As I went back through old issues of the Harbour Spiel to write this month’s feature, I kept getting lost in our past. Myrtle Winchester published her first issue of the Harbour Spiel in 1991 and though it doesn’t sound that long ago, it’s easy to forget how life was back then.
That year I was a wide-eyed country boy struggling to keep up with an overwhelming amount of work in my first year of university. I remember returning for a weekend to find this new little paper. I liked it but it probably didn’t matter much to me at the time because I was done with Pender Harbour and knew I’d never live here again.
The summer before, I worked at Lowes Resort renting boats to van loads of people who travelled here just to go sports fishing. The next summer I landed a job working on a salmon packer and travelled the coast. There was plenty of fish and timber and it seemed there would always be lots of work here because of it. Well, in a few short years we know what happened ― the backbone of local industry shifted and we were faced with an uneasy reliance on development and retirement.
The changing economy had a pronounced effect on the character of the town and Myrtle recognized that. As the ’90s progressed, she editorialized about changing attitudes in the area and placed a lot of the blame on what Al Lloyd used to call "Kitsilano transplants." She rallied for more industry in the face of what she perceived was a growing tide of NIMBY-ism.
We tend to idealize the past and one need only go back another 20 years to Howard White's Peninsula Voice to find evidence of NIMBYs, problems in the fishing industry, spats with local government . . . or a column by Al Lloyd. When I went to high school here, my friends and I called Pender Harbour a "vegetable garden." The nickname referred to what we saw as a place overrun with "cottonheads" ― old people.
I mention it to show not what insensitive jerks we were but how, even in the ’80s, there was a clear notion that retirement was challenging as our top industry. But in the economic vacuum left after the decline in forestry and fishing, it was fortunate we did attract those people who don’t rely on local employment yet still need services and new homes. Without them, the area might not have transitioned as well as it did and they may be the only reason we have enough families left to keep our schools open.
But as our winter population dwindles a little more each year, I think we’re seeing that the retirement economy is a false one. A sure sign of where we may be headed is a growing trend for local businesses to reduce hours or close altogether during the off-season. It’s just a symptom of what Myrtle wrote about in 1991 but, if it continues, even Kitsilano retirees won’t want to live here.
And then where would we be?
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