Public hearing – multiplexes and RS-zoning changes

September 13, 2023 by Administrator

September 13, 2023

City of Vancouver
453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1V4

Re: Public Hearing – Multiplexes and RS-Zoning Changes

Dear Mayor, Council and City Staff,

The Dunbar Residents’ Association wishes to state its opposition to the Multiplex proposal now before City Council. We have long been on record as supporting increased density to our area, but this proposal would allow excessive, overwhelming change without proper consultation with residents.

The information and engagement processes surrounding this proposal have been so poor that most residents aren’t aware of it even to this day. The reality is that not everyone is on social media or avidly following City Council or Shape Your City on the internet. No postcards were sent to affected addresses, so people did not receive any written notice either and are unaware of how severely impacted they soon may be.

While developers were heavily involved in the creation of this plan, community associations like ours weren’t even informed about it. Where were our workshops?

We urge Council to put the brakes on this proposal while a better engagement process takes place. Improve the plan. Then, begin with a small pilot project that tests its effectiveness and impact, and revise it accordingly before instituting something citywide.

The loss of trees and green space, along with parking and infrastructure problems are of major concern, especially when the resulting housing will be affordable to so few. And the plan would incur the demolition of older homes which have long provided affordable secondary suites for seniors, students and young families.

The DRA is a member of the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods and supports the points in its extensive submission on this issue. Please refer to CVN’s informative Appendix September 11, 2023.

Please consider our concerns and vote no to a plan that would drastically transform our neighbourhoods without the informed engagement of Vancouver residents.

Yours truly,
Board of Directors
Dunbar Residents’ Association

Rezoning application at 3581 West 30th Avenue

July 10, 2023 by Administrator

July 10, 2023

City of Vancouver
453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1V4

Re: Rezoning application at 3581 West 30th Avenue

Dear Mayor, Council and City Staff

The Dunbar Residents’ Association (DRA) Board writes in opposition to the proposed rezoning application for 3581 West 30th Avenue from RS-5 (Residential) District to RR-2A (Residential Rental) District, to permit the development of a four-storey market rental building at a height of 13.7 m (45 ft.) and a floor space ratio (FSR) of 1.75.

In referencing the Dunbar Community Vision (1998) “Approved Vision Direction 20.1 Community Involvement in Decision Making : Community residents should have more input, and more timely input into decision making about changes in their community, such as development projects, transit planning, street and traffic changes, park design etc.”

The application would set significant precedents for the Dunbar community given that the proposal is for a residential (non-arterial) street. We recommend that the applicant work with the Dunbar Residents’ Association, and in turn the affected residents, to come up with a proposal that works for both the applicant and the Dunbar community.

For example, we believe the Approved Vision Direction 7.1 should be considered. “More housing variety should be provided in Dunbar by rowhouses, four- and six-plexes and duplexes, which have many features of single-family houses but would cost less.”

Timely engagement with community members impacted by development could contribute to better outcomes for liveability in our neighbourhoods.

We appreciate and support the City’s efforts in adding density and a variety of forms of housing in all neighbourhoods and would like to be a partner in these discussions and decisions.

Yours truly,
Board of Directors, Dunbar Residents’ Association

Rezoning application for over-height seniors’ community care facility

July 5, 2023 by Administrator

July 5, 2023

City of Vancouver
453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1V4
Attention: Nicholas Danford, Rezoning Planner

Re: Rezoning application at 3329 – 3429 West 41st Avenue and 5649 – 5683 Blenheim Street for a Seniors’ Community Care Facility

Dear Mr. Danford,

It came to the Dunbar Residents’ Association (DRA) Board’s attention last month through communications with concerned residents in Dunbar that a rezoning application at 3329 – 3429 West 41st and 5649 – 5683 Blenheim for a Seniors’ Community Care Facility was linked to the Dunbar Community Vision.

