Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC

“Nature-First Cities is not a heavy academic book. We wrote it to be inspirational…and we challenge readers to understand why we have become so disconnected from nature and what happens when we start to rebuild that connection. What happens ecologically? What happens socially? Equity is a huge component of the book and one of the pillars around what makes nature-directed stewardship work. So, there is that broader picture around rehabilitating that sense of connectivity with people and nature in cities,” stated Sean Markey.

“I would like to say taxpayers are unhappy but that would be an understatement. They are angry! Everywhere there is distrust due to failure to communicate the purposes of local government as defined in the Community Charter for municipalities and in the Local Government Act for regional districts. So, what do we do? We reset. It is clearly a time of change. I think it is an appropriate time for local governments to reflect and self-evaluate the services they provide and how they provide them. This isn’t about blame. It is about putting pieces together,” stated Arnold Schwabe.

“Natural Intelligence is an idea that resonates because it is intuitively obvious. I believe it is that simple. Natural Intelligence is another angle on interweaving Western science and Indigenous knowledge because it explores what Indigenous knowledge is based on. Blue Ecology is a Natural Intelligence approach. Natural Intelligence is a form of Indigenous wisdom…which is knowledge of Natural Intelligence and how to live with it and how to be harmonious with it,” stated Michael Blackstock.

Bruce Milne was elected mayor of Sechelt the same year Janyk was first elected to council, in 1996. “He held us all to account for the next three years, to make sure we really did make some change,” said Bruce Milne. “Elected officials who weren’t as confident sometimes found a lack of space left over for less confident people to be difficult for them, but it was never a problem when he was actually advocating for Gibsons or the Sunshine Coast.” Barry Janyk’s environmentalism was a pillar not only of his life, but his time in office.

The “may you live in interesting times” quote has an interesting history. The first documented use of the quote was in a 1898 speech by Joseph Chamberlain, British politician and social reformer. “I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety,” he stated. Despite being so common in English as to be known as the “Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced.

We share our world view through our stories and storytelling This is how we pass on our oral history. Storytelling is the way we share intergenerational knowledge, experience and wisdom. “Storytelling is the commonality of all human beings, in all places, in all times,” stated Professor Rives Collins, Northwestern University, author of “The Power of Story: Teaching Through Storytelling”.

“On election day in British Columbia, an atmospheric river deluged Metro Vancouver and parts of the province’s south coast. Flooding was widespread across the Lower Mainland. The storm caused more than $110 million in insured damaged according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, reported the Canadian Press on November 15, 2024. On top of this are the flood costs incurred by local governments. Timing is everything. When Metro Vancouver’s Liquid Waste Committee met in October and again in November, the Election Day Flood was top of mind,” stated Kim Stephens.

“Food security, land security and water security are not separate issues. They are one and the same. But agricultural land is being lost bit by bit. And it is not because land is coming out of the Agricultural Land Reserve. Rather, it is all about what is happening on the land within the ALR. The Lower Mainland region is losing food land each year. That is just from making houses and yards bigger and adding amenities such as pools and tennis courts. This accumulating impact will have consequences for our food security,” stated Ted van der Gulik.

“A key purpose of the regional growth strategies legislation our government introduced in 1995 was to enable local government to respond to housing needs. It provided a basis for regional districts and their member communities to support adequate, affordable, and appropriate housing in places where the necessary facilities exist or can be provided. Meeting Metro Vancouver’s urgent housing demand is exactly the sort of situation for which we developed the regional growth strategies legislation in the 1990s,” stated Mike Harcourt.

“When we initiated EAP in 2015, it was almost intuitive to pick up on where things were after a decade of riparian area regulation, and then recognize local governments need a number if they want to get natural assets into their management plans on a regular basis. The question we asked was, how do you find that number? Well, we can treat a stream as a land use because we have RAPR and BC Assessment. The rest of it is the methodology that does the right calculation. EAP finds a financial value for the streamside protection and enhancement area prescribed by RAPR,” stated Tim Pringle.