A brush fire on an uninhabited island just 500 metres from Salt Spring Island brought as many as 30 residents — and almost as many boats — to fight it with buckets, shovels and eventually a pump and hose, according to witnesses.

And after several calls for assistance — and hours of hard work by local community members — the blaze that started on Third Sister Island Sunday, Sept. 14 was fully extinguished, according to Salt Spring resident Greg Bellavance, one of the first to attend the fire. Bellavance said flames had been spotted by aircraft and shared online, at which point he and Ian Mott decided to race out of Ganges Harbour by boat to see if they could help.

“We throttled up right after the Coast Guard dock,” said Bellavance. “Next thing you know the RCMP boat is approaching us, waving to me to slow down. I pointed toward the island and said we were attending the fire; he gave me the thumbs up and let us go on.”

Bellavance said when he and Mott arrived they immediately began running buckets of water up from the shoreline and shovelling around what had grown to be a 30-by-10-foot fire near the centre of the small island, home to the popular day-trip destination Chocolate Beach. 

Nearby, he said, were three people — two “passed out” under trees near where the fire was burning, and a third hanging clothes over smouldering branches.

“They had dragged out coals and burning chunks of wood from the main body of a campfire to dry their clothing,” said Bellavance, who said the trio insisted they did not start the fire.

“I was immediately on the phone with 911, [Mott] was on with BC Forestry,” said Bellavance. “I put a call out to a group chat of my friends who are all users of Chocolate Beach — ‘bring buckets and bodies!’ — and they all mobilized.”

Additional help arrived aboard even more private boats, Bellavance said, after a social media post by his wife Kym. Among the large group, he said, was one islander who came out from the Scott Point side — on a paddle board.

“I don’t know who she was, but she was right in there with the pickaxe,” said Bellavance. “A bunch were shovelling, running buckets; one gentleman showed up on a boat with a small fire pump and a whole bunch of hose. It was a community effort.”

Bellavance said after a frustrating 911 call, one of the volunteers ashore was able to reach police directly, and shortly after the RCMP patrol vessel Lindsay arrived at the island.

“I got on the VHF [radio] with them and asked if they could come ashore,” said Bellavance. “Which they did, and they took one guy away; a couple of hours later someone came out with a little tinny and the other two left with their three dogs.”

Messages to RCMP were not returned before press time; any campfire would be in contravention of a strict and nearly province-wide fire ban, in place until the end of October.

Responding to inquiries, Salt Spring Island Fire Rescue (SSIFR) Chief Jamie Holmes said that while assistance for out-of-jurisdiction fires can sometimes be arranged outside the department’s official capacities, SSIFR operations are strictly limited by its letters patent and bylaws. When a fire situation arises outside the district, another authority having jurisdiction needs to request SSIFR’s help; and, Holmes said, they can only respond if a mutual aid agreement is in place or a provincial task number is assigned — and when enough coverage remains in place to fully protect Salt Spring Island.

“Unfortunately, when it comes to response protocols, we don’t have a lot of leeway,” said Holmes. “Sometimes there are ways we can offer support without the actual agency responding, but we can’t respond to just anything we want to.”

Holmes told fire district board members Monday night that SSIFR did contact BC Forest Service but were told their firefighting resources were “tied up on other fires.”

“They said if they had a helicopter in the area it would swing by,” said Holmes. “But I think by the time their resources cleared up, some good citizens had tackled the problem on their own.”

The district has looked into fire boats in the past, according to Holmes, but plans never materialized largely over costs, which would necessarily require not only a commercial vessel but also employing a highly-trained captain and paying for annual skills training and certifications.

“Buying a boat is actually the cheapest part of it,” Holmes said. 

Notably, Sunday was the second impromptu firefighting effort for Bellavance in recent years. During the extremely dry conditions in the summer of 2022, Bellavance contained a brush fire discovered up Mount Maxwell Road with his bobcat until fire trucks arrived.

In the summer of 2003, Ganges Coast Guard transported four of Salt Spring’s volunteer firefighters to Third Sister Island to respond to a small nighttime fire, according to Driftwood reporting.

