My family and I came to live in Victoria almost 50 years ago and one of the few advantages of leaving Beautiful B.C., as we have done several times to work overseas, is that you come back with fresh eyes and notice the changes. Returning this January, Oak Bay does not present a pretty picture.
In one recent issue, Oak Bay News gave us several stories of significant crises; rapidly rising opioid deaths, remembering murdered indigenous women, the removal of the Greater Victoria School Board, the safety of our library staff and a ministry-appointed "advisor" to review Oak Bay's housing priorities.
Where to begin? There is something to say about all of them but my focus is on the last of these. The link between an over-the-top development proposal for a residential lot on Saint Patrick Street and B.C.'s own minister of housing creates the unpleasant feeling of a potential conflict of interest.
The key representative of the provincial government that is demanding expansion and rapid change to housing in our neighbourhoods is, at the same time, related to a property developer who seeks to construct buildings that are both too big and totally out of character with the established location.
Once the character of a neighbourhood is destroyed, you can't get it back.
I've now worked to support economic and social development in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean and this is the stuff of banana republics. It has no place here.
Christopher Gibbs
Oak Bay
