Hello, Westshore! We have a packed newsletter for you today, ranging from health care to civil disobedience to the ever-rippling impact of the pandemic on our normal ways of doing business—in this case, going to school.
Thank you to those of you who send periodic replies to these newsletters. I love hearing from you—whether you like what we do, or have what my years-ago sociology professor called “piercing remarks.” Reach out any time to let me know what issues you’d like to see covered.
Reporter, The Westshore
HEALTHCARE
Westshore foundation looking for practical solutions to health-care crisis
Dave Saunders is promoting a proposal for a healthcare support networks at a municipal level. (Image right: Royal Roads)
Dave Saunders is convinced local governments have more power than they realize to address the health-care crisis. A common refrain from municipalities is that the higher levels of government need to take more and quicker action. But Saunders, a former mayor of Colwood, local businessman, and president of the Saunders Family Foundation, says this crisis demands all hands on deck.
“We need to start thinking together and taking ownership of a shared responsibility for our health care, and not just pointing the finger at Island Health, at the province, or at the feds when there’s stuff that we can do on the ground right now,” he said.
Earlier this summer Saunders released a proposal of his vision for Westshore health care. Called the Community Healthcare Support Network, the basic idea is for municipalities to form a society that would run their own medical spaces and enact other policies that support health-care workers in the community.
Senior governments do control most of the purse strings, policy, and regulations, but municipalities can influence zoning, rent, housing, cost of living, amenities, and more.
In development permits, for example, municipalities could add health-care amenities to the list of incentives by offering bonus density allowances—allow a building to have more suites or be taller—if the developer builds a medical space for the municipality to rent and operate.
The rough outline of a plan has cooperation from Makola Housing, which Saunders invited specifically because of its success becoming a provincial resource for housing solutions. Why not expand those skills to health care? Langford Mayor Stew Young, some councillors in Sooke and Colwood, and, importantly, the premier have also heard the plan and given positive reactions.
Saunders met with Premier John Horgan and Esquimalt-Metchosin MLA Mitzi Dean—along with Kevin Alber, CEO of Makola Housing, and Mark Holland, a planning consultant hired to write the proposal. He wanted to know: would the NDP support an initiative like this?
“Unequivocally they said yes, [and went further saying] they want this implemented throughout Canada. They don't want to let the federal government off the hook in relation to the costs of healthcare, but they recognize that, incrementally, municipalities need to take more ownership in creating the supports necessary for our health-care system,” he said.
Saunders has been asked to speak to Central Saanich council next month.
“They have two developments right now and you can see the lights go on and the smiles on their faces that if they implemented some policy in relation to density bonusing, they could simply ask for a health-care amenity [from the developer],” he said.
That same council recently shot down a proposal from Coun. Gordon Newton that the municipality buy housing for healthcare workers to live in. Newton thought the initiative was one idea that could help Central Saanich attract doctors and nurses to practice in the District.
His fellow councilors thought the idea was not bad, but ultimately not the right mark.
“Do we have a doctor shortage? Yes. Is this the best way we can assist as a local government? I’m not convinced,” Coun. Carl Jensen said. “There are plenty of people working in our municipality that aren’t in healthcare who are struggling with housing.”
Local governments could also channel Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) toward housing for health-care workers, or promote housing agreements with developers that specifically benefit health-care worker housing, Saunders proposed.
Saunders looks at other sectors and the money that is spent attracting their professionals to the province, and wonders why health care doesn’t get the same attention.
“We have lots of plans for Beautiful BC tourism, or Canada tourism, or attracting the movie and film industry. However, we don't have a specific plan to retain, support, and attract doctors and nurses,” he said.
EDUCATION
Langford’s newest middle school won’t be ready for September
Centre Mountain Lellam Middle School under construction last fall. (📸 Zoë Ducklow/The Westshore)
Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School is supposed to open this September for students in grades 6 through 8. But parents were told this week that it will not be ready for the first day of school—and maybe not until November.
