‘TIME FOR ACTION’ TO PUSH GOLF CLUB TO OPEN TRAIL
Facility should respect public right to roam, pioneer’s descendant, former minister say
The great-grandson of the pioneer who gave his land to create the Marine Drive Golf Club says his ancestor would be appalled the club has long blocked off a walking trail along the Fraser River.
Albert Edward (A.E.) Philp, a lawyer and timber baron who provided his farmland for the course in 1922, was a civic-minded philanthropist who would have opposed how the private golf club’s directors insist on blocking the completion of the otherwise delightful Fraser River Trail.
Barrie Philp and his family support efforts to complete the trail link through the southern edge of the golf course — including former NDP premier Mike Harcourt’s idea of constructing a wooden walkway along about 700 metres of the bank of the mighty Fraser River.
The City of Vancouver could access the money, Harcourt said, from the federal government’s new $3-billion COVID-19 infrastructure fund, which is designed to improve walking and cycling opportunities so Canadians can “get exercise and enjoy nature” during the pandemic. Other trail advocates also suggest less expensive alternatives.
Philp, a retired tax specialist for KPMG, said his great-grandfather was the Marine Drive Golf Club’s first president and his photo has hung in its clubhouse. A.E. Philp’s descendants often swam off the sandy section of the Fraser River that the golf club now blocks off to ordinary citizens with intimidating signs.
“I’m very strongly in favour of right-to-roam laws that have been developed in England. Walking and cycling trails are great for tourism and exercise,” Philp said, standing next to the course’s eastern wire fence, adjacent to Fraser River Park. It’s peppered with club signs warning: No Trespassing, This Is Not a Public Right of Way, Dangerous, and Violators Will be Prosecuted.
“My grandfather was a very civic-minded guy. His wife, Grace, was a suffragette. They would have supported the trail.”
The Marine Drive Golf Club at 7425 Yew St., which has for decades refused to budge on repeated calls to remove its trail barricades, appears in a vulnerable legal position for several reasons.
A B.C. Assessment map shows a right-of-way extension of Yew Street runs through the centre of the Marine Drive golf course down to the river. Advocates for completing the trail also maintain the club does not own the river foreshore or the intertidal zone, arguing it’s Crown land.
The private club’s manager and directors, almost all of whom live on the west side of Vancouver, have for weeks refused to respond to Postmedia’s questions. Anonymous members have suggested on social media the course is already too small to give up any more land.
Sandy James Planner, a former city of Vancouver planner, says she’d like councillors to follow through on decades of efforts, including those of Harcourt when he was mayor of Vancouver and premier, that led to council in 1995 formally approving completion of the Fraser River Trail so it could merge into the city’s expanding Greenways network.
Other golf clubs in the area have co-operated for the benefit of the common good.
The adjacent McCleery Golf Club, which is owned by the city, and the nearby private Point Grey Golf Club, have both allowed the Fraser River Trail to run along their southern perimeters.
The Marine Drive Golf Club’s barriers are the only thing stopping walkers and cyclists from being able to enjoy an otherwise grand 21-kilometre Vancouver circle route that would go along the Fraser River Trail, through Pacific Spirit Park, traverse Spanish Banks and the beach front of English Bay and extend the length of the Arbutus Greenway.
“Completing the Fraser River Trail is a relatively simple thing for the city to do,” said Planner.
“It is simple initiatives, like the completion of this linear walkway, that show the last three city elections have been more about approving specific initiatives that carry the name of the party in power — as opposed to completing policy that several previous councils made for the future of the city.”
Ujjal Dosanjh, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister who is an immediate neighbour of the Marine Drive Golf Club, concurs. He has often jogged and walked the Fraser River Trail, and finds it “irritating every time” he comes up against the club’s barricades.
Instead of a relatively expensive wooden walkway along the Fraser River, Dosanjh believes the city could just swap its old Yew Street entitlement through the golf course for a three-metrewide strip of riverside. He’s not the only one also dreaming of eventually creating a contiguous Fraser River Trail from UBC to New Westminster and beyond.
“What’s wrong with the city?” Dosanjh said. “Why haven’t they done anything? It’s time for action.”
Neither veteran city councillor Adriane Carr nor parks board chair Camil Dumont, both members of the Green party, responded to Postmedia’s questions.
This is not the first time the Marine Drive Golf Club has fought for exclusiveness. In 2007, it successfully argued in the Supreme Court of Canada that female members had no right to use its male-only lounge.
Barrie Philp and his family, however, think it’s past time for the club to be more inclusive, especially since it has benefited not only from his great-grandfather’s generosity but also from taxpayers’ largesse, including a post-Second World War rescue by the City of Vancouver when it was virtually bankrupt.
“It’s become quite clear,” Philp said, “that people need access to nature. And one of the great assets of this province is the Fraser River.”