Behind the facade of Quaintness – CARS
Originally published November 2012: Nothing has changed.
In the late spring, through the summer and into early fall, the Vancouver Island Marmot is a restless creature. Having been cooped up all winter, he feels the need to stretch his legs, to venture forth from his burrow and so often goes in search of something interesting to spend his money on. He gets up on his hind legs, sniffs the new clean air, pockets his Visa or MasterCard, takes his family in hand and sets off for places undiscovered.
He wants an ice-cream. He wants to drink some very expensive gourmet coffee. He wants to go kayaking. He wants to put on a yellow floater suit and to hire a very fast speed boat to take him to see the whales. More than anything, he wants to be somewhere other than where he is at the present time.
It’s not just the Vancouver Island Marmot who behaves in this manner. Albertan Marmots, Saskatchewanian Marmots, even Marmots from as far afield as California, Nova Scotia, New York and Quebec suffer this wanderlust-and-spending combination. The grass is greener, not just on the other side of the fence, but better than that, is greenest on the other side of the continent. We know this to be a fact, because we see a wide variety of license plates on the vehicles they drive to Cowichan Bay Village.
We’ve even had Marmots all the way from Europe. They drive Mercedes trucks that have huge tires at each corner and custom-built campers on the back.
That these Marmots (tourists or visitors you might call them) are so often attracted to Cowichan Bay Village is for us both a blessing and a curse. The fact that they spend seemingly vast sums of money stuffing faces, watching the seagulls, walking the docks and asking innumerable funny questions before buying a trunk load of souvenirs and remembrances, some even not made in China, is very good for the small businesses that have sprung up to provide them these diversions. The businesses have promoted the heck out of Cowichan Bay over the last few years, touting it as one of Vancouver Island’s last undiscovered and therefore unspoiled day-trip destinations.
It’s a Cittaslow community after all they say, even if we aren’t exactly clear as to what that entails precisely. The signs look great and lend a warm fuzzy feeling to the entire experience. It’s eco-friendly, super-local, non-gmo, completely natural and involves at least six other recently developed marketing buzzwords which don’t come to mind just now. Apparently we even have canoes instead of taxicabs.
Unfortunately, the fact that so many folks have in recent times begun “discovering” Cowichan Bay Village is impacting everyone except those business owners in more or less a negative manner.
The curse that comes with the aforementioned blessing is that it’s getting to the point where on most weekends now, Cowichan Bay Village is full of cars.
I mean, Full. And Goodness help you on Regatta day or during the Spot Prawn Festival.
You can’t get another car in unless one leaves. The place is like a night club that’s been packed over capacity. People park in the bus stop zones. People park in front of the garbage dumpsters. People park in front of the gates, blocking access to communal post boxes. People park two wide on the street. People even drive into the paid parking areas, places where Village residents pay by the month for a spot, and park. Then they become indignant when the rightful owner parks behind them, boxing them in. They become even more indignant when the rightful owner charges ten dollars “rent” and insists on it.
Village Resident’s Vehicle as seen by Local Business Owner
Now, if you ask any of the business owners, who themselves add to the parking problem by driving to work (Did you think they all actually lived in the Village and walked to work? Ha!) and who hire employees who also add to the problem by driving to work, with rare exception you’ll find they have strong opinions on the parking issue. They see Village residents as the problem parkers.
On the whole, we don’t shop at their stores all that much, don’t eat daily in their cafes, buy only a little art at the gallery and while we do patronize the Pier-66 liquor store and the pub, we don’t tend to do this with quite the gusto of a boat load of visitors who are determined to pack a months worth of seamanship and salty tales into a single weekend.
What we do however, is tend to park along the roadside and therefore in front of their businesses, taking up space that could, according to them, best be used by those who are there to spend themselves out of their boredom.
They want customer parking at all costs. We want to park our cars on the street like any resident of a neighbourhood might.
And so the conflict.
You see, Cowichan Bay Village is situated on a two lane public highway. Regardless of what some may try to tell you, anyone can legally parallel park on this two lane public highway for up to 72 hours at a time, without risking being towed. Nobody can tell anybody where they can or cannot park along the road, although it gets a bit confusing at times in Cowichan Bay Village.
Firstly, nobody is permitted to angle park along the highway. Everybody does it, but it’s officially not allowed. Second, some businesses have turned parts of their leased land into parking which they can and do control. For example, the Rock Cod Cafe, the Maritime Centre, the Schooner Marina and the Smoothie shop all have designated parking which they own. So does the Pier-66 store. The No Overnight Parking spots in front of the Maritime Centre are a grey area, as technically only the last three feet of the spot closest to the building is actually part of the leased land. The rest is public highway. You could parallel park a tour bus across all three spots there and do so legally, although it might be a bit of a public relations disaster for the rock band concerned.
The Bakery however and the Cheese shop, the Pirate store, the seafood store, Robs Lighthouse Eatery, the Marine Supply Store, the whale watching place and the haircut shop, the pub and the Masthead restaurant are so close to the road edge that they cannot control who parks, or for how long up to that fateful 72 hours. In some instances they used to control the parking, but have since moved planters into the parking spots, creating a walking zone.
The sign in front of the bakery limiting parking to 15 minutes is completely unofficial, as are all the Resident Only signs in front of the stilt houses. You may safely ignore them, although you might find yourself involved in some street theatre when you finally come back to your car. Tempers have been known to flare.
I have been asked twice politely if I might consider not parking in front of such and such business over the weekend or at other busy times. I’ve tried to comply with such requests, since being a good neighbour has its advantages.
In times past however, I myself engaged in a bit of street theatre with one business owner, who had a reputation of complaining to any Village resident who dared park in the one spot directly in front of their business. This person had words with several residents on the issue and I simply wasn’t going to have any. There was a bit more to the event than just an argument over the parking issue, and I had parked in the spot more or less to see what would happen, but it just goes to show how possessive some people can be, especially those who refuse to understand the rules and the attitudes we generally have with regard to vehicles in the Village.
So what should be done about all of this? Absolutely nothing. There’s nothing much we CAN do. It’s a live and let live situation that works more or less like this: I’ll try not to park where you don’t want me to, if you don’t complain about those days when I do because you, your staff and your customers have filled up all the other spots.
The amount of parking availability is a natural limiting factor in the Village. The laxity of rule following allows everyone a bit more flexibility. If everyone followed all the parking rules to the letter, there wouldn’t be room for half the Marmots we see here each weekend. They’d just drive in one end of the Village and right out the other, seeking whales, ice creams and restaurant meals somewhere next to a more vacant parking lot.
That would be a bit of a shame, because from the business perspective it’s a lost sales opportunity while from our perspective, Marmots are an awful lot of fun to watch. Especially when they whistle.