The Sooke School District told parents Wednesday that supply chain delays have pushed back the occupancy day, which had been planned for Sept. 1. The 520 students registered to attend Centre Mountain Lellum have been distributed between Spencer and Dunsmuir middle schools. Some Grade 7 students, the smallest cohort, will be placed in PEXSISEN Elementary for the first few months of the school year.
Kristen McGillivray, communications manager for the district, said absorbing the 520 students will put things where they were last year—that is, with a lot of portable classrooms. Sooke School District schools are pushing capacity and desperately need the new space. At the end of last year the district was at 120% capacity, and had 55 portable classrooms in use. The Ministry of Education’s goal is for districts to operate at 95% capacity.
Items yet to arrive at Centre Mountain Lellum include fire suppression equipment and some windows. The delays are out of the control of the contractor, Farmer Construction, and the school district, McGillivray said.
The other factor in this delay is a labour shortage, something we investigated this spring. Part of the source of the shortage in the construction industry is, ironically, the utter unavailability of housing for crews being recruited from out of town to supplement the local workforce. Unavoidably, COVID infections have caused people to miss work.
In hindsight, it was a lofty goal to build two new schools in the midst of a pandemic, she said, but budgets and contracts were in motion before global supply chain implications of the pandemic were known.
PEXSISEN Elementary, on the same campus as Centre Mountain Lellum, is ready, and students will start school Sept. 6 as planned. At least three other new schools are in the works throughout the Westshore as the District works to absorb the mushrooming population.
PROTEST
Two years on, the battle at Fairy Creek continues in court
Two years ago yesterday, a group of people who were concerned about plans to log the old forests around the Fairy Creek Watershed set up a blockade on one logging road. They had a tent, an orange cone, and a handful of people. Word spread and people across the province came to support the blockades, galvanized by a provincewide campaign to stop old-growth logging.
Teal Jones, the logging company with a licence to log the area, eventually got a court-ordered injunction prohibiting anyone from blocking access to logging crews. The RCMP began arresting protestors, dismantling camps, and established a broad exclusion zone around the area to control access.
Protestors were not deterred. They hiked through the night to evade detection, some carrying bags of concrete, power tools, and food supplies. They developed sophisticated hard blocks they called sleeping dragons, where a person locked themselves in place to a tree, a car, or a freshly poured concrete barrier. It took RCMP hours to remove each person. Delay was the whole strategy at that time: Every day police spent extracting protesters was a day logging couldn’t happen.
The RCMP began enforcing the injunction on May 18, 2021 and have since made 1,193 arrests. Fairy Creek is by far the largest collective act of civil disobedience in Canada’s history.
Since the flurry of arrests and police action to dismantle camps, the fight has shifted to urban action and legal recourse. There are no active blockades in the forest right now, and logging work is ongoing, but the fight against old-growth logging continues.
Around the ’Shore
**🌊 T’Sou-ke Nation using smart buoys to find out what’s going on in the Sooke Basin.**The floating data collector, made by MarineLabs, are stationed in the basin to help T’Sou-ke investigate the impact of rising temperatures, shipping traffic, and increasingly dramatic storms. The data collected will inform the way T’Sou-ke manages its food harvesting in the basin. [CBC]
🏃🏽 ♀️ Frontrunners Footwear is Vancouver Island’s largest locally owned running and walking footwear and apparel store. Check out their Westshore location at 755 Goldstream Ave!*
🐢A turtle-in-one: Crews at the Royal Colwood Golf Club noticed a turtle making a nest in the sand, so they staked a temporary fence around the spot to keep the eggs undisturbed, and of course took some cute photos.
❤️ We love local shops! The Westshore is connecting independent online local Shopify shops with our readers. Email us if you want your shop included.
