Wreck Beach 2004


	Wreck Beach Vancouver, British Columbia FALL, 2004


	Construction of several high rise residence towers on the campus of the University of British Columbia threatens to destroy the character and perhaps even the very existence of Wreck Beach, one of the most popular and beautiful clothing-optional sites on North America.


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		RESOURCES

NAC Action Alert - October 16, 2005 NAC Action Alert - September 07, 2005 NAC Action Alert - October 26, 2004 NAC Action Alert - September 25, 2004 Web site of Wreck Beach Preservation Society




		In this photo taken on September 21, 2004, construction has already begun on Tower #1, located directly across Marine Drive from the edge of the cliff overlooking Wreck Beach. {CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE.]


	The following copyrighted article originally appreared in a different format in the May, 2004, issue of The Newsletter. All rights reserved by the Naturist Action Committee. Click here for information about The Newsletter, including an online archives of selected back issues.

Tower Threat Looms Over Wreck Beach

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Successful stewards of clothing-optional beaches on public lands know that perhaps the most essential key to preserving the character of their beach is careful planning for the avoidance of user conflict.

For years, the Wreck Beach Preservation Society (WBPS) has steadfastly fought the cutting of trees, the building of proposed roads, the dumping of tons of rock on the beach and other projects that would have put traditional nudity on the beach into conflict with nearby users. Historically, the source of the proposed conflict-inducing projects has often been the neighbor with whom conflict now seems inevitable.

Perched on the property above the cliff and beyond the trees, the University of British Columbia (UBC) has been out of sight, if not ever entirely out of mind.

Now, like a neighbor peering over a fence, the University has proposed to breach the natural barrier of the trees on the cliff with a cluster of new high-rise dormitories on Marine Drive, at the edge of the UBC campus - and just above Wreck Beach. The buildings are to be constructed in phases, and a number of them are planned to be towers reaching a height of 20 stories and looming over the beach.




			PHOTO: BRUCE McPHERSON PHOTOGRAPHY

	APRIL 10, 2004: As folks enjoy a clothing-optional day in early Spring at Wreck Beach, the Wreck Beach Preservation Society raises a small helium filled blimp from the site of a residential tower proposed by the University of British Columbia. WBPS conducted the demonstration to determine that the tower would be visible from the beach, and vice versa. Although the blimp is tethered at only half of the proposed completed height, it can be seen easily above the trees on the forested cliff above the beach. [CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A LARGER VIEW]




	Dennis Pavlich, UBC Vice President for External and Legal Affairs.

Edifice Complex

The university's Official Community Plan (OCP) was approved in 1997 and calls for extensive construction that will increase the number of people living at UBC and on the university's endowment land by a staggering 14,000 over the coming decade. The controversial Marine Drive student residences are expected to accommodate as many as 2,000 of that increase.

The overall plan is anticipated to require as much as a billion Canadian dollars for the creation of housing and institutional buildings. One of the most adamant proponents of the grandiose blueprint is former UBC law professor Dennis Pavlich.

Pavlich, a native of Rhodesia, was appointed in 2000 to be UBC's Vice President of External and Legal Affairs.

Denial and Obfuscation

By 1999, construction had commenced on early stages of the project, and truck traffic from excavation and from the logging of trees on the university's endowment land was already beginning to cause problems for the university's neighbors. Acceding to demands from angry residents and businesses, UBC promised to limit trucks leaving the site to a "mere" 300 per day.

Over an 8-hour work day, that still averages one heavily laden truck rumbling out every minute-and-a-half or so into the neighborhoods around the campus. And it doesn't account at all for the empty trucks returning to pick up another load.

Still, when local residents realized that the number of trucks was exceeding the university's promised maximum, UBC denied the original commitment and said the limit of 300 laden trucks had been intended to apply only to residential projects on the campus.

The university has consistently rejected suggestions from citizens for on-site disposal or use of excavated material and logged timber, preferring instead to send heavily loaded trucks rumbling out the gates of the campus and down city streets. Citizens complain that they have been denied any input into the matter, but those complaints have gone unanswered. The university recently conducted a truck count of its own, but it was done without independent verification, and UBC refuses to make the results public.

