If patience is a virtue, islanders know we typically have more opportunities to be virtuous than most.
The same patience that shepherds us through a surprise two-sailing wait serves us well in many aspects of island living, not least of all in waiting for long-promised improvements — or even desperately-needed repairs — to our community infrastructure and fabric.
We note with guarded optimism the list of highly-visible “big projects” nearing completion has grown quite a bit this summer.
Some of these have been in the works for years — BC Housing’s multi-unit supportive and affordable housing project at Drake Road, for example, first promised for “fast-tracking” in 2022 is now likely just weeks away from opening its doors to our island’s underhoused.
And the perennially protracted Policy Statement revision project from the Islands Trust — by one measure a six-year-old process, but truly last tackled in earnest three decades ago — has finally rounded a procedural corner into an admittedly long back stretch toward a finish. With luck — and with smooth sailing on engagement — that could be as little as six months away.
More difficult to appreciate are the equally long-term but relatively quiet or behind-the-scenes “big projects” taking place all over the island. The new partnership between local family doctors and other agencies that’s becoming the Salt Spring Island Primary Care Network is a big one, and it looks to dramatically upgrade islanders’ ability to connect with family doctors, nurse practitioners and health professionals of all kinds.
Some of these nearly-complete endeavours only seem like they’ve gone on for years — it hasn’t quite been a full year since flaggers held up their first stop signs at the Fulford-Ganges Road project, for example, nor has it been 12 months since the first concrete pour took place at the new fire hall site.
But standing at any of these projects today, if we tilt our heads just a little, all of us can easily imagine what the finished product is going to look like, and how it will help.
Patience pays off, and we appreciate those who persevere — spotlight or no.