There would appear to be something going around Bowen Island that is highly contagious but that is not a flu nor a virus of any kind. Indeed it does not seem to be something that you can catch by holding hands or using the same utensils or even by being sneezed upon.

In fact this is not an illness we speak of but rather a manner of being, or a way of living even, and yet despite not being a malady of any kind, if you live here on Bowen and have contact with the community then it is something that eventually you could conceivably catch.

It’s called “getting involved.”

To begin there are dozens of volunteer organizations on island with scores of members. The Garden Club has in the neighbourhood of 150 members and it spends time and funds on projects for the good of the community.

The Bowen Island Fish and Wildlife Club likewise has been known to spend time and funds on projects that benefit Bowen – the recent project at Explosives Creek, where they have put effort into an attempt to bring back spawning salmon into the creek, as detailed in The Undercurrent, is a case in point.

The newly formed True Green Bowen already has about 70 members.

There are politically orientated meetings on island that routinely have more than 100 attendees. In fact there were two such meetings – one on a developer’s bid to create affordable housing and another on the OCP – in October. The Undercurrent had a staffer at each and we found the commitment, effort, time and the zeal of our fellow islanders to be impressive.

Of course a meeting of 100-plus people may not sound too impressive to some, but recognize that political meetings in the District of North Vancouver often don’t manage 100. This is significant, especially when you consider that North Vancouver has a population of 90,000 while here on Bowen we have a population of about 3,500.

We cannot say if people are prone to this “getting involved” contagion before they come here – it’s conceivable that they come here because of a predisposition to it – or if there is something in the air on island that invades a host and causes this willingness to contribute.

But we can say that all we need to do in order to keep this phenomenon going is to get involved.

–The Undercurrent