By Tom Read
A sunset view of Davie Bay that I took at a social event we attended last summer. This spot served as a log dump until the late 1980s, and still has old logging equipment stranded in the bush nearby.
Back in September of 2007, when the WestPac LNG proposal had Texada Island in an uproar, I wrote a Journal entry titled “Paradox in Paradise” that began with the following sentence:
Texada Island confronts a fateful paradox facing many rural areas of beautiful British Columbia: corporate globalism and its allies in provincial and federal government seek to impose large-scale heavy industry upon a natural paradise and a strong local community.
In the paragraphs that followed, I noted that Texada has accommodated heavy industry for more than a century, particularly mining and forestry. Anyone visiting Texada today by ferry sees evidence of this history upon arriving at Blubber Bay, where Blubber Bay Quarry dominates the landscape next to the ferry terminal. As you proceed south, the presence of three working quarries and numerous old quarries and mines attest to Texada’s unmistakable identity as an established mining district.
But that doesn’t mean that Texada is exclusively an “industrial island,” as is often cited. The first thing many visitors notice, once they get beyond the ferry landing, are Texada’s spectacular views of ocean, islands, forests, mountains and distant glaciers. Closer examination reveals an abundance of rare flora and fauna, and a settlement pattern that concentrates most human residents in two villages, leaving lots of room to roam along the many miles of hiking trails and old logging roads. There’s very little old-growth forest or pristine wilderness left on Texada Island, but second-growth forests are beautiful, too. And anywhere you go along the shoreline or the mountaintops, the views are sublime.
Mining and forestry operations proceed mostly unseen and barely heard on Texada, at a scale that could last hundreds of years given current rates of consumption. More than 75% of our 100-square-mile island is accessible for recreation. My conclusion from that 2007 posting: “Texadans proclaim their home an industrial island with the confidence that industry does not impose too much unpleasantness on daily life, while bestowing above-average local incomes and infrastructure. Result: a fine balance, so far.”
But nothing stays the same for long in this world, or on Texada Island. The question I’d like to address here is: can an expansion in quarrying, such as proposed by Lehigh for the Davie Bay area, be accommodated on Texada without destroying the natural beauty and high quality of life enjoyed by its residents? Let me give you a little background before answering that question.
When Linda and I first came to Texada in 1997, we noted the quarry at Blubber Bay with approval, because to us that industrial scene meant the local people likely enjoyed a decent standard of living. We were looking for a new home, so the quality of life in the island’s human community mattered to us. We had seen rural communities where the only outside income came from tourists and government handouts; such places typically lacked public infrastructure and suffered the negative social effects of too much poverty. Conversely, we had also seen rural places overrun by the absentee wealthy, where most homes stood empty much of the year. What we liked about Texada was its social stability as a largely working-class community, where even most of the retirees were former resource industry workers, not urban professionals. We knew it might be a challenge for urban immigrants with soft hands like us to fit in, but we were pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome we received from almost everyone we met.
Before buying our property here, we studied the Texada Island Official Community Plan (OCP), which had previously been updated in 1987. We noted that the OCP favoured a lifestyle with minimal regulations. There were “land use designations” covering the island but very few restrictive zoning bylaws. The property we eventually bought, designated “Rural Residential,” is only about ¼ mile (1/2 kilometre) from Imperial Quarry, designated “Resource.” So we live a lot closer to a working quarry than most people on Texada, and it’s true that sometimes, if we’re outdoors, we can hear the sound of distant diesel engines, and the occasional warning siren and blast. If the wind is from the west, we might also hear Texada Quarrying trucks and blasts, but always rather faintly. This in no way bothers us, because we knew we were moving to a mining district when we came here, so a bit of background noise now and then was expected. It doesn’t reduce our enjoyment of our land or of Texada one bit to have working quarries in our backyard, so long as they’re not literally on our doorstep.
And that is really the answer, I believe, for the future of industry on Texada. If the proposed Lehigh quarry isn’t in anyone’s face, and if the mining plan has done everything possible to mitigate the inevitable environmental impacts of quarrying (also giving our community something to use to hold the company accountable), and if the proposal is on clear-cut and second-growth forest land designated in our OCP as Rural Low Density having a potential for quarrying, and if our community might receive a donation of land for a park at Davie Bay, then there’s really no compelling reason to oppose it. In a contracting global economy, we ought to be thankful for the additional decent-paying jobs, because we’ve already lost many such jobs on Texada. Bear in mind, also, that Lehigh could decide to back out if the global economy goes through another decline such as we experienced late last year or even if anticipated markets don’t meet expectations before they begin construction of their Texada project.
As for the Lehigh proposal, I attended both Lehigh’s presentation and the Texada Action Now public meeting. I’ve spent some time studying the mining plan and listening to the objections of those of my friends and neighbours who oppose this potential new quarry. After considering the data and different viewpoints, I believe that if the new quarry comes to pass, then life here will carry on pretty much the same, where mostly peaceful co-existence between industry and natural beauty has been the norm for decades.
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