For some, the trucks have been far more than an inconvenience. Last October, an elderly woman was struck and killed by one of the trucks. In 2001, a boulder rolled off a truck and into the windshield of the car of another woman, causing a collision that killed her.

UBC's Pavlich characterizes the deadly truck traffic as simply a part of the cost of providing the province with a fine educational facility.

An Issue of Privacy ?

Caricatures of the "Peekaboo Towers" as leering buildings looking down on the beach have made light of issues of privacy that have been raised by some supporters of the clothing-optional beach. Critics and friends alike have asked what privacy can truly be expected when one is in a public place, nude or clothed.

But the notion of intrusion is a very real issue in the uneasy interface between UBC and the users of the beach below. Repeating a promise he made years ago, UBC Vice President Dennis Pavlich said that the University's proposed construction would never encroach on the privacy of those who use Wreck Beach. Unsurprisingly, few beachgoers believed him.




			PHOTO: CRAIG HEALE

		From the back of a flatbed truck, Wreck Beach Preservation Society organizer and NAC board member Judy Williams speaks to a rally of protesters seeking the relocation of the Marine Drive residential towers. [CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A LARGER VIEW.]




		PHOTO: BRUCE McPHERSON PHOTOGRAPHY


	VIEW FROM THE FORESHORE. With the blimp at 20 stories, the WBPS demonstration shows quite clearly that several stories of proposed Tower #6 would loom forever over Wreck Beach. [CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A LARGER VIEW.]

To demonstrate the extent to which the proposed towers would rupture the natural buffer between the clothing optional beach and the university, the Wreck Beach Preservation Society (WBPS) conducted a series of tests on April 10. As a normal clothing-optional crowd milled about on the foreshore on a beautiful day in early Spring, WBPS raised a small rented blimp from the site of Tower #6.

With markers tied to the tether rope to indicate to position of each floor of the proposed building, it became obvious that several floors of the building would be in direct visual communication with those using the beach.

True to form, Pavlich denied the results. Then he ordered a carefully managed test of his own, intending to refute the WBPS blimp demonstration. The word games that followed were remarkable.

Pavlich addressed only the portion of the residence project that has received final construction approval. Conveniently, that does not include the tallest of the towers. Then, he considered only those users who will be content to stay above the high water line, which extends very close to the base of the cliff. While it is true that those who remain huddled against the cliff will be unlikely to see the towers perched above, historical usage patterns for the beach show that users have never confined themselves to such an area.

In an official press release issued on May 14, Pavlich concluded his specious remarks by reminding his readers that "the important thing to remember here is that this will create 2,000 housing units for students who desperately need them."

And once again, the ends justify the means.




			PHOTO: CRAIG HEALE

	A group of outraged Wreck Beach supporters protests the short sightedness and heavy-handedness of the University of British Columbia.

Other Valid Concerns

Many of those who enjoy being nude on Wreck Beach consider themselves naturists, and not just people who are occasionally naked there. They feel a connection to the site on several levels, and their outrage at the UBC tower issue extends beyond threats to the naturalness of nudity on the beach.

It reflects a deeply rooted concern for the migratory birds, the unique flora, and the eagles with which they share the site.

"There's been no change since Captain Vancouver and Simon Fraser were here," Judy Williams of WBPS and NAC observed recently. "Except for Stanley Park, it's the last beach cloaked in a forested area that we've got, and it must stay that way."

Avoidance of User Conflict

Ultimately, however, it may be the avoidance of user conflict that offers the most reasonable objection from the point of view of those wishing to preserve the clothing-optional character of the beach. Placing students in their residences in direct visual juxtaposition with naturists on the beach is a proven recipe for confrontation.

Could the University be fomenting a conflict that will be difficult for naturists to win? A daunting prospect.

Except, of course, that we have Dennis Pavlich's word that it's not so.

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