Editorial: For kids born today, 'new' Squamish will be 'old' Squamish

If you were sitting on the patio of the Tap & Barrel at the Shipyards in North Vancouver on a sunny afternoon last week, you would have been surrounded by people sharing meals with friends and family.

You would have seen untold numbers of parents with young ones playing on the boardwalk.

Couples and groups of folks of every age walk by, chatting after a brisk walk of the Spirit Trail.

Some head into nearby art gallery, The Polygon Gallery. 

It is hard to imagine it was ever not thus, but about a decade ago, the shipyard area was a polluted brownfield.

Before that, it was Wallace Shipyards and Burrard Dry Dock, where labourers built hundreds of ships until the 1990s, when the last ship and worker left for the last time.

Something was lost in this transformation, to be sure.  Some preferred the way it was, likely even as a brownfield area.

And the changes came with pain for some.

A long-time resident of the area, Cath-Anne Ambrose, welcomed the changes but is quoted in a Glacier Media publication as saying that it became harder to find parking, long-time businesses and friends left, and construction was constant.

Sound familiar?

“There is the fine balance of wanting to keep the original neighbourhood and support new business ventures in the community,” Ambrose said.

And therein lies the rub for Squamish.

What we are in now is the awkward stage where we have many hardships — the temporary loss of access to the oceanfront, for example, the construction noise, the parking issues, and, most painful of all, a lack of affordable housing — without seeing the benefits.

But one day, not too long from now, it will be hard for those born in Squamish today to imagine the SEAandSKY waterfront landing area — which was the old Interfor Mill site — and oceanfront developments — which was previously home to the Nexen chloralkali plant — as something other than what they are set to become.

That new-to-us version will be their “old Squamish.”

The truth is, though, each generation claims it, this town was never owned by any one era.

And unless you are Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), your family was new once too.

Progress never benefits all, and that is the hard part. It never has. That is capitalism, as we have created it.

There was likely never a time when Squamish was a place that felt welcoming to all.

But the changes Squamish is undergoing mean areas that were once enjoyed by a select few will be enjoyed by many.

Those few won’t be wrong in their sorrow for what is lost. Their story is valid, as is the story of those who will enjoy — and one day reminisce — about what it becomes.