Our Bowen Island Elementary School is a community school and many events, along with classroom learning, are conducted within its hallowed walls. Students attending the school are very fortunate, not just for what happens within the school’s walls but also for the surrounding landscape: not only are there two playgrounds, and a large playing field, but the school grounds are surrounded, on two sides, but wooded land zoned to be passive-park land.
My granddaughters, now 22 and 19, have fond memories of the years they attended school on Bowen. They speak of the sheer enjoyment of the treed part of their extended playground, that is, of those areas that provided not only shade, but also shelter. They speak of the endless opportunities for the imagination to take flight, for forts to be built, and for games to be created. Visiting them on the school grounds involved me in some of those delightful flights of imagination as we sought out our choices for Barbie and gnome houses, or apartments, within the gnarled twists and turns of the tree trunks.
They had been saddened awhile back, by some of the removal of those trees near the tennis courts and expanded soccer field, and, more recently, by hearing about the prospects of very dense development planning in the area.
The specter of further development threatens more of the wooded land surrounding the school grounds. I fear that with that loss, we are also losing a great many learning opportunities for the children of Bowen Island. A recent study out of the University of Kings College, in London (UK) shows that outdoor learning actually makes lessons more relevant to students. The study also shows that more time spent out doors does great service to the health of students – and teachers.
I believe that the some 6 – 8 acres of Lot 2 of the community owned land, still undeveloped and that lie to the east of the school, need to be reevaluated in terms of their value as a protected learning resource so conveniently adjacent to Bowen Island Elementary School. Limiting protection to perhaps just that part of the forest that lies directly behind the school would limit the scope of territory that involves the study of birds, amphibians, other forest creatures, and soil and land ingredients that all work together in sustaining the whole. There is some evidence too, that many flight paths for a variety of birds take the route through and over the trees on Lot 2.
We are lucky that here on Bowen we don’t have to spend thousands to restore green spaces around our school. It is all RIGHT THERE, all we have to do is respect it enough to preserve it, and keep it in tact – for generations to come.