Having had several conversations with Amica and Pooni Group, we were aware of the proposed project. We were, however, not aware during those discussions that the project was proposed under the 1998 Dunbar Community Vision. We had assumed incorrectly that the project was being proposed under the enabling six-storey Secured Rental Policy, allowing for a maximum height of seventy-two feet. We were also not aware at that time of the project’s proposed height of 94 feet.

Once aware of these aspects of the project, members of the DRA Board began to undertake a careful review of the application and became aware of the project’s proposed height and massing and the significant impact it would have on liveability for area residents, especially those to the north of the project.

Although the application is linked to the Dunbar Community Vision, many aspects of the proposed project depart from its stated intentions.

Vision Direction 9.1 Seniors Housing identifies that “Seniors should have a variety of choices of housing that allow them to stay in the community as they age (e.g., congregate housing, intermediate and extended care).” However, with Vision Direction 9.2 Seniors’ Lowrise Housing, “Lowrise buildings (up to four storeys) committed to seniors should be permitted, provided the scale and design fit into the neighbourhood. They should be located near local shopping and transit.”

It is in Vision Direction 9.2 that the application departs significantly from the Dunbar Community Vision, specifically in scale and design that fit in to the neighbourhood. Further, although not stated, one would assume four storeys to be in the range of forty feet.

The project’s proposed height of 94 feet, width of 496 feet, and depth of 129 feet, is a substantial change from the properties to the north where houses range in height from 25 to 35 feet and the average lot’s width is 50 feet. This difference in scale is significant.

Further, the design of the project needs to be sensitive to the fact that the lots immediately to the north are on average one hundred feet in depth. The atypical depth of these properties would mean that the shadowing would be even more significant than if their depths were the more-common one hundred twenty feet. The design needs to keep this in mind to maintain the liveability of the properties to

Further, the Dunbar Vision document notes that Seniors’ Housing Rezonings Vision Direction 9.2 “…would be implemented through site-specific rezonings. That means that when a group that is organizing housing for seniors finds a site, they would be able to apply for a rezoning. Each rezoning would be considered in consultation with neighbours.” We have learned from the neighbouring owners that there has not been meaningful consultation and they feel that their concerns have been neither heard nor addressed.

This requirement for consultation is restated in Vision Direction 20.1 Community Involvement in Decision Making where “Community residents should have more input, and more timely input, into decision making about changes in their community, such as development projects, transit planning, street and traffic changes, park design, etc.”

Vision Direction 14.2 addresses Preserving Existing Private Greenery. “There should be more preservation of existing trees and major shrubs on private sites than is now required.” With the current proposal, the adjacent neighbours will experience an irrevocable loss to nature with the proposed removal of seventy mature trees at the back of the property including the wildlife that inhabits those trees. More should be done to preserve existing trees and major shrubs.

As stewards of the Dunbar Community Vision, the DRA Board is requesting the following for the rezoning application with a view to maintaining liveability for those who would be impacted by the proposal:

1. Consultation – that there be sufficient consultation with neighbours who would be affected by this application to ensure that their concerns are addressed. Stefan Aepli, Architect AIBC, SIA, LEED AP, a member of the Urban Design Panel, advocated that there be more study for impact on neighbours.

2. Ceiling height – that the ceiling height for each floor be reviewed. At the Urban Design Panel review on May 24, 2023, Bryce Rositch, Architect AIBC, AAA, FRAIC, architect for the project, specified that nine-foot ceilings would provide sufficient air circulation. The drawings however show an allowance for ten-foot ceilings on most floors.

3. Height allowance for mechanical equipment – with respect to the height required for mechanical equipment, many members of the Urban Design Panel thought that the height allowance for mechanical equipment could be reduced. Reza Mousakhani, P.Eng., CPHD commented that at least a foot could be taken off.

4. Massing – that the overall massing be reviewed with a view to breaking up the massing so that more sunlight can filter to the north. Kai Hotson, Architect AIBC, member of the Urban Design Panel referred to the project as “a big wall.”

5. Setbacks – that setbacks of the building mass to the property lines be increased, most importantly the setbacks to the north, with a view to reducing the impact on neighbouring properties.

