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Looking around the City of Victoria, it doesn’t take a lot of insight to conclude: This place is humming! Old houses in the suburbs, and once venerable buildings in the city proper, are turning into holes in the ground; nesting pots for steel and glass condos sprouting uptown and down.
The increasing human population, both resident and transient, requires more room too; room to move into and room to get around.
Making room for those people’s in-migration is, naturally, just what made this place desirable in the first place; the remnant “natural elements” within the city – that would be developer-speak for trees.
According to a Habitat Acquisition Trust report of 2013, Victoria lost the equivalent of 12 Beacon Hill Parks between 2005 and 2011; and that was before things got seriously crazy around here.
Now, another stand of trees is slated for the axe to accommodate the ever more, more, more of a Garden City in full boom…
Stuart Herzog is the long-time, Victoria-based environmental and social justice advocate currently coordinating the Victoria Citizens Action Network, a coalition of groups and individuals coming together to work on issues effecting our city and region. Right now they’re focused on BC Transit’s proposal to clearcut the west side of Douglas Street between Hillside and Tolmie.
Stuart Herzog in the first segment.
And; Ken Boon is a farmer in the Peace Valley, and President of the Peace Valley Landowner Association. He’s in court today in Vancouver, trying to get in the path of Christy Clark’s Site-C dam.
Ken Boon taking Site-C to court in the second segment.
And; host to untold hundreds of thousands of refugees from Middle East wars waged by the West, tiny Lebanon is straining at the brink of national viability; and yet somehow it’s managing to cope. But, that may not last, as it increasingly appears Lebanon will be next on the ISIS hit-list.
Patrick Henningsen is a freelance journalist and co-founder of the online news site, 21st Century wire, launched during the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. Patrick’s geopolitical analyses and commentaries are featured online at RT and Al Jazeera, and of course at 21Wire. I spoke to Patrick last in the wake of the Paris attacks; he’s in Beirut now, and we’ll try reach him to get a sense of life today in what was once called “The Paris of the Middle East.”
Patrick Henningsen in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us news of some of what’s good to do in and around our town in the coming week, and beyond. But first, Stuart Herzog and a bus lane too far for one Victoria neighbourhood.
