Down In the Park
Jan. 25th, 2005 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauLes Leyne's column in today's T-C (local paper for you out-of-towners) is good:
***
Time to fix silliness over Beacon Hill: Judge gave the city the means to change the rules that restrict use of park
Times Colonist January 25, 2005 Les Leyne Page: A10
This city owes the Friends of Beacon Hill Park a debt of gratitude. The long-running fun eradication campaign by the self-appointed guardians of the park has finally gone too far. The Canada Day picnic and the folk festival were nagged out of the park years ago and nobody did too much about it. They hassled all the road races for various charities out of the park and everyone just moved down the street and adapted as best they could. Their diligent patrols looking for any sign of people enjoying themselves at events where any kind of corporate logo may be on display has created a sense of paranoia to the point where people who try to organize fun events in the park tear their hair out in frustration at the mere mention of the Friends.
But the cancellation of this summer's enchanting night-time Luminara Festival, blamed directly on the park vigilantes, may have finally brought things to a head. We should all be grateful. Now that we're laughing-stocks of the province, known far and wide as the city so uptight and prim you can't even have fun in the park, maybe now Victoria will come to its senses.
After going along with this nonsense for years, like everyone else, I had a personal revelation a few months ago. Milling around with thousands of other people in the vast wasteland of Ogden Point parking lots a few months ago at a breast cancer fundraising run, the only-in-Victoria lunacy of it all hit me square in the face.
The 7,000 people could easily have been massed in the park enjoying themselves. But the event was shunted off to the barren parking lot, partly so bannered event tents with company names on them wouldn't offend the Friends. People were allowed to run through the park, but they weren't allowed to stop and enjoy it. It wasn't only the madness of surrendering the obvious place for a big happy get-together that struck me. It was how we all just shrugged and went along.
But Victoria doesn't seem to be going along with the end of Luminara. There's a big groundswell headed city council's way over this stupidity, and it will be very interesting to see who gets on top of it and rides it. Doing my best to foment revolution and overthrow the tyranny of the Friends, I contacted a couple of local MLAs. I was eager to hear some tough talk about how "they've gone too far" and perhaps some kind of call to action. But what I got from assorted people was mostly mush.
The political and legal groundwork behind the current ludicrous situation stems from a trust written in the mid-1880s that transferred the property from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Crown, which transferred it to the city in 1882, under strict conditions meant to head off the spectre of commercialism.
It was the attempt in the late 1990s to stage Rootsfest in the park that sent the city to the Supreme Court seeking a ruling on whether a folk festival was an allowed use. The judge decided it was not. Beacon Hill is "a nature park and ornamental pleasure ground," said the judge, and even a weekend folk festival went against the trust.
The ruling, by Justice Dean Wilson, was a strict and proper interpretation of the law related to the trust. But even the judge realized it could be considered unrealistic to apply 150-year-old norms to 20th -- now 21st -- century ideas about public recreation.
So he suggested an out that's been sitting on the books for seven years now, waiting for someone to use.
"If there be public outcry for relief from the suffocating fetters of a past generation, then, the solution, in my judgment, is not the expedient manipulation of referents to accommodate a contemporary agenda ... but rather, to move for a termination of the trust, and conveyance of the trust, and conveyance of legal and beneficial title to the city. The property then may be administered free of the encumbrances imposed by the aspirations for us of a generation long since dead, and the interests of generations yet to be born."
If that isn't an invitation to get real and update the title, I don't know what is. City council just has to ask the province to rescind the trust and replace it in an instant with a new arrangement that recognizes it isn't illegal in 2005 to go to a company-sponsored picnic.
Just So You Know: The MLAs I talked to waffled on about how it's all in the city's hands, and we have to be aware of conflicting demands and on the one hand this and the other hand that, etc., etc.
What I was looking for was someone to stand up and invite the city to ask the province to fix this silliness once and for all. Local Liberals should recognize this issue could be a potential winner, because most of them have got nothing to lose.
***
It has been suggested by one of my Constant Readuhs that people just spontaneously congregate in Beacon Hill Park on the night that Luminara would occur in 2005, with their lanterns, and have our own little procession. No administration, no sponsorship, just a slow flash mob (perhaps a flashlight mob?). A stick in the eye for the No-Fun Brigade - they can't forbid an unofficial event, especially after it's underway.