6. Shadowing – that minimizing shadowing to the north be a component of a review of height, massing and building setbacks.

7. Fence to the north of the lane – we recommend that the design decisions for the fence be made in consultation with the neighbouring properties, that it be built with environmentally friendly materials, that along with suitable planning it provide privacy, and that it be light-friendly so that light can filter to the properties to the north.

8. Traffic study – that a thorough traffic study be conducted for minimizing congestion and maximizing pedestrian safety, keeping in mind that an increase in traffic would be generated not only by the current proposal but also the six-storey development to the west and the five-storey development to the east.

9. Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) – we recommend that consultation take place with the DRA for input on what contributions would add value to the community.

Yours truly,
Board of Directors, Dunbar Residents’ Association

Let’s Talk About Seniors

June 12, 2023 by Administrator

by Bruce Gilmour, DRA President

As a very visible presence on Dunbar Street, with my white cane and beautiful companion dog Falina, I get stopped a lot by people who know I’m president of the Dunbar Residents’ Association. Very often, the ensuing conversations are about seniors’ issues – no surprise, since the latest census shows that in our area, more than 20 percent of the population is 65 or older.

For example, in the Stong’s checkout line, someone who identifies me with the DRA says: “Do you want to know what you are missing? There is no dialogue about seniors’ housing and supports.” Outside, a 72-year-old woman stops me on the street to say the removal of her nearby bus stop may force her to leave Dunbar. “The demands on my strength do not allow me to shop and safely return home with what is now a four – when it was a two-block – walk to my closest stop,” she says.

Then, at a recent library session on the resiliency of the elderly in climate extremes, questions arise about the lack of local services for seniors and why they must travel to the Kerrisdale Seniors’ Centre to access them.

One hopeful sign is that the new city council is planning to create a dedicated full-time planning position focusing on seniors. Here’s what I think that planner could do to help:

• Open a conversation with seniors about making Dunbar a “complete community” – as envisaged in the Vancouver Plan – that works for them, as well as for other residents.

• Explore how the city can ensure that street-level retail aligns with the needs of local residents.

• Ensure that transit serves the needs of seniors, including the provision of enough easily walkable bus stops.

• Look at the recreational and cultural opportunities in Dunbar. Do civic amenities like libraries and community centres offer what seniors want and need?

• Ensure streets and sidewalks are designed to serve pedestrians of all ages and abilities. Adequate benches and controlled crosswalks encourage walking and help residents stay healthy and connected.

• Ensure that seniors have ways of staying engaged and informed at the neighbourhood level, whether through websites, social media or printed communications.

The DRA wants your ideas and feedback about how seniors can age well in Dunbar. Email us at dunbarseniors@dunbar-vancouver.org.

Salmonberry Days are back!

May 12, 2023 by Administrator

Theme : Re-discovery

May 17th to 31st 2023 Dunbar’s Environment Festival

Among the newer happenings are:

1. New birders’ walk with Graham Sunderland

2. Visit City Farmer Compost Demonstration Garden with Michael Levenston

3. Pollinator Planting with Farmer Alex Kaiser

4. 40 Years Behind the Wheel with Angus McIntyre

Welcome to the mini-version of the Salmonberry Days Festival for May 2023. The planning committee had started to plan for our 2020 event when COVID arrived and everything was put on hold. We put several video walks and talks together as we all started to Zoom. Three years later we are embarking on a smaller version of two weeks. This will allow us to monitor attendance and get feedback for the events. Check out the guide for new and repeat activities, especially if you moved to our neighbourhood in recent years. Most events are free and led by volunteers.

And of course we know – with gratitude – that Salmonberry Days events are located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people.

The Salmonberry Days Fair, traditionally held on the last weekend of Salmonberry Days at the Dunbar Community Centre, will not take place this year.

Remember World Migratory Bird Day on May 13th this year. And check out the campaign to name the Canada Jay/Whiskey Jack as Canada’s national bird. Birding is a wonderful activity, available to all. http://www.vancouverbirdweek.ca

Please keep a lookout for the Dunbar-in-Bloom pamphlets in June.

