Whereas the Grandview Cut is second only to Stanley Park in green
space;
Whereas there are Vancouver Park Board lands abutting the Grandview
Cut;
Whereas we are committed to the Greenways plan;
Whereas the Grandview Cut is located in the East Side of Vancouver,
an area deficient in green space;
Whereas the present ratio of residents to green space is 0.91 in the
East Side, and 2.4 in the West Side, an inequality will be further
exacerbated by the destruction of the Cut, should it occur;
Whereas the Grandview Cut is located in an area with a high percentage
of First Nations residents and especially First Nations Youth, many
of whom have no other access to natural parkland;
Whereas putting a SkyTrain through the Grandview Cut would destroy
a valuable wildlife corridor, would not decrease stress and pollution,
and would reduce green space;
Whereas the aforementioned project would greatly decrease livability;
Whereas the proposed SkyTrain route would decrease property value
and negatively impact on local businesses during the two year construction
period;
Whereas many members of the public feel there has not been adequate
public consultation on this matter;
Whereas SkyTrain riders are subsidized by $40 per person per ride,
as opposed to $2 per person per ride on the buses;
Whereas 87% of transit users use the bus and only 13% use the SkyTrain;
Whereas increasing the bus service would substantially decrease transit
problems in the lower mainland, and the SkyTrain proposal wouldn't;
Whereas increasing the bus service in the lower mainland would increase
unionized employment providing citizens with good jobs in transit;
Whereas the proposed SkyTrain expansion will not decrease pollution
or get people out of their cars for a number of reasons;
Whereas the proposed habitat replacement completely ignores the ecological
devastation which would occur and cannot be mitigated;
Whereas the destruction of the Grandview Cut represents the destruction
of a viable, intrinsically valuable urban natural ecosystem, home
to a multiplicity of living creatures which enrich the ecology, our
hearts and minds;
Whereas it is the belief of citizens of the East Side that they are
subsidizing the project which is above ground on the East Side and
below ground on the West Side, and that this is a class and race issue
that they take exception to;
Whereas, for the future of the children, the elders, and the animals
in the East Side, the destruction of the Grandview Cut would be devastating
physically, ecologically, culturally and psychologically;
And Whereas when teams of heavy horses and soiled and sweating men
hauled away wagons of earth and shaped the Grandview Cut, no one planted
the trees and shrubs that cling where they can to the steep slopes
today. There was no need. Native woodland covered the area less than
a century ago. In its unassuming way this gradually reclaimed the
wounded land. As years passed and trains ground noisily along the
bottom of the Cut, the trees grew undisturbed, some to impressive
heights. One by one, their fellows in the surrounding woods were felled.
House were built, streets were paved, and business communities evolved
along what were once skid tracks. Park warblers continued migrating
along the corridor of the Cut. The wrens continued nesting in its
trees;
Whereas with each kilometer outward that the city spreads, each hectare
of forest, field, and creek side lost, every cluster of trees within
that enclave, every huddle of shrubs and herbs, every patch of semi-isolated
gravel where killdeers might raise their young grows exponentially
in importance;
Whereas it is no longer enough to plant tamed and tidy gardens, trees
spread daintily along the boulevard. The garden, the laneway, the
grid of streets are no longer clearings in the midst of wildness,
human habitat gleaned from a rough and endless native world. They
sprawl across ecosystems, climate regions, borders, dividing wild
from wild. The discontinuity frays the health of wilderness itself,
diminishing the richly woven tapestry of life, individual by individual,
species by species, ecosystem by ecosystem. We have reached the stage
where we need to do everything in our power to reconnect those wild
lands, to salvage and restore wherever we can grassy patches, shrubs,
woodlands no matter how disturbed or small, no matter that they don't
yet represent the ultimate combination of species for this particular
patch of land. These are the only refuge urban wildlife has, the only
pockets of connection that lets it leapfrog across the concrete that
has taken over its home;
Whereas instead of digging in and taking more and reducing what is
left - WE NEED TO LEAVE THE WILD, WILD and shape our roadsides, parklands,
gardens, backyards wherever we can to a kinder, wilder place that
will coax back the great chorus of birdsong, woo home the peregrines
and the hawks. We must tame the pollution in the waters and soil and
air so that frogs and humans and chickadees alike can happily call
this sprawling city home;
Whereas why do we need these wild and semi-wild and returning-to-wild
places? Why isn't it enough that new trees and shrubs will be placed
in a linear park along Grandview, even if there was a way for this
to support the same wildlife that currently lives inside the Cut (which
there is not)? It is more than knowing that wildlife is valuable in
and of itself, more than knowing that our own well-being depends on
healthy forests and bogs and oceans. It exists on a level we cannot
always feel, and which expresses itself differently for each of us
- as love for a gently parent, as a joyful disorderliness, as a memory
of a distant home. We come from the wild land. Even in those of us
who love "civilization", the city life, the ways we have
learned to organize and fascinate ourselves, part of us is always
wild. That part needs to be enclosed, ordered, constrained like a
potted plant or a greenway pruned for safety and visibility. We need
to be able to look down and know that whether we ever walk in the
Cut ourselves, it is growing there, largely unrestrained, and that
this is possible for us as well. We need places of great beauty right
before our eyes, in our neighbourhoods - not only beauty that has
been designed and dictated by someone else, but something that follows
its own notion of what is healthful and vigorous growth. We need woodlands
to love and grow up beside and fight for. We need to know that wildlife
isn't all in the Serengeti or the Far North - that it lives right
here, that it's a part of us, and we need to have a place to look
at as our home, that will not disappear or be molested with the passage
of time.
For ourselves, as well as for the wildlife, we need to save and honour
this precious wild land in our midst.
Be it resolved that the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation strongly
support the people of Vancouver in demanding a halt to the proposal
of putting the SkyTrain through the Grandview Cut, and, that we listen
to voices of the people at the next Park Board meeting on this issue,
and that we strongly encourage City Council, TransLink and the Province
of BC to do the same.
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