Burnaby Lake is located at the centre of Burnaby, an economic tributary to Vancouver, British Columbia, and exists as an urban sanctuary for wildlife. In particular, this unique area is an important stopover for over 200 species of migrating birds and waterfowl travelling on the Pacific Flyway. There are laws now in place for protecting the many hundreds of species of mammals and birds that live in, and visit, the park on a regular basis, but it has not always been this way.

In September of 1924, Burnaby Lake was given the status as a game reserve. This meant that the animals that lived in the area would be protected until hunting season each year. However, by August of 1964, the area was declassified as a game reserve because it had become illegal to hunt in the municipality. There were no longer any laws in place to protect the marshy ecosystem from negligence and urban growth.

Doreen Lawson began her long-time relationship with Burnaby Lake when she was a little girl. She remembered stuffing socks in her mothers skates to make them fit her small feet as a child, and wobbling around on a frozen Burnaby Lake while her father skated circles—backwards—around her. But it was not until she was an adult, married and with memories of her own children at the lake, that she became actively involved in getting the proper laws in place to protect not just a place of past memories, but a place of future childhood memories for future generations.

A long-time volunteer and environmentalist with several groups in Burnaby, Lawson said she “was an environmentalist in the years when mention of the word invariably resulted in a chuckle or a sneer.” However, Burnaby’s municipal council, staff, and electorate responded positively to her environmental projects. Her ability to lead and positively garner attention to environmental issues made her a respected member of the community.

By 1965, Reeve Alan Emmott (a Reeve is an elected president of a town council in some parts of Canada) asked Lawson to serve on the Parks and Recreation Commission where she soon took charge as chair from 1969 to 1971. Jack Wasserman, a Vancouver reporter, inspired Lawson to do what she felt was her most important environmental work. He asked her why the new Parks and Recreation Commissioner did not do something about the pollution in Burnaby Lake. It was a challenge that Lawson embraced for over twenty-five years.

Wasserman introduced Lawson to a man living on the south-western shore of Burnaby Lake, Milo d’Angelis, who owned and flew a small float plane to and from work every day, using Burnaby Lake as his runway. Encouraged by Wasserman to take a ride in d’Angelis’ three-seater float plane, Lawson resolved: “if I had to go, then Mayor Bob Prittie had to go too.” The group nervously looked down at the lake from the little plane as d’Angelis spoke with anger about the oil and other pollution floating on the lake, and the way that the lake was slowly shrinking in size.

D’Angelis then directed Lawson to a Burnaby student studying at the University of British Columbia, Wayne Campbell, who was extensively researching issues surrounding Burnaby Lake. Campbell took Lawson on a revelatory tour of Burnaby’s watershed, expressing concern over uncontrolled pollution in streams that were enclosed underground. Lawson learned from Campbell that the presence of plankton and fish were rapidly declining in Burnaby Lake due to the increased manifestation of sewage and other pollution. This tour opened Lawson’s eyes to some of the many environmental issues concerning Burnaby’s waterways. The combination of the low-lying lake collecting urban run-off and a “No-Hunting Law” as the only protection for wildlife were taking a toll on the area.

The autumn of 1969 saw Lawson run unsuccessfully as an independent for Burnaby Municipal Council with planks in her platform to discover why wildlife was disappearing from Burnaby Lake, better laws controlling urban pollution, and the declaration of the lake as a wildlife sanctuary, among other issues. The Burnaby public was not yet ready for an outspoken feminist/environmentalist making policy decisions, but perseverance paid off. After her third campaign, Lawson was elected to Council in 1971 and she immediately began to work on implementing her campaign platform.

In 1972, she proposed, and Council adopted, that Burnaby’s creeks and streams be protected from further enclosure. As a result, 60% of Burnaby’s waterways and surrounding ravines still exist and are an asset to the urban environment. In that same year, Lawson proposed to Council that action be taken to declare Burnaby Lake a wildlife sanctuary.

After a ten-year campaign by Lawson, Council adopted the recommendations to make Burnaby Lake a nature conservation area in 1976. Lawson remarked modestly that “Council and staff were very supportive of my environmental efforts, even though environmentalists were generally not held in high regard.” By 1978, negotiations with the Greater Vancouver Regional District were concluded and Burnaby Lake Regional District Nature Park, consisting of 994 acres, was finally established.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Lawson continued to campaign for the rejuvenation of the lake and protection of wildlife in Burnaby Lake Regional Park until she died in 2003. The lake needs to be dredged again, as the dredgeate placed at the edge of the lake for the 1973 Canada Summer Games is continuing to shift back into the deeper parts of the lake, adding to the sediments from urban runoff and making the whole lake much shallower. This is an ongoing challenge that must be addressed critically and with fairness to both people and wildlife.

In 1992, the year of Burnaby’s centennial, and also the year Burnaby graduated from municipality to city, Lawson wrote in a letter to the Burnaby City Council of 2042 that she hoped “lots of the colour green will still be seen when driving through, flying over, or sailing past Burnaby (if not, I just may be back to haunt you).” It is Lawson’s legacy that Burnaby has, and will continue to have, important green spaces within its urban borders.

Bibliography:

Biography of Doreen Lawson. Located in AThe Doreen Lawson Collection.@ Record ID 2003-30, City of Burnaby Archives.

Burnaby Centennial Anthology: Stories of Early Burnaby. Burnaby: City of Burnaby, 1994.

Holmes, J.A. Nutrient Pollution: Eutrophication. (10 August 2000) http://www. utoronto.ca/ env/jah/lim/lim09f99.htm.

For more information about Burnaby Lake:

* City of Burnaby – Environmental Assessment of Burnaby Lake Rejuvenation Project, Engineering Report regarding the current dredge project

No related posts.