UVic guerrilla garden reappears

Youth protecting Yams
Youth protecting Yams, satirical take on the Youth protecting Youth issue*.

The guerrilla gardeners at UVic have — technically still are — struck again, replanting the garden in front of the McPherson Library. With the current community gardens under threat of being turned into a warehouse, students decided to take direct action and plant a garden in the middle of UVic. That work was subsequently ripped out by UVic in the middle of night, spawning this second effort.

While the UVic Student’s Society, perhaps  not surprisingly, lacks an official position on the ad-hoc community garden, one of the senior UVSS people I spoke to said the UVSS lacks even a more generic statement of support for community gardens at UVic and that it ” might be a good idea”.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Several people I spoke to seemed to think that the university will likely wait until the summer to rip out this garden 2.0, mostly to avoid further confrontation. Bunnies might not be the only things getting culled this summer.

*Youth Protecting Youth is a pro-life group that was denied club funding by the UVSS due to their use of shock tactics with images of aborted fetuses.

Community Initiatives Committee for the win

Active transportation and a new plan for Oak Bay Ave. Formerly homeless, these ideas are now part of the expanded role of the Community Initiatives Committee. To fit the expanded role, council added Councilor Nils Jensen and put out a call for interested members of the general public. As of today, that includes me. No date yet for the next meeting.

That Oak Bay Lodge resolution

As has been reported elsewhere, Oak Bay Council passed a resolution on Monday night that essentially tells private developers that they aren’t going to get that land rezoned. Unfortunately, the Times Colonist didn’t see fit to include any of the resolution, so here it is:

That the Minister of Health and VIHA be advised that Oak Bay Council supports:

(1)     the retention in public ownership of land, such as the Oak Bay Lodge site, which is currently zoned and used for the provision of long term complex care under the auspices of the provincial government;

(2)     the upgrading, expanding, enhancing or renewal of the community of care facility on the publicly owned Oak Bay lodge site to serve seniors in the Municipality and surrounding areas, maintaining or increasing the number of complex care beds and incorporating additional subsidized units, with an appropriate transition plan for existing residents.

The whole council was pretty clear in their discussion that they don’t see why VIHA is selling the land and that any such sales would be “short-sighted”, as Pam Copley said.  The RFP has already closed but the winner bidder hasn’t been announced and it is doubtful that VIHA fully reviewed all of them anyway, so this resolution comes at the perfect time. Now that both Saanich and Oak Bay councils have spoken so clearly, what happens next should be interesting, to say the least.