Advocating for Bowen to become a sustainable and a “complete community” is the goal of an emerging group called True Green Bowen.

They have published a 10-point charter on their website – www.truegreenbowen.ca – and two founding members, David Hocking and James Glave, say the group – 69 members strong and growing – wants to see Bowen maintain its unique culture and green spaces yet become a place where developments create a more vibrant, self-sufficient and environmentally-responsible community.

“We don’t want to be framed as a pro-development group,” Glave said. “We’re a smart planning group that advocates responsible growth and responsible planning so the growth that does come, and it is coming, is done in the most efficient, healthy and inclusive way possible.”

Talking at Doc Morgan’s on Tuesday night, Hocking, the head of the communication department of Metro Vancouver, and Glave, author of the book Almost Green, said Metro Vancouver now is 2.2 million people strong and that another million are projected by 2035 and, they say, Bowen needs to develop a healthier approach to the growth headed this way.

Statistically speaking, right now the group claims the island is nowhere near as green as many might believe and that our green record is in fact poor.

According to numbers they say are taken from B.C.-wide municipal statistics and Metro Vancouver data, Bowen has more kilometres of road per capita than any other jurisdiction in the province and is the greatest per capita carbon producer – carbon is the gas that causes global warming - in all of metro Vancouver.

“While we have a lot of trees here that absorb carbon we have nowhere near enough to counteract what we’re putting out of our vehicles,” Glave points out.

Glave, the father or two, says this is because increasing numbers of Bowen residents leave the island for work, shopping, recreation and other services.

He says a solution is to have a community with business, services and facilities such as a recreation complex.

But that requires change and an obstacle to that is that people fear growth and fear being a suburb of West Vancouver, True Green Bowen believes, but they claim that the way things are done now, with homes spread out, no community recreation facilities, a paucity of thriving businesses, does not prevent that. “We don’t have a complete community this way,” Glave maintains. “Really we’re like a suburb already but one with lots of trees and no conveniences.”

He feels what people fear is here now, but in “stealth.”

Their charter details what they feel is the solution including supporting affordable housing, smart growth (in part increasing density), the strengthening and development of local businesses, maintaining green spaces, a transportation system reducing reliance on vehicles and the production of local food.

Hocking, a former member of Bowen council, and Glave said they are aware people are busy with children and work and they cannot always give their time.

They ask anyone that joins True Green put their name on the website, but accept that some will not want to go “public.”

The group began to take shape in the spring but Hocking said that the “roots go back a fair while for some of us.”

He has worked for sustainability for Bowen since serving on a sustainability committee struck by the island’s first council 10 years ago. He later chaired a similar committee while a member of council.

The two said it’s too early to talk of the group submitting candidates for political office and that they are concentrating on building their membership and looking at issues and publishing letters and papers that weigh in on those issues, as they are in the process of doing with Parkview Slopes.

“The pressure for growth will be relentless, that we know for sure,” Glave says. “But this public sentiment that you can stop the invasion by saying ‘no’ to every proposal that comes along is misguided and it will only make our situation worse.

“As Sarah Baker so eloquently put it recently: ‘to truly live greener and more affordably, we must snuggle up a little closer.’”