the Union SteamShip Company not only serviced the island, but owned a resort and delivered hundreds of tourists and cottagers on the summer to what was known as “The Happy Isle.” There are a few structures and an orchard preserved from that time including our magnificent library building and a number of cottages that were used by families and later by a vibrant community of hippies and squatters in the 1960 and 70’s before they were all finally evicted in the 1980s. Following the end of the USSC era, the island fell very quiet and was just a bit too far away for a regular commuter community. A few hundred people were left, working hard to preserve the school and the post office. Many of them were formerly residents of the now abandoned cottages and they were the ones that seeded what has become the most recent era of Bowen Island history that began with a concerted effort to save the island from rapacious growth and then bring in essential services and finally incorporate as a municipality, which happened in 1999.
How does heritage act as a mirror? What image does it return to me when I gaze into it? What parts of it are relevant to my life today?
There are no permanent Squamish villages here today, but there are some unmarked and unprotected architectural sites on the island. A few descendants of some of the original settler families still live here, but for most of us our “heritage” is really an experience of gazing into a past we were never a part of. It’s not a mirror of my personal history but it is a reminder of the layers of history upon which I am living and from which I derive my life. I have only been here 21 years. What I have done is lived atop the infrastructure and history that has preceded me in this place and that includes the outright theft of the land from the original owners who were sustained completely by this land and sea for more than 10,000 years, and the establishment and building of infrastructure by settlers to eek out a living which feels now like it may actually become too much for us to afford, being a small population of 4200 living in a serviced community that is about the same area as Vancouver, with pipes and systems that were haywired together 50 years ago.
So as a settler, it’s important to me that we acknowledge the historical Squamish presence and continued contested ownership of this island. They have never sold it, ceded it, given it away, lost it in a war or otherwise allowed another people to claim it. In that sense, the history of squatting here is pretty interesting!
In places I have travelled to and lived in like the UK and Estonia, heritage of the everyday is about the continued use of a place. In the UK as a kid I lived in a 400 year old cottage (pictured above) that had been added to and renovated at least four times, including the complete incorporation of the hayloft on the adjacent barn in the 1970s as a master bedroom. The structure just grew along the lot adding indoor bathrooms, a few extra bedrooms, a modern kitchen and a garden. In other places, like Estonia, where the medieval city in Tallinn is intact at 800 years old, every building is used and changed. Coffee shops punch holes through walls to expand their space, the apothecary still exists, but with modern technology in place, and the medieval feast hall is an overpriced tourist restaurant that operates within the bones of the old structure with up to date kitchen equipment.
Conservation is a question of morals and ethics. Here in Squamish territory, I think the restoration of Howe Sound’s natural environment is a powerful statement that shows that we have a choice in what we declare “heritage” and worth of conservation. There is a contested view that says that Howe Sound was an industrial area and should remain so, by building an LNG plant or a gravel quarry at the mouth of a critical salmon stream, for example. And there are those of us who feel like not everything should be preserved. The mine at Britannia Beach almost completely destroyed the ecosystems of this place and it took decades of citizen action with occasional government support (and complete neglect by the companies that were just allowed to pollute take the profits and leave) to restore healthy marine ecosystems here.
Conservation and preservation is first and foremost, as Raymon says, “is to generate a creative coexistence between the old and new territories … to comprehend the mysteries of place a cultivation of morals & purpose are required …” We have to answer questions about whether preserving is about stability of structure or continuation of use and by whom ein what way. These questions never leave us, and the choices we make reflect how we see who we are and who we will become, based on the history we choose to preserve or transform.
The Labours of the Artist, the Poet, the Musician, have been proverbially attended by poverty and obscurity; thiswas never the fault of the Public, but was owing to a neglect of means to propagate such works as have wholly absorbed the Man of Genius. Even Milton and Shakespeare could not publish their own works.
And Kate Bush just got her windfall from it:
It is not going to work for everyone, but if it’s one thing I have learned since the dawn of the World Wide Web, its that we can still find the means to produce and share our own creative work and there are ways to make a living out of that.
I’m happy to lift up the voices of those who are creating incredible new ideas and art that are meaningful to me, and lift them a little to the eyes and ears of the truly top rate people I have in my circles.
So for your edification, have a listen to what Lady Pace and Shael Wrinch, a couple of neighbours of mine from Bowen Island, do on a Sunday.