Transit strike

Bus services could shut down
Nov. 27 if deal not reached.
P2 and at langaravoice.ca

Pattern designer

Local pattern designer and
entrepreneur turns worldly
experiences into print. P4-5

Voice Radio

This week's podcast covers traffic
congestion issues and culture of
city cycling. langaravoice.ca

PRODUCED BY LANGARA JOURNALISM STUDENTS | WWW.LANGARAVOICE.CA

NOVEMBER 21, 2019 + VOL. 52 NO. 06 > VANCOUVER, B.C.

Golf
course
at risk

Langara plans to
be part of
consultation over
land development

By STEVEN CHANG

he Vancouver Board of

Parks and Recreation is now

considering new develop-
ment on the Langara Golf Course.

Green Party commissioner Dave
Demers, the park board vice chair,
thinks the golf course has potential
as a sport’s field, freshwater swim-
ming location or more walking trails.

“There have been talks about
considering golf courses that are
owned by the park board in the city
of Vancouver for partial develop-
ment costs for housing,” Demers
said. Any plans for housing devel-
opment would be made by the City
of Vancouver; plans for recreational
development would be made by the
park board.

Affordable housing in proximity
to Langara College has been a long-
standing issue for students.

The Langara, Fraserview, and
McCleery golf courses total 464
acres, some 15 per cent of all park
land under Park Board jurisdiction,
according to park board minutes.
The number of golfers using the
three golf courses plunged by more
than 31 per cent since the late 1990s,
as the population of Vancouver has
increased by 20 per cent.

The City of Vancouver is expected
to start planning strategies in 2020.

Langara College, which is not
involved with the golf course, has
no claim on the municipal land.

However, Langara’s facilities
director Dwayne Doornbosch said
it would provide feedback to the city
as part of community consultations.

“Any recreational scape adjacent
to the college would likely be popu-
lar with our community,” he said.

Maurizio Grande, a South
Vancouver resident and owner of
Marble Art Canada Ltd., uses the
golf course 15 to 20 times a year.

“The course is meant for the public
to use, and it has already been cut
down in the past to build the
college,” Grande said. “The fantasy
to create a stadium for sports is just
absurd. If the city is making money,
then they should plant more trees
and spend it on maintenance.”

,

Planting more pollination-friendly plants can give pollinators food, shelter and help increase their population. FR/c4 BULMAN PHOTO

Pathway for pollinators

Community creates gardens for bees, butterflies and

By LAUREN GARGIULO

ith a decrease in
pollinators around
the world, the Sunset
community wants to
create a greener, bee friendly neigh-
bourhood by implementing the
Sunset Pollinator Pathway Project.
The pathway project involves
volunteers plant-
ing more polli-
nator friendly
gardens in
their yards to
create a path-
way between the
parks in the area.
They hope to
provide more
shelter and food,
giving pollinators
a reason to fly farther away from the
parks and support an increase in
population.

Due to growing cities, use of pesti-
cides and the spread of diseases,
pollinators have been on the decline
and yet they are essential to our

“There's a lot of
effort to encourage
people to plant more
pollinator friendly
plants.”

— SCOTT PEARCE, GARDENWORKS

survival.

They pollinate our plants, provid-
ing us with fruit, nuts, flowers and
honey.

Angela Crampton, a Sunset resi-
dent and organizer of the Sunset
Pollinator Pathway Project, encour-
ages anyone who has space in their
own yard, to consider leaving a patch
of their garden to grow wild, which
attracts more pollinators.

“People are
really unaware
of how urban
areas foster such
biodiversity,”
said Andony
Melathopou-
los, Oregon
State Univer-
sity’s pollinator
health exten-
sions specialist
and host of PolliNation Podcast.

The goal of the Sunset Pollina-
tor Pathway Project is to connect
the three main parks in the Sunset
neighbourhood: Sunset Park,
MacDonald Park and Memo-
rial South Park, by providing more

plants in and between those parks
that can become a full-season habitat
for native pollinators.

“It’s a bit of a balance between the
active parks and maintenance and
being realistic,” Crampton said.

Getting permission for a
community garden from the
Vancouver Board of Parks and
Recreation is a slow process.
However, Crampton said they have
a lot of support as the Sunset neigh-
bourhood and the parks board share
an interest in increasing biodiversity
in parks.

“There’s a lot of effort to encour-
age people to plant more pollinator-
friendly plants,” said Scott Pearce of
Garden Works in Burnaby. Garden-
Works is a store that sells plants and
supplies for gardeners.

‘They also supply a list of pollina-
tor friendly plants on their website
for bees, ladybugs, butterflies and
hummingbirds.

“Twenty-five years ago, people
would ask if a plant attracted bees,
and if you said yes they wouldn't
want it and now it’s the opposite,”
Pearce said.

birds

Pollinators provide honey, fruit,
flowers and nuts. £R/c4 BULMAN PHOTO