The plan to develop “South Skirt Mountain” is a blueprint for further mass destruction.  (“Bear Mountain” and “Skirt Mountain” are the same mountain)

Claiming to set aside 40% of what precious little remains on this ruined and scarred mountain, and calling it open green space is a very sick joke.  Little of what has been coloured “green” on the planning maps for “South Skirt Mountain” will ever be green again.

The steep vertical slopes below the summit have already been clear cut and blasted, and every natural rock formation has been smashed and obliterated.


The giant arbutus forests on South Skirt Mountain are gone.  They have been slashed and burned.  And there is nothing to protect those arbutus that remain on the mountain, nor apparently any other living thing.
More Garry Oak meadows than we can count are gone, and so is the soil that would support new life.
The wildlife are in distress; their numbers decimated.

Waters have been diverted, no longer flowing into Florence Lake, nor into the former healthy wetlands.  Almost half of the large central wetland on the planning maps for “South Skirt Mountain” has already been filled in.  It is buried under tons of blasted rock rubble as part of the “Echo Valley Road” construction.

The numerous deep natural ravines and waterways on the south slope of “Skirt Mountain” have all been blocked by massive rock rubble.  Tons of rock fill from the crude Bear Mountain Parkway construction obstruct the natural flow of water that always ran clean and clear down the rich green ravines, regardless of the volume or velocity of all the water the winter storms and snows could possibly bring down.

The spring-fed headwaters, the purest mountain spring water that we drank until 2006, now runs blood red for the 3rd year, from the putrid sludge that pours down from Bear Mountain.

These are the authors of mass destruction, or, in their own words, practitioners of “MASS WASTING”.
“Mass wasting” is a development style.  It is clear cutting, scraping away all natural vegetation and native soil down to the bedrock, then blasting the bedrock to level it, and then using the smashed rock to fill in the ravines and valleys.  The mountain has been blasted beyond recognition.

Engineers from Hell have planned and are implementing the systematic destruction of a living mountain, and with it an entire watershed.  It was once one of the most beautiful mountains in the world.  It has been defiled and desecrated.

The absolute contempt for ancient sacred sites and sacred lands is a matter of record with this mountain.
Yet what majesty of reason was contained in the ancient knowledge that the natural springs, the headwaters, and pools of the purest mountain water were sacred to all living things.  The source----the source of life was sacred.




l’ancienne