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While not everyone who participated in extinguishing the Sept. 14 fire was known, Bellavance was able to pull together the following names to thank for helping, in addition to himself and Ian Mott: Dale Dow, Jeff Whitmore, Trevor Kaye, Nick and Celine Boychuk, Nick Ogilvie, Matt Kerrigan, Tom Miller, Allan Maten (and friend), Garrett O’Dwyer, Jann Helssen, Kim Duchek, Sal and Shauna, Cochise and Ginny, Ernesto, Jill, Chris, Cyrus, Tom, Andrea, personnel on the RCMP Lindsay and anyone forgotten or misspelled.

A new petition before B.C.’s Supreme Court contends Salt Spring’s Local Trust Committee (LTC) has overstepped its authority in crafting development regulations meant in part to protect marine environments — a power lawyers for some property owners say lies exclusively with the government of Canada. 

Arguing the LTC’s creation of Development Permit Area (DPA) 3  “Shoreline” within Salt Spring’s Official Community Plan (OCP) should be rendered invalid by the paramountcy of federal law, Baker Beach area homeowners Ethan Wilding, David Demner and Heidi Kuhrt have initiated a petition for judicial review of the LTC’s decision not to issue a permit for a shoreline stabilization project at their waterfront properties.

Alongside an application for a licence of occupation from the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship (WLRS) to do work within the Crown land at the shore, the Islands Trust required a permit for the project to proceed, since it lay within DPA-3. 

In the July appeal, consultants for the homeowners addressed an itemized list of staff concerns, warning the beach itself was in danger from the same erosion processes that threatened the proponents’ homes. Ultimately the LTC deferred to its own staff, noting trustees’ lack of specific scientific expertise, and reflecting vocal public sentiment against the proposal.

In the petition filed Aug. 27, lawyers for the property owners characterized both denials as products of “unconstitutional overreach by the Trust Committee, exercising powers over the protection of fish which neither it, nor the Province of British Columbia, possess,” according to petition text. It suggests that federal permission for the project to proceed had already been received from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) under the Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program — indicating, lawyers said, federal endorsement for the erosion mitigation effort, in line with both environmental standards and those respecting the rights of First Nations.

When the LTC’s planning services staff rejected the application initially, their concerns were based — at least in large part, according to the petition — on DPA-3 guidelines in Salt Spring’s OCP intended to protect tidal waters and aquatic habitats; DPA-3 extends into the intertidal zone seaward of the “natural boundary” of the ocean.

Lawyers for the property owners argue those guidelines exercise a power that exceeds the statutory authority of the LTC, established under the provincial Islands Trust Act, which, they said, could not empower it to directly regulate marine environments.

“During the July 10th LTC meeting, it became clear that the concern for fish and fish habitat arose primarily within the context of the LTC’s concern over Aboriginal rights to fish or harvest shellfish along Baker Beach,” read the petition. “The Islands Trust Act does not authorize the Trust Committee to enact rules for the protection of fish or fish habitat in tidal waters . . . [and] the impugned portions of the OCP exceed the Trust Committee’s statutory authority. They are invalid and ought to be set aside.”

The petitioners contend that the LTC’s DPA-3 guidelines encroach upon federal jurisdiction, which they say is exclusive over fisheries and fish habitat under Section 91(12) of the Constitution Act, 1867, and the Fisheries Act, emphasizing that federal agencies, particularly DFO, have extensive and detailed regulations, approvals and environmental assessments supporting the project’s compliance, rendering the LTC’s restrictions unconstitutional. 

“As the Trust Committee is a creature of provincial statute, it may not under any circumstance exercise statutory authority not possessed by British Columbia,” read the petition. “By creating the impugned DPA-3 Guidelines for Development in the OCP, the Trust Committee has impermissibly stepped into an area of exclusive federal jurisdiction.” 

The property owners’ petition also took exception with the LTC’s July debate on the appeal, saying trustees seem to have made up their minds before the public meeting — a procedural flaw compounded, according to the petition, by the LTC’s reasoning for rejecting the appeal, which lawyers said failed to address statutory exemptions explicitly granted in the OCP that would allow projects approved by federal agencies like DFO to proceed without requiring separate local permits. 

“Because the project cannot proceed, the petitioners are exposed to real and ongoing risk of irreversible erosion to their respective properties,” read the petition. 

“Ethan, and David and Heidi, continue to face the prospect of their homes slipping into the sea.”

The project proponents had petitioned the court back in May for an order requiring the LTC reach a decision on their application. Reached this week, Salt Spring LTC chair Tim Peterson said trustees would have no comment while the matter remained before the courts.