The Village at Cowichan Bay is unique in that it is one of the last remaining places on Canada’s West Coast where a diverse group of people have come together to form a traditional waterborne community.
What is special about our community, for there are indeed other places where one can live out on the water, is that it has so far resisted the gentrification so often seen at other locations.
It is a waterborne community in the old sense and style. They used to be common up and down the coast, but alas no longer. It is a welcoming place where neighbors look out for one another, a place where nearly everyone is on a first name basis and where the community comes together in times of both celebration and crisis. We look after our own here, out on the water.
Our community, the one that exists between the road and the low tide line, in fact beyond and into the bay itself, is an eclectic mix of people who come from all walks and manners of life.
Here the retired rub shoulders with those still young enough to be working, the wealthy mix freely with those who get by on lesser means. The shoestring cash budget is as well known here as is the paid up platinum credit card. It is not uncommon to see a new Mercedes parked next to a 20 year old pickup truck.
We have artists, lawyers, businessmen, shipwrights, drapers, potters, bakers, painters, schoolteachers, marine mechanics, welders, carpenters, truck drivers, boat brokers and more than a few who work at a variety of occupations as opportunity and ambition knock.
Some live out on the water, while others reside in quayside accommodation which looks out across the harbour. Some, like my wife and I live in float-homes, others in power-cruisers, retired commercial fishing vessels or sailboats. There’s even a tugboat or two with that friendly lived-in look.
It is a community whose residents choose to live quietly and with a small ecological footprint. For most this has been a deliberate lifestyle choice. We are mindful of the ecosystem in which we live, for in many cases only half an inch of wood planking separates us from the water that surrounds us and which touches everything.
There is value in living in the manner we do here in the village, even though this value is decidedly different from that found in other areas of Cowichan Bay. There is value in the community that has been maintained here over the last 140 years or so and in the dignity of those who reside here. The village has gone through several declines in it’s history only to be reborn again. It’s been through rather a lot and has managed to survive. It’s a community that through luck and effort simply has not been allowed to die.
Yet too, as is the manner of these things, the village itself is also quite fragile. This in terms of both infrastructure and community. Were the community to be extinguished, the soul, the tradition of the village would soon follow. This has been the fate of countless little places up and down the coast. We work actively to prevent that happening here.
It takes a community to build a village.
It takes a community to keep that village alive as well.
