What defines life on the Gulf Islands? Well, if you asked a half dozen Gulf Islanders you’d probably get at least six different answers. Among them: serenity, lush scenery, laid back life style – not to mention dependence on BC Ferries and the privilege of paying 10 cents a litre more for gas than you do on the mainland.. But none of those are the true defining characteristic of living in the Gulf Islands, no. What really sets us apart from the rest of the world are our potholes.
Man, have we got potholes. Oh, the main roads are pretty good, but you point your hood ornament down some of our secondary roads and you are in for a ride that makes white-water rafting look like a paddle in the kiddies’ pool.
And I’m not talking about temporary, pop-up in mid-winter, paved-over-by-late-spring potholes here. In the Gulf Islands we have heritage potholes. Entire generations have grown up dodging the same roadway caverns, canyons and crevasses. Some of our potholes are so old they have First Nations names.
I could never understand why our potholes endured so long until a letter to the editor of our local paper, The Driftwood, explained it all. It’s because our potholes are good for us. The letter was written by Jean Gelwicks, a well-known environmentalist and avid cyclist. In essence her letter said ‘don’t think of our potholes as potholes; think of them as complimentary speed bumps’.
Perhaps, her letter suggests, the condition of our roads forces us to go more slowly. “Maybe”, she writes, “the potholes say that islanders are not so driven by the automobile as people in the city. Maybe they say we don’t even care if we have to travel slowly. In fact, maybe we like going slowly….We can enjoy the views of our hedgerows, pastures, trees, glimpses of the ocean and maybe a deer or two as we drive slowly down our roads.
Well, sure. Makes sense. Only a fool (or a first time tourist) drives fast on island secondary roads. It could cost you your entire undercarriage.
Jean Gelwick’s letter reminded me of a place I used to live in rural Ontario. The secondary road which ran by my front gate featured a beautiful old railway underpass built in the late 1800’s out of huge blocks of hand-hewn limestone. In its heyday, I suppose, the trains went over and the horse and wagons and Model T’s went under. That bridge was beautiful, and now that I think of it, it was kind of…our community speed bump. The bridge was built to accommodate horse-drawn wagons and Model T’s….Not SUV’s and Cube Vans and Hummers. You had to drive real slow and negotiate the underpass one vehicle at a time. More than one driver in a hurry left streaks of fender paint on those limestone blocks.
Alas, the trains disappeared and the tracks were torn up, but the bridge remained, slowing down vehicular traffic in both directions. So naturally the town fathers voted to demolish the bridge.
They called it a bottleneck. They tore it down and paved the road and widened it so that within a year the road was handling 80 percent more traffic including dump trucks and tractor-trailers that used it as a short cut to the highway. Brave new world.
I just got back from a few weeks in the south of Spain, where the approaches to many small Andalucian towns feature what they call a policia dormido – a sleeping policeman. It’s a ridge of concrete (frequently unmarked) that runs right across the road. Hit it at 30 kilometres an hour or less and you’ll notice a bump, but you’ll be okay. Hit it at highway speeds and you will be airborne. Savvy Spaniards tend not to speed through those small towns.
All comes down how you look at the world. I see down in the states that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going after hybrid cars. They’re asking Congress to impose a special tax on the hybrids because, the Chamber of Commerce spokesman complained, “those cars consume less fuel than regular cars and therefore aren’t paying their share of the gasoline tax”.
Potholes or speed bumps? Depends on your point of view. As Jean Gelwicks says in her letter, “Perhaps our pothole-riddled roads remind us of a time when everyone traveled more slowly. When there were fewer cars on the road and people walked more.”
Could be. And maybe they serve to remind us that driving down the road is as good a time as any to slow down. Roll down the window, smell the Nootka roses. And take in the Big Picture.
I’m Arthur Black on Planet Salt Spring.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
