Islands Trust is ordering the removal of a privately owned dock on Lasqueti Island that residents say is one of the few ways to leave the island when its main dock is unusable.
Tracee Carey said she and her husband, John, who was born on Lasqueti, chose to buy their property in 2019 partly because it had a good spot for a dock they wanted to build, adding that it’s rare to have safe moorage on the island.
The dock, built in 2020, is in Scottie Bay, a five-minute drive from the public ferry at False Bay.
Carey said they were careful to follow dock-building regulations set out by the provincial government, but struggled to navigate the application process with the Islands Trust local committee.
The Careys decided to build the dock and apply to rezone the property to accommodate the structure after the fact, citing a provision that allows people to apply for a bylaw amendment once the project had started, as long as they pay a surcharge.
Since then, the couple has been engaged in a battle with the Islands Trust, and say they might be forced to remove the dock.
When they applied to rezone, Carey said the motion was defeated by the local committee.
Carey said the Islands Trust sued the couple to have the dock removed in 2023, after the first defeat, and they were advised to reapply for a zoning change.
The process went to public consultation, but a motion to bring the rezoning application to a first reading was defeated during a May 12 meeting of the Lasqueti Island Local Trust Committee.
“We were dumbfounded. We were shocked,” said Carey, adding that she wanted to hear the public’s opinion of the dock before it was denied rezoning again.
Minutes from the meeting say the zoning application was opposed because of issues related to maintaining scenic views, protecting marine life and keeping the coastal area undeveloped.
The minutes note that local First Nations weren’t consulted, and the social benefit of the dock was in question.
Carey said her focus now is on complying with the court-ordered removal.
Meanwhile, community pressure is growing to keep the dock, which was used as a backup recently after the False Bay ferry dock was closed when a float plane flipped while landing.
Without the False Bay ferry, islanders were left stranded in Parksville, said Carey.
Carey said she and her husband transported eight people from Vancouver Island back to Lasqueti, adding the dock’s location made it easy to return people to their vehicles in False Bay.
Grover Foreman, a Lasqueti resident, said he’s upset with the decision to have the dock removed.
“It all seems so unfair and so unnecessary,” he said, noting that in his 52 years on Lasqueti, no one has been taken to court by the trust over a bylaw issue.
Richard Ayers, another Lasqueti resident, said the dock has been used by first responders. “We live on an island,” he said. “They can’t deny us a dock.”
Karl Darwin, whose 84-year-old sister Nikki was transported using the Scottie Bay dock during the False Bay dock closure, said the community banded together to get people back to the island, calling it “a reverse Dunkirk.”
In a statement, an Islands Trust spokesperson said the dock dispute has been an “active enforcement file” since 2020, and “does not comply with local zoning regulations and does not align with the environmental policies set out in the Lasqueti Island Official Community Plan.”
The statement said the committee might consider a third application “if new information is provided or if the proposal is revised in a way that brings it into alignment with Islands Trust policies like the Islands Trust Policy Statement and Official Community Plans.”
