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Get involved: save a park

David Jordan | | 01 Jun 2007

When Laurence Brown moved into his West Side house in 1972, he appreciated the tranquility of living on the eastern border of the UBC Endowment Lands forest. It would be another 15 years before he realized that he was living just half a block from what had once been a natural bog – a rare habitat dating back to the ice age.

In 1997, Brown and a handful of neighbours decided to restore the Camosun Bog to its former glory. More than 2,500 volunteer hours later, a portion of the bog has been almost completely restored. The tranquil oasis includes a pond in the rainy months that is home to mallards and herons, and an array of native plants including blueberry bushes and Labrador tea. Ringing the bog is a boardwalk offering joggers, Saturday strollers and dog walkers a 360-degree view of the restored bog.

“For me, this has been a perfect retirement project,” says Brown, a former metallurgical engineer who has devoted just about every Saturday morning to the bog since 1997. “I’ve got no technical background in bogs at all,” he says. “I’ve just picked up this stuff as I’ve gone along.”

The Camosun Bog is just one of dozens of restoration projects in parks throughout the Lower Mainland. From the UBC forest to the Belcarra shoreline on the Indian Arm inlet, scores of volunteers have donated countless hours to restoring salmon streams, cleaning up shorelines and uprooting invasive plant species.

The Greater Vancouver Regional District makes it easy to get involved in local park restoration projects. It manages regional parks in 21 municipalities, and oversees a network of volunteer programs. Each park region has its own society, and each society might oversee numerous volunteer groups. The Camosun Bog Restoration Group, for example, is part of the Pacific Park Society.

The bog group draws up a work plan each year at an annual meeting, and that plan is vetted by the
Pacific Park Society before being forwarded to the GVRD for formal approval. For a list of participating parks and contact information, visit www.parkpartners.ca/associations.htm.