Editor:
Katherine Alexandra wants to return to the Sunshine Coast (“I want to come home,” Letters, March 22) from Ontario to live and work. From afar, she’s determined that a lack of affordable housing is preventing her and others like her from returning here, and so urges residents to accept new developments like The George and Touchstone in Gibsons and Evolve in Wilson Creek.
I disagree. Just because you want to live here doesn’t mean we should turn our coast into “Surrey-by-the-Sea.” That’s what developers want and, with the help of chainsaws, excavators and myopic councils, they are attempting to do just this.
I’ve had many recent trips to Kingston, your home, to visit my father. Last December, flying on a clear morning from Kingston to Toronto, I looked out the window and for more than 100 miles I couldn’t see more than 100 to 200 metres of contiguous forest anywhere between the lakeshore and several miles inland. Then we hit Oshawa and the only land in any direction not occupied by buildings was golf courses and pencil-thin riparian setbacks.
Please don’t lecture us that we ought to accept developmental degradation on the scale of southern Ontario. And that will happen if we don’t push back and reject rapacious developments. I understand your dilemma but if you really want to live here, I urge you to find a way that doesn’t feed the “log-it, burn-it, pave-it” practice that many coastal residents are diligently seeking to hold in check.
Michael Maser, Gibsons
