June 2025 on the Shore
June is here, and you know what that means—it's summer solstice time. Get ready to soak up the sunshine on the longest day of the year. It's the perfect season for garden parties, barbecues, beach adventures, and fabulous festivals. See you all out there, Duncan, Martyn, Greg, and Heather.
p.s. “sunscreen”
Mosquito Creek Marina floating homes Photo: Ghislaine Courcelles
What’s going on at council?
District of North Vancouver
RVs parking on streets 🚐🚚
People park all kinds of vehicles on our streets. However, some roads in particular attract big vehicles that sit for long periods — for example, along Mackay and 1st Streets. Council discussed this at their June 9th meeting. While it’s pretty clear that straight-up vehicle storage can be dealt with through education, tickets and more restrictive time-based parking limits, this issue crosses over with the housing crisis because people may live in their vans or cars. All councillors expressed their understanding on that issue, with Councillor Hanson, especially, exhorting the province to do more to help on the housing file.
Safety on Queens at Delbrook community centre 🚲🛴
Councillor Pope proposed that staff return to council with options for safety improvements on Queens for all users, particularly those walking and rolling to get to the centre, to free up parking and make the area safer. The motion passed 4-3. The mayor and councillors Back, Pope, and Hanson voted in favour. Councillors Forbes, Muri and Mah voted against.
District of West Vancouver
Ambleside commercial area plan 🏪⛱️
Council delayed sending the commercial area plan to a public hearing for a second time at the request of the Ambleside Dundarave Ratepayers Association for more time to review the plan. A public hearing on this plan is now not likely to occur before the fall.
Gleneagles pickleball, skateboards and bike park 🛹🚲🎾
Unusually, there was a packed city hall on June 9th. The big issue? Staff proposed two new pickleball courts, a renovated skateboard bowl and upgraded bike park for Gleneagles community centre. Pickleball players wanted more than the two courts, and many people came out to express that opinion. There were also advocates for the skateboard and bike facilities. Pretty much everyone agreed that if all activities could be accommodated, that would be ideal. The problem is a lack of space. The mayor then mentioned a property across the street, owned by Hydro, may be a potential location for adding more pickleball courts or a mountain bike skills facility. Despite an attempt to accommodate this idea, amid a lack of clarity, the motion to release $125,000 for design was defeated. But it will be back.
City of North Vancouver
Small-scale multi-unit housing 🏘️🏘️
The city has shouldered the burden of creating housing options on the Shore for years, and has the most liberal zoning of all three municipalities. Nevertheless, like all other municipalities, the city is required to develop new local zoning bylaws to comply with the mandatory provincial small-scale, multi-unit housing regulations. Council approved zoning changes to alter 35 properties to allow three, four or six homes. Most of these properties were already zoned duplex or duplex+suite. 35 was a much lower number than staff initially identified (~880). To reduce the number, the city removed the minimum lot width requirements for coach houses, making almost every lot compliant with the province’s law, but without truly embracing the idea of creating more small-scale, multi-unit homes. In other words, it's a workaround that mostly avoids the provincial regulation. It’s interesting because the city has always been housing-friendly, supporting most of the growth on the Shore.
Housing as a human right ⚖️
At the same meeting, Councillor McIlroy tabled a motion for council to support ‘housing as a human right’ at the provincial level at the Union of BC Municipalities meeting in the fall. So far, ten other municipalities have voted to support this idea. The motion was passed unanimously.
Stories from betternorthshore.ca
Wait wut? Tax expenditures on fire and police services in the city
Since I’ve been paying property taxes, the portion that goes to fire and police services has been around 35-40%. That’s been true for all three north shore munis. So this year, when I got my City of North Vancouver property tax info sheet, I saw that the percentage going to public safety (fire and police) was only around 15%. Wut?
City of North Vancouver tax distributions - 15% goes to fire and police.
District of North Vancouver tax distributions - 37% goes to fire and police
I checked with staff to understand this better and found that to more clearly show where our tax dollars go, the city decided to include capital projects. Good thought. However, capital projects are often funded from other sources, not just property tax, mixing apples with oranges, so I’m not sure this is an accurate representation. The math on the city’s operating budget shows that fire and police get ~32% of our property taxes. That’s more like it.
Fire season
Climate change is causing longer, hotter, and drier summers, increasing the threat of wildfire, even in damper regions like here on the Shore. All three municipalities apply FireSmart principles to protect critical infrastructure and remove excess underbrush and dead trees to reduce wildfire risk. Homeowners living in the forest interface zone can book a free FireSmart home assessment to help them mitigate wildfire damage.
West Vancouver: FireSmart home assessment.
District of North Vancouver: FireSmart home assessment.
New Hastings Creek Fish Ladder
Hastings Creek in Lynn Valley is a tributary of Lynn Creek. It winds through residential areas and Hunter, Princess and Hastings Creek parks. It supports Dolly Varden, cutthroat, coho, sculpin, and steelhead fish varieties.
Photo: The aging Hoskins Road fish ladder at work. Courtesy of North Shore Streamkeepers.
North Shore Streamkeepers volunteers are working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to replace an existing fish ladder at Hoskins Road. Intended to help coho migrate to the upper reaches of the creek, the 45-year-old ladder is aging and functioning poorly. The new ladder should be built in 2026.
Old Growth Conservation Society free tours
Register now for one of these 2-3 hour tours starting at 10 a.m.
Sunday, July 6 – Lighthouse Park
Saturday, July 12 – West Lake Road
Sunday, July 13 – Whyte Lake
Saturday, July 19 – West Lake Road
Where on the Shore?
The first person to send us an email with the location of this window looking out at Ay-yul-shun (English Bay) will win a Better North Shore T-shirt. (Past winners are ineligible) hello@betternorthshore.ca
Photo: Derrick Daniels
Want to get more involved with Better North Shore? We’ve created a private chat server—a safe space to organize, exchange ideas, and work on making the North Shore better. If you’d like to get more involved, please join our Discord server. Join using this invite link.
If this newsletter and our stories resonate with you and your values, please forward this to a few friends, and suggest they join our email list. We're building a group of like-minded people who want to see the North Shore positively embrace and manage the many changes we face. Thanks, we really appreciate it, Heather, Duncan, Greg and Martyn.
