The past few weeks have been devastating as we saw Chickadee and Eagle trails logged. We did everything we could to stop it, but we couldn’t. We beg the forgiveness of the chickadees and the eagles who call Stanley Park their home or their home-away-from-home. But we are not quitting, despite being turned down on our recent injunction request.
We have been thoroughly perplexed by the court’s reasoning that the City of Vancouver does not owe a duty of care to each of its citizens that trustingly seek refuge in Stanley Park. Michael Caditz fought valiantly and even though the courts sided with the chainsaws in this latest battle, we aren’t giving up. In fact, we have big news. We retained a lawyer – Malcolm Funt from BFG (Bohm, Fund and Gibbons). Our new lawyer, with his wealth of experience in environmental and administrative law, believes we have a path forward – so we are gonna give him a crack at this.
The Vancouver Park Board passed the motion to keep logging the park (despite all but three speakers over two evenings speaking against it). Revealing that he had made his mind up before the meeting started, one of the commissioners brought from home the book Fire Weather to waive around in the air. (The book is scary but completely not applicable to a coastal rainforest like Stanley Park). We WILL be pursuing our new legal strategy and we WILL be again petitioning the court for an injunction.
If you love the Park, now is the time to put the pressure on. Email the commissioners here. If you want to see the commissioners and experts presenting at the park board meeting, find them on our youtube channel here. Jillian and Michael have been busy creating short videos, so whenever you have 10 mins, watch one and PLEASE amplify on your social media.
Our lawyer is giving us a reasonable price. Logging Stanley Park is plain WRONG. But his services are not free. This will be an uphill battle and will cost us at least another $10,000, on top of the $20,000 that has already been spent on expert witness fees, court fees, etc. so if you love the park and you can contribute, please do.
If you donate here on our petition, the money goes to change.org to help promote our petition but we cannot use it for our legal fees. To donate directly to us for our legal fees, click here to get to our donation page or copy and paste this link in your browser: https://chuffed.org/project/savestanleypark Alternatively, you can e-transfer a donation to donate@savestanleypark.ca.
We understand that not everyone is in a position to make a large donation, but even $10 helps. If you are in a position to shoulder a larger chunk of the financial burden, please do it for the trees and the animals and, well, us! If we lose these trees, we lose them for the rest of our lifetime. If the forest does come back, it will be for our grandchildren to enjoy and I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to walk in a forest once in a while…..
It quite literally is now or never for Stanley Park.