Twenty-four years an islander

I met my friend Aryana on the trail this morning heading to the pier for some coffee and a walk. She said “you’ve been on Bowen for a while now, right?” I looked at my watch and saw the date. Twenty-four years ago today we were busy packing up our three bedroom co-op townhouse in the West End of Vancouver, and bundling our 4 year old daughter and nine month old son into our 1996 Honda Civic. We were getting ready to follow the moving truck to Horseshoe Bay and then over to Bowen Island.

If you have followed along at this blog and others, you will know that I began writing about my experiences of the island almost right away. There was a few months of hand coding html pages for the Bowen Island Journal before I switched over to blogger. That blog kept a good record of the first 15 years of our time here. In about 2017 I consolidated all my writing and just starting writing Bowen Island blog posts on this blog with their own tag.

I love the occasional dive into these archives. They remind me of my curiosities and what had my attention even in the swirl of change that a small community experiences. Perhaps for my 25th anniversary on Bowen I’ll draw these together into some kind of publication. My friend Pauline LeBel would love that.

Bowen Island these days is very different than it was 24 years ago. There are more marine mammals around: sea lions, orcas and humpback whales are now regular residents in our waters. The businesses in the Cove have come and gone, but at the moment there are some wonderful cafes (Like Tell Your Friends on the pier) that are my regular haunts. The Pub is in a new building, The Snug and Docs are where they always were. The library long ago moved to the old General Store. The Ruddy Potato is where it was when it opened the weekend I moved here.

There are new neighbourhoods and new trails and some places I used to go are now fenced off. Some other things never seem to change much. People still complain about the heavy toll tourism takes on our village. The ferry runs at a relatively random schedule. No one likes it when various layers of government do things, except now that we have to build long neglected infrastructure, there is a tenor of discontent that we didn’t do it sooner. Facebook has replaced the Phorum, but the same songs are sung by the chorus.

We have a new municipal hall and community centre, where I will be going tonight to watch Singing In The Rain complete with cartoon and short film trailers, just like in the old days. Tomorrow I will be singing with my choir at Tir-na-nOg, a theatre school for young people that found a home about 20 years ago after rambling across various space on the island.

We have a cougar now, as evidenced by the numerous sightings reported by Islanders and the deer carcass that was stewing in the ditch near my house (but which was thankfully relocated today). The last bear to visit here was about 14 years ago, but there are coyotes and racoons and skunks in addition to the endemic wildlife. The barred owls are breeding like rabbits.

This morning on my way to the Cove, I had my usual June trail breakfast of salmonberries and huckleberries plucked from the bush. We’ve made some amazing moves to protect lands that were long fought over, especially the Cape Roger Curtis lands that now sport a lovely waterfront trail that winds along the shoreline in front of a couple of huge houses that no one will ever live in and a few slightly more more modest houses lived in by actual Islanders. The Bowen Island Conservancy has protected a bunch of south shore waterfront in perpetuity and Metro Vancouver has bought the rest as parkland. They have also done a marvellous job on a waterfront park on Dorman Point. We have also been encompassed by a UNESCO Biosphere Region and we are developing relationships with our hosts, the Squamish Nation, who blessed the name of the island on our sign in a ceremony back in 2020. We live on Nexwlelexwm, and Sempuliyan, one of the family that held us in ceremony on that date, referred to us as Nexwlelexwm uxwimixw, the villagers of Bowen Island.

Affordability has only gotten worse here, but the Bowen Island Resilient Community Housing Society is in the processes of building an affordable rental building with 27 units behind our new amazing community health centre, which sits next to our new amazing fire hall and emergency operations centre. A seniors building, Snug Cove House, is going up across the road meaning that long time islanders like me might have an option to live a long life here as our mobility decreases and our needs increase.

We still have a local newspaper, with its own cartoonist, the inimitable Ron Woodall. Visual arts are still a huge part of life here and there is live music most weeks to listen to at the pub or in the various venues around the island.

Years ago, there was a swan that lived in the lagoon by Mannion Bay. Everyone loved this swan from a distance but also everyone hated meeting this swan up close. My daughter called it “the ornery swan” becausee it nipped and bit people and made a bunch of noise when its perfect little world was disturbed in any way. But from a distance, the swan struck a beautiful image, a still white bird floating majestically on the still dark waters of the bay or the lagoon.

When the swan died, we held a little memorial for it and I wrote a song with a call and response chorus that somehow captured why we loved that bird and how he was so much one of us.

Islanders now gather round
The swan, the swan was swimming
The swan lays dying on the ground
And the swan swims here no more.

Gathered on a wintery day
The swan, the swan was swimming
On the rocky shores of Mannion Bay
And the swan swims here no more.

Where salmon leapt upon the weir
The swan, the swan was swimming
Where ducks and geese all lived in fear
And the swan swims here no more.

All who came to know that bird
The swan, the swan was swimming
Defied the warnings they had heard
And the swan swims here no more.

Islanders have come and gone
The swan, the swan was swimming
We had the swan to reflect upon
And the swan swims here no more.

A stately bird of grace and poise
The swan, the swan was swimming
Beautiful and mute of voice
And the swan swims here no more.

For this wild creature was one of us
The swan, the swan was swimming
A mute and silent blunderbus
And the swan swims here no more.

Who are we without the swan?
The swan, the swan was swimming
A part of us is dead and gone
And the swan swims here no more.

The tide rolls in and fills the Bay
The swan, the swan was swimming
But the waters here are still today
And the swan swims here no more.

Now eagles chase the gulls away
The swan, the swan was swimming
And things have changed on Mannion Bay
And the swan swims here no more.

That kind of gets at the red thread of this place. Twenty-four years.