A Matter of Trust: B.C. Gulf Islands Real Estate

Image by: Nik West

Sebastian Moffatt sees farming as vital to a dynamic community – and that might upset Nimbyists who have little truck with tractors and roosters.

B.C.'s Gulf Islands have seen almost four decades of bitter infighting pitting 
development against protection of “unique amenities” and “community 
character.” Is there a better way for Gulf Islanders to govern 
their land use and ensure long-term economic viability?

Like a lot of British Columbians, Sheldon Duff dreamed of one day owning a property in the Gulf Islands. The UBC professor of environmental engineering pictured retiring and using a modest island residence as his home base while travelling the world. Duff knew it was a long shot; his professor’s salary would barely provide the means to buy a piece of property, much less a waterfront residence and boat to accommodate an island lifestyle. But when an eight-hectare parcel of former forestry land on Galiano Island came on the market in 2003, he saw an opportunity. The existing forestry zoning at the time meant Duff couldn’t build on the property, but that restriction had been quashed in court once before and was under legal challenge once again.

 

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“I took a big gamble and I lost,” the now-retired Duff says of his property, which he still can’t legally live on. He declines to disclose how much he paid for the land, but it isn’t so much the financial loss that bothers him; it’s the hornet’s nest of animosity and name-
calling he found himself embroiled in.


“It’s sort of a local government gone wild,” says Duff. “After attending a lot of different meetings and trying to develop different bylaws, I just got a really bad taste in my mouth about the place, and I really don’t want to be there anymore. It’s clear that you’re not wanted there.”


Duff’s is not an isolated story. Bitter in-fighting pitting neighbour against neighbour is endemic to the Gulf Islands: on Saturna, it’s a controversy over whether new development threatens scarce water resources; on Hornby it’s whether short-term rentals threaten the residents’ tranquil lifestyle; on Galiano it’s a fight over whether former forestry lands should be preserved as pristine wilderness. The pattern is similar: a development is proposed, a vocal opposition erupts and years of lawsuits and bylaw manipulations ensue. The toxic environment boiled over last summer with a demonstration protesting the denial of a rezoning application by Salt Spring Coffee Co. and a petition calling for the overthrow of the Islands Trust, the governing body that for 37 years has been responsible for land-use planning on the islands.

 

The Islands Trust Act

Created by the Islands Trust Act of 1974, the Islands Trust divvies the islands into 14 groups, each governed by a local committee comprising three trustees, two of whom are elected locally and one of whom is appointed by the trust executive in Victoria. (Bowen Island has since become a self-governing municipality, although it retains representation on the trust.) When the two locally elected trustees agree, decisions rest with them; when they disagree, the appointed trustee casts the deciding vote. However, all roads lead back to Victoria and the holy grail enshrined in the Islands Trust Act, which empowers the trust to “preserve and protect the trust area and its unique amenities and environment for the benefit of the residents of the trust area and of British Columbia generally.”


The Islands Trust was created in response to concern over unchecked development of the Gulf Islands, in particular to a 1960s subdivision that had turned 240 hectares of North Pender Island into 1,200 residential lots. In response to a public outcry, the provincial government called a moratorium on further Gulf Islands development, striking a committee to look into the issue. That committee’s recommendations would lead to the Islands Trust Act of 1974. 


Debate in the Victoria legislature one day in May 1974 offers an insight into the fiery politics from which the Trust emerged. Waving a pamphlet in the air, Progressive Conservative MLA Hugh Curtis explained that he had obtained a copy of an internal newsletter published by the ruling NDP party, and he read from an item bearing the headline Playboy Paradise Plucked by People: “Formation of the trust, which is yet to be approved by the Legislature, will mean the end of rip-off development in the islands by greedy speculators and fast-buck recreation lot developers. It will mean the end of the influence of rich foreign landowners who range from German barons to Hong Kong sweatshop bosses and California surgeons.”


Curtis objected strenuously to the language of the newsletter, claiming his constituents were “distressed” by its vision of what was needed for the islands. Despite his protestations, however, the ruling NDP would carry the day, and the Islands Trust Act was declared law on June 4 that year. Since then any requests for development have had to pass through the Islands Trust, by way of a local trust committee.


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  • Salt Spring Coffee, 
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