And of course we know – with gratitude – that Salmonberry Days events are located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people.

The Salmonberry Days Fair, traditionally held on the last weekend of Salmonberry Days at the Dunbar Community Centre, will not take place this year.

Please keep a lookout for the Dunbar-in-Bloom pamphlets in June.

Dunbar’s future is in your hands

October 4, 2022 by Administrator

by Carol Volkart, DRA Newsletter Editor

When you cast your vote for the next City Council on Saturday, October 15, 2022 you won’t just be choosing people or parties – you’ll be voting for how Dunbar and the entire city will develop over the next 30 years.
    That’s because this election will also determine whether the Vancouver and Broadway Plans, which set the stage for massive densification throughout the city by 2050, will go ahead as planned, be altered dramatically, or withdrawn altogether.
    For Dunbar, that means you’ll be deciding whether you agree to the prospect of 12-to-25-plus-storey towers in some areas of the neighbourhood, plus much denser development throughout.
    The controversial plans were approved by City Council in June and July after heated public hearings, heavy correspondence to council, and many amendments. However, they will not be implemented until the next council takes office, so their future depends on the people we elect this fall.
    The Vancouver Plan is mostly a “framework” setting out directions for future growth, with many specifics still lacking. The much-further-advanced Broadway Plan, which will be incorporated into the Vancouver Plan, gives a clearer idea of what we can expect citywide if the overall plan proceeds.
    And that is density – lots of it. The Broadway Plan allows 20- to-40-storey towers, as many as three per block, in a 500-block area along the Broadway Corridor, from 1^st to 16^th, from Vine to Clark Drive.
    The Vancouver Plan is less specific, but a map shows only a small proportion of the city reserved for relatively low-density housing of up to six units per lot. Everywhere else is denser, with apartment buildings and towers of various heights allowed.

A key element of both plans is the disappearance of Vancouver’s 23 traditional neighbourhoods, including Dunbar. Long considered the basic building blocks of the city, they are to be replaced by a handful of generic “neighbourhood types” scattered all over the city.

    The two plans also dramatically change the treatment of neighbourhood voices. Contrary to past practice, the city did not engage neighbourhood residents or their representatives in planning the future of their areas. Instead, it worked with selected “stakeholder” groups to create the plans, then released them to the general public for input.
    Previous neighbourhood plans created by residents, such as the Dunbar Community Vision approved by city council in 1998 after two years of work by community members, will be repealed, as has already happened in Broadway neighbourhoods. Chief City Planner Theresa O’Donnell has said the old plans are outdated and incapable of dealing with the city’s current challenges.
    What can Dunbar residents expect if the Vancouver Plan proceeds?

Our neighbourhood will look very different. Many more and bigger buildings will fill once-single-family lots where trees and gardens flourished. Apartment buildings and some retail will move off Dunbar Street and into what have traditionally been single-family areas. There will be towers.

The area we’ve known as Dunbar will become three different “neighbourhood types” – a multiplex area, a neighbourhood centre, and a rapid transit area. The Vancouver Plan map is fuzzy about boundaries, but the two latter categories appear to take up most of Dunbar.

The relatively small multiplex area could allow up to six units per residential lot, at heights of up to three storeys. However, six storeys would be allowed for rental apartment buildings or social housingin these areas.

Dunbar Street and a vaguely defined area around it will be called a neighbourhood centre. What will happen here is a bit confusing. In late 2021, council got a jump on the Vancouver Plan by approving six-storey rentals on arterials like Dunbar, and four-to-five-storey rental apartments on adjacent blocks.

However, the newly approved plan appears to allow much higher buildings around the main shopping street. It says buildings of up to 12 storeys will be allowed, with the latter “within a block or two of the local shopping street.” For Dunbar, this would mean west to Highbury and Wallace, east to Collingwood and Blenheim.