Any interest?
(cross-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
victoria_bc
***
Time to fix silliness over Beacon Hill: Judge gave the city the means to change the rules that restrict use of park
Times Colonist January 25, 2005 Les Leyne Page: A10
This city owes the Friends of Beacon Hill Park a debt of gratitude. The long-running fun eradication campaign by the self-appointed guardians of the park has finally gone too far. The Canada Day picnic and the folk festival were nagged out of the park years ago and nobody did too much about it. They hassled all the road races for various charities out of the park and everyone just moved down the street and adapted as best they could. Their diligent patrols looking for any sign of people enjoying themselves at events where any kind of corporate logo may be on display has created a sense of paranoia to the point where people who try to organize fun events in the park tear their hair out in frustration at the mere mention of the Friends.
But the cancellation of this summer's enchanting night-time Luminara Festival, blamed directly on the park vigilantes, may have finally brought things to a head. We should all be grateful. Now that we're laughing-stocks of the province, known far and wide as the city so uptight and prim you can't even have fun in the park, maybe now Victoria will come to its senses.
After going along with this nonsense for years, like everyone else, I had a personal revelation a few months ago. Milling around with thousands of other people in the vast wasteland of Ogden Point parking lots a few months ago at a breast cancer fundraising run, the only-in-Victoria lunacy of it all hit me square in the face.
The 7,000 people could easily have been massed in the park enjoying themselves. But the event was shunted off to the barren parking lot, partly so bannered event tents with company names on them wouldn't offend the Friends. People were allowed to run through the park, but they weren't allowed to stop and enjoy it. It wasn't only the madness of surrendering the obvious place for a big happy get-together that struck me. It was how we all just shrugged and went along.
But Victoria doesn't seem to be going along with the end of Luminara. There's a big groundswell headed city council's way over this stupidity, and it will be very interesting to see who gets on top of it and rides it. Doing my best to foment revolution and overthrow the tyranny of the Friends, I contacted a couple of local MLAs. I was eager to hear some tough talk about how "they've gone too far" and perhaps some kind of call to action. But what I got from assorted people was mostly mush.
The political and legal groundwork behind the current ludicrous situation stems from a trust written in the mid-1880s that transferred the property from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Crown, which transferred it to the city in 1882, under strict conditions meant to head off the spectre of commercialism.
It was the attempt in the late 1990s to stage Rootsfest in the park that sent the city to the Supreme Court seeking a ruling on whether a folk festival was an allowed use. The judge decided it was not. Beacon Hill is "a nature park and ornamental pleasure ground," said the judge, and even a weekend folk festival went against the trust.
The ruling, by Justice Dean Wilson, was a strict and proper interpretation of the law related to the trust. But even the judge realized it could be considered unrealistic to apply 150-year-old norms to 20th -- now 21st -- century ideas about public recreation.
So he suggested an out that's been sitting on the books for seven years now, waiting for someone to use.
"If there be public outcry for relief from the suffocating fetters of a past generation, then, the solution, in my judgment, is not the expedient manipulation of referents to accommodate a contemporary agenda ... but rather, to move for a termination of the trust, and conveyance of the trust, and conveyance of legal and beneficial title to the city. The property then may be administered free of the encumbrances imposed by the aspirations for us of a generation long since dead, and the interests of generations yet to be born."
If that isn't an invitation to get real and update the title, I don't know what is. City council just has to ask the province to rescind the trust and replace it in an instant with a new arrangement that recognizes it isn't illegal in 2005 to go to a company-sponsored picnic.
Just So You Know: The MLAs I talked to waffled on about how it's all in the city's hands, and we have to be aware of conflicting demands and on the one hand this and the other hand that, etc., etc.
What I was looking for was someone to stand up and invite the city to ask the province to fix this silliness once and for all. Local Liberals should recognize this issue could be a potential winner, because most of them have got nothing to lose.
***
It has been suggested by one of my Constant Readuhs that people just spontaneously congregate in Beacon Hill Park on the night that Luminara would occur in 2005, with their lanterns, and have our own little procession. No administration, no sponsorship, just a slow flash mob (perhaps a flashlight mob?). A stick in the eye for the No-Fun Brigade - they can't forbid an unofficial event, especially after it's underway.
Any interest?
(cross-posted to
victoria_bc
