Although I fully understand the desperate need to solve the issue of funding for an organization such as The Land Conservancy, I am absolutely baffled by its quest to sell property it owns.
Properties here on Vancouver Island, and elsewhere in B.C. have been gifted in wills to TLC with the condition that those properties remain intact in perpetuity, not bulldozed to build more condominiums or developments.
The legacy that those individuals intended were clear. Properties were gifted to TLC to act as caring stewards of the land. However, that is not what is happening at all.
TLC can easily sell these lands for development, to reduce their liabilities, and return to a more financially stable position.
Doesn’t conservancy mean that they protect something and not sell it to the highest bidder? Isn’t that why they were gifted to this organization, so that those lands would be protected forever, and not developed, not split into a multitude of lots, but protected for all to enjoy? It certainly makes one think seriously about gifting something.
Every time I visit Vancouver and Stanley Park, I marvel at the vision of the men that protected that land for a park. They could have just as easily developed that land – it is prime and valuable.
I guess it boils down to what we, as a society and as residents, want to build and be remembered for.
It is not likely that there will be great memories of a condominium development on what was once a lakeside property or a working farm.
We are losing something here.
Ann Moxley
Saanich