Forty-first Avenue and an area that appears to run from 33^rd to 49^th will be a rapid transit area, described as “generally within a 10-minute walk of existing or future rapid transit stations.” For these areas, the plan allows up to 12-18 storeys, with “25-plus in strategic locations.”

As a low-density, high-amenity area, Dunbar is a high priority in the Vancouver Plan. Along with most of the city’s west side, it is categorized as an “opportunity area” that can be used to improve equity citywide, one of three main goals of the Vancouver Plan (along with reconciliation and resilience.)

CityHallWatch, a website that keeps a close eye on civic issues, notes the only party with a stated policy on the Broadway and Vancouver Plans is TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, which says it will withdraw them if it wins a majority. All the other parties have indicated support for the plans through press releases or other methods.

CityHallWatch’s summary of the plans are at: https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2022/08/14/2022-election-crucial-on-broadway-plan-vancouver-plan-future

Thoughts from a Broadway Plan Rally

July 15, 2022 by Administrator

By Bruce A. Gilmour, DRA President

On Saturday, May 7, I joined a rally at Vancouver City Hall! I gathered with those curious, concerned, hoping to learn more, or wanting to voice their opinions to the current Mayor and Council about the Broadway Plan and citizen participation in civic democracy.

Regarding engagement at the neighbourhood level, has the time arrived for Vancouver neighbourhoods to petition Council on what change we are prepared to adjust to in housing mix in the traditional single-family neighbourhoods? For example, mixed zoning changes one or two blocks off arterials. A housing design plan that provides for single-family, duplex, fourplex, and sixplex housing –market, fixed income, rental, and seniors’ housing and supports.

Would this zoning approach protect views, natural light and trees, sustain form and character, and attract the eight-to-80 demographics wanting active and healthy living? Let’s have the conversation at the local level to learn what we can live with as we plan for growth and change. The Broadway Plan rally raised the following questions for me:

Affordability – for who?
Capacity – are City Council and staff locked into building up without considering unrealized zoning potential?
Trust – does getting the plan through before the end of the current Council’s mandate engender trust?
Liveability – has a reliable inventory of what residents define as their neighbourhood values been completed?

Turning to the Vancouver Plan, I ask whether it has created the opportunity for engagement and feedback at the neighbourhood level about residents’ definition of liveability. This would include walkability, retail diversity, accessible transit services, rent controls, green and park space for play, seniors’ housing and supports, and ‘K’ to 12 education.

Does densification of housing supply threaten these neighbourhood values with the introduction of medium (six-storey) to high (40-storey) towers to increase housing stock? Common thought is yes.

Housing is needed, but are taller buildings going to preserve neighbourhood values defining liveability? As often is the case, we did not know what we had until it was taken away – irreplaceable, taken-for-granted values, such as faces at the street level, ambience, mom-and-pop commercial retail diversity, the public realm!

I live in a single-family home where we raised a family. I experience overwhelming gratitude for living in a friendly, welcoming neighbourhood. I am incredibly grateful for the neighbourhood values which have meant a positive experience of liveability. I accept that growth and change are inevitable. I also understand my responsibility to stay informed, to advocate, and participate in citizen-created forums.

The past two years of COVID ruined opportunities for face-to-face citizen participation. Consequently, news talk radio interviews, mailouts, print media coverage, surveys, and social media have been utilized to educate and message the taxpayer. Has the process been effective? Do you feel you have any agency in this far-reaching government-led neighbourhood planning? Has the City put in a checkmark in the community-consultation box? The jury is out on this decision! Perhaps more to learn in this fall’s municipal elections?

What you don’t know can hurt you

July 15, 2022 by Administrator

by Carol Volkart, DRA Newsletter Editor

If you don’t know about two massive city-changing plans that will transform the look, feel and texture of Vancouver over the next 30 years, you’re not alone.

Mention the Broadway Plan and Vancouver Plan to most people on the street, and you’re likely to hear, “I didn’t know about that!”

