Ugly buildings spreading to Central Saanich

Re: “Ugly cubes sprouting all over Victoria,” letter, April 9.

Central Saanich has been sprouting Sovietera-style cookie-cutter multi-unit housing that blocks out the glorious views in every direction and condemns neighbours in their shadow to a life in the shade. Dated before they are inhabited! And, yes, they all have cantilevered projections that serve no imaginable purpose. Could the intent be to direct the eyes to the heavens to distract from our loss of beautiful views?

West Saanich Road in Brentwood Bay has a lovely median strip of flowering vegetation, perfect for jaywalkers to lurk in as they prepare to outrun cars, an attempt to garden its way out of the building blight.

West Saanich Road is enroute to becoming a grey, tarmacked tunnel through a beige cluster of high-density ugliness. Everything is shades of beige or grey. Can it be possible that everyone but me covets life in a beige container?

I now delight in a blue, green, white or yellow house that punctuates the dull, manmade visuals where I once responded to mountain views in all directions, distant ocean sparkling, green and growing fields and glorious personal gardens, and, yes, houses of charm or character, many a lesson in our history as a community.

Resistant to change? Or saddened at the loss of accessible views of natural beauty?

In Central Saanich, style might not be everything, but the lack of it reflects urban budgets and values, and not the rural community commitment in 1958 that was the incentive for Central Saanich to separate from a developing Saanich.

Karen Harris Saanichton