**📕 School supply donation drive for Westshore families underway.**The Salvation Army in Langford is collecting school supply donations for Westshore families in need. ”We are planning for a 30% increase in the amount of requests coming in,” David Hickman told the Goldstream Gazette. The increase includes a number of Ukrainian refugees. Drop off supplies in person at the Salvation Army Connection Point Church and Resource Centre, 103-737 Goldstream Ave. [Goldstream Gazette]
*Sponsored Listing
SPONSORED POST. CONTACT US TO ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS WITH THE WESTSHORE.
TOGETHER WITH ONE BEAR MOUNTAIN
Construction is underway – move in summer 2024!
Construction of One Bear Mountain is underway! Their completion date will have homeowners move in the summer of 2024.
A select inventory of exceptional 2-bedroom+ homes are now available. Choose the unit that perfectly fits your needs: their Sun Collection features exceptional 2-bedroom designs from the mid $700s, or take a look at their Signature Home Collection, which offers larger square footage 2-bedrooms+ from $1.5 – $3 million.
Which one will you choose?
Browse available floor plans on their website and find the space that is perfect for you. Learn more at OneBearMountain.com.
Community Events
**🧘🏻 ♀️ Tonight! Outdoor free yoga at Royal Bay.**Bring your mat for the free class; all abilities welcome. 6pm at Meadow Park Green.
🎸 Music in the Park: Every Friday a different band performs in a different park. This week The Temps, a classic hits cover band, performs at Colwood Creek Park from 6-8pm. On top of that, the Esquimalt Lagoon has food trucks all weekend, every weekend, plus music on Saturday nights.
🏡 Curious about Langford’s attainable home ownership program? City staff are hosting an information session on Aug. 17, 6-8pm, 2840 Peatt Rd. in the Langford Business Centre. RSVP to welcomehome@langford.ca.
🎈 Free park party with bouncy castles, hosted by Colwood Church. They’ll have food, prizes and more. Aug. 20, noon to 4pm at Colwood Elementary.
🎭 A floating theatre will dock in Sooke, performing for an audience on shore. Shows Aug. 17-21.
What’s Offshore?
Esquimalt Lagoon looking towards Washington State, taken on Aug. 10, 2022 (📸 Tom Gierasimczuk)
🚢******#1**The Merchia is a Bulk Carrier built in 2015 and is sailing under the flag of Marshall Islands. It is sailing from 🇬🇹 Puerto Queztal, Guatemala ➡ 🇨🇦 Vancouver and was scheduled to arrive last week.
⛴ The CMA CMG Andromeda is a Container Ship built in 2009 and is sailing under the flag of Malta. It is sailing from 🇺🇸 Bainbridge Island, WA ➡ 🇨🇦 Vancouver and was scheduled to arrive earlier this week.
SPONSORED POST. CONTACT US TO ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS WITH THE WESTSHORE.
📸 David Cooper
TODAY’S PARTNER: DANCE VICTORIA
Early bird Nutcracker tickets for Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet with Victoria Symphony
Save up to 20% off regular priced adult tickets to Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Nutcracker using promo code Nut-Westshore until Sept. 14 at 10pm. A snowy pond hockey game, battle on Parliament Hill, Mounties, and a cast of Canadian critters make this Nutcracker memorable.
December 2-4, 7pm | December 3 & 4, 1pm | Royal Theatre
Tickets at Royal and McPherson Theatres or 250-386-6121.
Westshore Eats
(📸 Amelia Acedo)
🥗 The Westshore has partnered with Tasting Victoria, Vancouver Island’s largest food-themed Instagram account, to curate a must-try recommendation on the Westshore.
🍦 Tasting Victoria recommends: Parachute Ice Cream. Hand-made ice cream and gelato, milkshakes, floats, hot chocolates, sundaes, soft serve, and slushies with local dairy and other high-quality ingredients. Located at 129-735 Goldstream Ave.
🍰 Must-try item: Strawberry cheesecake ice cream. It’s so good! You can taste the cheesecake bites.
Want more Tasting Victoria recommendations? Subscribe here.