The plans, both expected to be approved by City Council in the next two months, will densify the city significantly by 2050, allowing high-rises in many new areas and more intensive building everywhere.

The Broadway Plan, which covers 500 blocks from Vine to Clark Drive, from 1^st to 16^th, will allow as many as three towers per block, some as high as 40 storeys. The overall Vancouver Plan replaces traditional neighbourhoods with a patchwork of generic neighbourhood types based on the kinds of buildings each allows. All include more density; some allow high-rises where none have been permitted before.

Why don’t you know about this? Probably because you don’t belong to the “stakeholder” groups targeted by the City in the years it’s been developing the plans. Certain groups, including the building industry, were heavily consulted, but curiously, neighbourhood groups and associations were scarcely notified, if at all.

Another reason is the process – top-down, with staff drawing up the plans, then inviting feedback through online surveys and Zoom workshops. For non-stakeholders who don’t follow City issues closely, especially during COVID, it was easy to miss.

Vancouverites are accustomed to a different kind of planning process; traditionally they’ve been deeply involved in creating plans for their neighbourhoods. A prime example was the Dunbar Community Vision, approved by City Council in 1998 after Dunbar residents spent nearly two years figuring out how their neighbourhood should evolve.

Dunbar has already been affected by the early approval of one aspect of the Vancouver Plan. The “Streamlining Rental” initiative passed last December allows six-storey rental buildings on Dunbar and four- to-five-storey apartment buildings on adjacent blocks.

As for further impacts, a muddy Vancouver Plan map shows Dunbar divided into at least three neighbourhood “types” – “Rapid Transit” along 41^st (meaning towers); “Neighbourhood Centre” along Dunbar (meaning an emphasis on shops and mid-rise construction); and “Multiplex Area” for the rest (purpose-built rental housing and “missing middle” ownership.)

While the City calls the Vancouver Plan an essential long-term strategy to support future growth, local architect and planning critic Brian Palmquist isn’t impressed. He says it will mean a continuation of the “years-long practice of spot rezoning a pox of development across our city, so that no resident of any neighbourhood will know how long their neighbourhood, their street, their view, their green space, their access to light will be preserved, or even respected.”

For more information: Vancouver Plan at https://vancouverplan.ca/, Broadway Plan at https://shapeyourcity.ca/broadway-plan

For analysis of what it all means, see Brian Palmquist’s City Conversations Substack at For Broadway Plan, see For Vancouver Plan,

CityHallWatch https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/ puts out a constant flow of information about city issues.

Blind Transit Rider Starts Website to Fight Bus-Stop Cuts

May 4, 2022 by Administrator

By Carol Volkart, DRA Newsletter Editor

More danger. Extra time. Less independence. That’s what Bus Balancing has meant for a blind Dunbar resident who has started a website and petition to publicize the impact of TransLink’s bus-stop-cutting program.

“I now have to ask strangers to guide me along streets and across intersections,” says Stephanie, a physically fit woman whose carefully established routines were turned upside-down by the loss of stops on the No. 7 and No. 2 routes.

TransLink says its Bus Balancing program is aimed at improving travel times and reliability while maintaining convenient access for passengers, but Stephanie says that for those coping with mobility or disability issues, it’s the opposite.

“I am very independent, but removing the bus stops is a huge problem and will be for so many other people,” she says. “I see it stopping people from going out and about, so it’s more isolation for seniors and people with disabilities.”

She says much of TransLink’s “propaganda” about Bus Balancing is misleading, and some is simply not true.

While TransLink says the program could cut two-and-a-half minutes off some one-way trips, providing an easier and more pleasant transit experience, that isn’t the reality for those struggling to get to more distant stops, she says. Its statement that it wouldn’t cut stops in busy convenient areas is the opposite of what she has experienced. Its assurance that bus stops won’t be so far apart as to make transit inaccessible is also not true. Many are four blocks apart, an impossible distance for those with mobility and disability issues, frail seniors, and people carrying young children and loads of groceries.

