Editor:
I look forward to reading Coast Reporter every week. I love seeing photos and reading stories of so many people I have come to know the past 12 years I have lived here. The Sunshine Coast is small town living at its finest, and Coast Reporter does a great job documenting what it is like to belong to a great community.
But I was really disturbed reading the July 23 article "Beach wall owners threatened with legal action."
I am not sure how much research went into the article, or was the journalist writing from the press release written by the Islands Trust? The article seemed really biased against the Pedersens who have been battling erosion and bureaucracy for the past 11 years, trying to save their waterfront property.
Having kayaked around Keats Island, I've seen at least 40 or 50 walls on the foreshore, made with creosote logs, cement blocks and other unnatural materials. I went for a moonlight canoe ride the other evening from Gibsons Harbour to Soames Point and witnessed all sorts of walls along the shoreline.
Last winter's storms brought harsh erosion along our shores, washing out a little memorial garden I made to my sister on the shores of Bonniebrook. Since then, I have seen all sorts of attempts of cribbing, cementing, bouldering and excavating to save people's properties and cabins.
Obviously their permits were approved within a reasonable period of time, or somehow the Islands Trust (or its equivalent), and the government officials have missed those ones. I just wonder why all this hullabaloo regarding the Pedersens. Are they being scapegoated? Made an example for everyone else? Seems fishy to me.
Government officials, rallies and protests don't seem fair when there are revetments all over the Coast, including the Squamish and Sechelt Nations' coastlines. It seems like downright bullying to me.
Cindy MacInnes
Gibsons
