There are beaches and there are beaches. The town of Qualicum Beach derives its eponymous name, in part, from one of the town’s very best features – namely, its beach.
There are wild beaches, urban beaches, and artificial beaches. Qualicum’s beach lies somewhere between wild and urban. With luck and good planning, the wild aspect of this beach may be preserved.
But there are proposals out there that see the beach at Qualicum as just another way to increase profits, another way to exhibit human power over nature; proposals that would remove many of the soothing qualities of a beach and make it just another jangling money maker.
Why should a town’s every blessing and amenity be considered as only a way to relieve people of their dollars, a way to attract more and ever more people? Why should the beach be seen simply as a feature with possibilities for gain?
Believe it or not, people do come to beaches for surcease from life’s daily hassles. They come to beaches to recharge their inner batteries. They come for the unimpeded vistas of water, sky and shoreline. They come to regain some of the calm inherent in their original source — the feel, sounds, and movement of the sea. They come to be still, quiet, even somnolent during this time away from the marketplace.
It’s enough that Qualicum’s beach is paralleled by a path for belching motor vehicles. It does not need the added annoyance and distraction of a carnival atmosphere or motorized water sports.
A beach is an inherently unstable environment, and human activities, in part, have already led to alterations in the beach’s natural formation and to the threat of rising sea levels. Before we were as knowledgeable as we now hope we are, we admired that beach, built homes and businesses on its very edge in order to enjoy its calm or violent moods, and are now stuck with trying to protect and preserve what we wrought.
But we don’t have to nurture some people’s need for only the easy way, for constant excitement, or their propensity to spend as the only way to enjoy. It’s perfectly permissible to maintain our beach in as wild a state as we can while preserving our probably misguided waterfront constructions of an earlier era.
It’s also perfectly okay to be different. People will come to enjoy this beach because it is different; because it’s more peaceful; because it allows them to get a little more in tune with nature. There are other beaches with playgrounds, bandstands, performers, motorized watercraft rentals, concessions, and Coney Island atmosphere.
Qualicum’s beach can offer something different (and rarer, these days) … it can offer an almost truly genuine beach.
Qualicum is blessed with a beach of infinite ‘beachy’ variety. It has clean, smooth, shallowly sloping sand — perfect for wading, sandcastle construction, and splashing in the sun-warmed water for little tykes. It has stretches of shingle with a vast array of patterned and interestingly shaped rocks and pebbles. It has sea life-encrusted rocks. It has beach grass and an assortment of drift logs for leaning, sitting, or make believe fortifications.
Qualicum’s beach has sea critters in abundance, ready and waiting to be discovered, admired, and returned to the very spot they were found. Qualicum’s beach is a natural science lesson that’s fun.
All of the above are absolutely ‘raison d’etre’ to leave it well enough alone.
If one needs a more official hands-off policy, remember that Qualicum’s beach is part of the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve; it’s also within a wildlife management area.
Oh, and too much disturbance (worse, it’s said than any other part of the world) decreases (by over 50 per cent) the number of feeding Brant geese (who bring so many spending, Brant Festival visitors to our area).
Nancy Whelan is a community-based columnist. She lives in Qualicum Beach.