In fact, the new program “excludes seniors and people with disabilities from being able to access parts of transit so it’s a loss of mobility,” she says. “It also affects anyone who has had a stop removed where they live and for people with small children it makes it more difficult to get around.”

The reality, she says, is that Bus Balancing is “backward thinking and does not provide the service that is needed now or into the future.”

Stephanie gave three examples of how bus-stop cuts have made her life more inconvenient, stressful and dangerous:

Fourth and Vine was a shopping hub for her, with its Safeway, Whole Foods and Shoppers Drug Mart on three corners easily accessible from east and westbound stops at Vine. The stops were removed when the No. 4 and 7 routes were “balanced” earlier this year. Now she gets off a stop early, at Balsam, and must depend on finding someone who will guide her the extra block to Whole Foods; she says it takes three months to fully learn a new block. “For the first time in 15 years of getting my groceries at Whole Foods, one of the employees there guided me to the bus stop because it was further for me to walk and it was a new stop and I had lots of food on my back, so lots of weight.”

Removal of the No. 2 stop at 10th and Macdonald has cost her time, independence and added a dangerous intersection to her route. “It is a transfer point so people would get off the bus at 10th then walk to Broadway and turn right to catch the 99, 9 and 14 when the 14 was going east on Broadway,” she notes. Now, she says, she must catch an earlier bus to make her transfer on time, get off at Broadway on the north side of Macdonald “and have to ask a stranger to guide me across the street so I can get the bus. That intersection is a very busy intersection with people running red lights and turning right on to Macdonald.”

Removal of the No. 7 stop at 26^th and Dunbar has caused problems for her regular trip east along West 25^th to Main, where she stocks up on two to three months’ worth of meat. She used to get off the northbound No. 7 bus at 26^th, walk to 25^th and turn right to catch the No. 25 on West 25th. Now she stays on the bus until 18^th, then crosses Dunbar to catch the eastbound No. 25 at 17^th. She chooses that route instead of crossing Dunbar at 25^th because she’s concerned about aligning with the crosswalk when crossing such a wide street. “It adds up to 15 minutes to my trip and is an added stress.”

Stephanie says she started the website to draw attention to the problems Bus Balancing is creating for herself and others. She’s especially concerned because TransLink plans to expand the program throughout the region at the rate of four to eight routes a year, so all Metro residents will face similar issues.

Her website includes a petition link and offers readers a form they can fill out to tell TransLink what an “awesome” transit system looks like to them.

“Let’s not let TransLink’s short-sightedness dictate our lack of access to transit,” she writes. “Let’s design a transit system that is accessible for all people and one that is good for businesses and our community at large.”

Ron Hatch: A Life of Books and Adventure (1939–2021)

April 21, 2022 by Administrator

Residents involved in *The Story of Dunbar* remember the kind and professional support of local publisher Ron Hatch, who died in November.

By Carol Volkart, Newsletter Editor

“When I heard of Ron Hatch’s passing last fall, I googled him and found an outpouring – a flood – of appreciation for him and his work coming from the province’s finest writers,” recalls Dunbar resident Helen Spiegelman. “How amazing that he made time to help a little committee pull together a history of their neighbourhood.”

The history was The Story of Dunbar: Voices of a Vancouver Neighbourhood. Ron Hatch was the quiet man who helped his neighbours capture the century-long transformation of their community from forest to suburb in 12 polished chapters, complete with old photographs, and high-quality index and sources sections.

The Dunbar book is among about 300 titles published by Ronsdale Press, the company Ron Hatch and his wife Veronica bought (and renamed) in 1988 after his retirement as a UBC English professor. Headquartered in their West 21^st home, it became a strong and highly regarded press in the B.C. and Canadian literary world.

Dunbar’s efforts to capture its early voices before they were gone fit well with Ronsdale’s goals of giving Canadians new insights into themselves and their country.

But why would a world adventurer, mountaineer and lover of the wilderness choose to set up as a book publisher in his retirement? Asked about it when he won the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award in 2014, Hatch said: “I felt I could add something.”

