It's hard to believe anyone today would seriously put forward a proposal to pave over one of the ecological jewels of North America, but that's just what happened 30 years ago to Burns Bog. The future of the bog and whether it should be maintained in its natural state was the hot issue in Delta in the spring and summer of 1988, when Deltans debated a controversial plan to build a $10.5-billion city covering 6,000 acres of the wetland.
A couple of years earlier, a proposal was made to build a deep-sea port and major industrial development on 5,000 acres of the bog. That proposal sank, as did the subsequent application by Toronto-based Western Delta Lands Inc. to cover Burns Bog with a development that would have housed 125,000 people.
Called Delta Centre, the latest project was pitched as "an integrated community with full accessibility to modern technology and communications service to address the growing trade with the Pacific Rim Nations."
In a large advertisement in the Delta Optimist in May of 1988, the company promised that at maturity, the city would feature sheltered sidewalks, pedestrian laneways and pathways with "skycab" and "jitney" passenger service throughout the city core.
The company said the development would not be a self-sustained, suburban and isolated community. "It will instead be a fully connected, glass-fibre wired, integrated settlement for those who want to fully participate in building a better future for themselves and their children..."
In addition to housing, the proposal included a 10-berth seaport, "generous" container storage areas and a manufacturing and distribution complex.
Western Delta Lands, the development arm of the McLaughlin family, also noted environmental scientists identified just two areas of the property "where efforts to preserve it may still be warranted."
The development would have covered the largest domed peat bog on the west coast of North America. Named after Vancouver entrepreneur Dominic Burns, who at one time owned the land, the bog sustains a unique ecosystem containing a wide variety of flora and fauna, including 24 mammal and 150 bird species.
The newly formed Burns Bog Committee, chaired by Eliza Olson, tried to raise public awareness that year, saying the development would have disastrous environmental implications. Later that year, Olson and others formed the Burns Bog Conservation Society.
The proponent behind Delta Centre submitted a survey to municipal council, indicating 36 per cent of respondents favoured the proposal, while only 27 per cent disagreed and a whopping 37 per cent were undecided.
However, when hundreds turned out for a public hearing that took place over several days in May of 1988, it was clear a vast majority were opposed. Many urged Delta council to reject the proposal outright or begin a study on the long-term impact on the ecological, environmental and social issues.
On June 22 of that year, council defeated the plan, but Alex Leman, planning consultant for Western Delta Lands, soon vowed the company would not walk away from the project.
"It's a huge parcel of land in an urban area that is well serviced by road, water and rail and can also provide excellent industrial and manufacturing opportunities," he said in an interview that summer.
Even before then, the site had a long history of controversy, as well as people trying to save the bog.
In 1965, the Burns Bog Protection Society formed with the idea that a municipally-owned portion of the bog held great potential as a park. In 1966, the group was instrumental in a campaign to defeat a proposal to turn the site into a sewage lagoon.
By 1968, the protection society had generated considerable interest in the ecological value of the land. The botany department at the University of B.C. began testing that year to see if a drainage system adjacent to the bog had affected plant life.
Also interested in preserving the land in its natural state was the Nature Conservancy of Canada. In a letter to Delta council in 1968, the conservancy's Charles Sauriol said the land was rapidly disappearing under housing, industrial and highway development, and should be preserved.
In the summer of 1969, an editorial in the Delta Optimist noted the bog was becoming a "naturalist's mecca" where Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, high school and university students frequent to study its varied, condensed forms of nature.
In 1970, new science curriculum for schools encouraged the concept of outdoor education, so the bog preservation group seized the opportunity by convincing the Delta school board and council to develop an outdoor classroom concept.
"It is very difficult to get across this idea of ecology," the society's Doug Van Nes said that year. "This is virtually an untouched area and has been this way for 500 or a thousand years or more. I can't think of another area within 100 miles where you can walk through and say, 'This is what it was like.'"
He also warned, "Population is rapidly coming into the area and daily we see damage."
School trustee John Robinson echoed the sentiment of his colleagues in 1970 that the bog had "tremendous educational value."
Peat extraction at the bog during the early 1980s
The following year, funding was made available through the Opportunities for Youth project for high school and university students to catalogue the flora and fauna of the bog, clear trails for public use and construct a lookout tower for student observations.
The Delta Nature Reserve, located on a 148-acre municipally-owned parcel, was unveiled in October of that year. It provided an outdoor classroom for students in Delta and throughout the Lower Mainland. That year, project member Harold Klassen, a teacher who did his master's thesis on outdoor education, said Burns Bog should be used "to instill within students and public a reverence for all living things."
The protection society, which never formally registered, eventually disbanded, but thanks to the work of those advocates and students, a massive uproar was sparked when the Delta Centre plan came around.
Over the coming years there were other threats to the bog, including a plan by Western Delta Lands to build a $94-million racetrack on 350 acres. That proposal fell through in 1993 when the B.C. Racing Commission rejected it.
In 1999, two years after the conservation society presented a 25,000-name petition to the B.C. government calling on it to preserve the bog, a proposal was pitched to build a giant entertainment centre that would have included a new home for the PNE. When the plan was unveiled, former NDP tourism minister Ian Waddell called it a "win, win, win" that would have preserved part of the bog. However, many warned the viability of the ecosystem couldn't be maintained if a large portion was covered with asphalt.
After hearing the public outcry against the scheme, Delta council turned down the proposal and urged the province to acquire the bog to save it from development.
In 2004, four partners - federal, provincial, regional and municipal governments - jointly purchased 2,042 hectares (5,045 acres) of Burns Bog to be protected as an ecological conservancy area.
The partners, wanting to make sure the site was maintained using the best science available, agreed to come up with an overall management strategy. Delta assumed responsibility for managing its hydrology and over the years has undertaken a number of projects, including internal ditch dams to ensure the environmentally sensitive wetland doesn't dry up.
In 2012, Burns Bog finally obtained a Ramsar designation. That international recognition, created from the Convention on Wetlands held in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty meant to embody the commitment of member countries to maintain the ecological character of their Wetlands of International Importance.
The MK Delta Lands industrial development approved by city council and the development given preliminary approval for the Pineland Peat site are just outside the designated conservancy areas. The bog society launched a petition to the federal government in the hope of stopping those projects.