What he added was apparent in the torrent of appreciation unleashed when he died on Nov. 25. Author after author – poets, biographers, novelists – wrote online tributes to his fastidious editing, his kind support, his honest opinion delivered, as one writer said, “with a twinkle in his eye.”

Spiegelman, who took over the editing of the Dunbar book after the death of the original editor Peggy Schofield in 2005, had the Ron Hatch experience first-hand:

“As I settled into that committee following the death of dear Peggy Schofield, I sensed the presence of invisible forces guiding our work, providing us with behind-the-scenes support that made our project so much more than it would have been, and our work so much smoother and easier to do. In retrospect, it looks like a fairy tale,” she wrote.

“I met with the kindly man on West 21st a few times without realizing that he was the wizard making it all happen. He would be the one who sent us our copy editor, Naomi Pauls, who read our manuscripts and sat with us at weekly meetings at Pam Chambers’ dining room table hashing out details. He would be the one who thought of bringing in a little behind-the-scenes team that distilled out of the sprawling text (400+ pages long) the meticulously detailed index at the back of the book, so people could look up references to things and people that they were interested in. He would have been the one who had the eye and the experience to approve a really great cover image, clear photos, and graceful design inside.

“In all those tributes to Ron Hatch that I read online, I could see the same Ron Hatch that we’d known, smiling, gentle, helping make magic happen.”

Hatch was so notoriously modest that his friend Alan Twigg organized a celebration of the Hatches’ publishing venture in 2013 because he felt that “Ron’s low-key and determinedly non-self-referential manner was being under-recognized.” On Hatch’s death, Twigg, an author and creator of BC Bookworld wrote: “A keen environmentalist, a meticulous proofreader and a courageous soul, Ron Hatch was a gentleman and a scholar who never sought the limelight; always empowering others to do so.”

Dunbar Residents’ Association board member Sonia Wicken recalls Hatch as a casually dressed, quiet man who could be spotted mailing off packages at the local post office or walking his black Labs in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, he’d show up on her doorstep with a royalty cheque for the Dunbar book.

When the DRA and Hatch sat down to negotiate the book contract, there was no drama, says Wicken, who was DRA treasurer at the time. The DRA had to guarantee pre-sales of 2,000 for a 5,000-copy run, which it easily did, and the book sold well afterwards. “He didn’t lose money on it, so we were pleased about that,” she says. Hatch didn’t come across as a salesman, she notes, but he did a great job of distributing the book, working hard to get it into the airport and onto the ferries.

Hatch, born in 1939, grew up in Dunbar after his parents moved here from Thunder Bay, Ont. in about 1947. Except for a few years working for CUSO in India and studying and teaching in Europe, he made Dunbar his home. The house where he lived and ran his publishing operation was a block from where he grew up, his grandson Forrest Berman-Hatch wrote in a Ubyssey obituary in December.

But Hatch was also an adventurer and traveller, with a passion for mountains, wilderness and foreign scenes. As a young couple, the Hatches took “epic motorcycle journeys across South Asia and the Middle East and spent time in the Himalayas so my grandfather could climb among the world’s most legendary mountains,” wrote Berman-Hatch. “He completed multiple first ascents but would never mention them unless pressed.” Later, there were sabbaticals abroad, but always the wilderness too – hiking in Whistler, summers off-grid in northern B.C., and a cabin on Hollyburn Mountain. “He loved that cabin and would go up there to read manuscripts under a propane lantern for decades,” Berman-Hatch recalled.

And underscoring it all, literature “of the kind that champions the values of freedom, decency and critical thinking,” Berman-Hatch wrote. “To my grandfather, literature was about maintaining civilization in the face of darkness.”

Twigg recalled Hatch as “old-fashioned in the best possible ways,” never speaking unkindly of others, saving money on stamps by dropping off cheque payments by hand. “At a crowded literary event,” he remembered, “I once spontaneously introduced Ron Hatch to the person next to me by saying, ‘This is Ron Hatch. He tells the truth and he does things on time.’”