Who Stole the Gorge? How Four Municipalities Let Public Waterfront Become Private—One Dock, Hedge and “No Action” Decision at a Time

 

Who Stole the Gorge?

How Four Municipalities Let Public Waterfront Become Private—One Dock, Hedge and “No Action” Decision at a Time

Veins of Life Watershed Society — August 2026

We are not against docks. We are against public land quietly becoming private land in everything but name, sensitive habitat being occupied without proper assessment, and four municipalities managing one tidal ecosystem as four unrelated shorelines.

The Gorge Waterway, Selkirk Water and Portage Inlet do not belong to any one municipality, waterfront neighbourhood, government department or group of private landowners.

They are a connected tidal system linking Victoria Harbour with Craigflower Creek, Colquitz River, Hospital Creek, Cecelia Creek, Gorge Creek and the surrounding watershed.

They are also:

• public waters and public foreshore;

• fish and shellfish habitat;

• a migratory-bird sanctuary;

• an Indigenous cultural landscape;

• a recreational waterway;

• part of a working harbour;

• and the receiving environment for more than a century of urban and industrial pollution.

The Gorge does not recognize the boundary between Victoria and Esquimalt. Eelgrass does not change its legal status when the shoreline crosses from Saanich into View Royal. Fish do not stop at a municipal line to check which council is responsible.

Yet that is how the waterway continues to be managed.

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We are not against docks

This needs to be stated clearly because criticism of private docks is too often reduced to a false choice:

Support every dock—or be accused of opposing all access to the water.

That has never been the VOLWS position.

Over the past three decades, VOLWS has removed abandoned docks, derelict boats and marine debris. We have restored shoreline access, planted shoreline vegetation, worked to restore eelgrass and supported public access to the water.

We helped build a community dock near the Tillicum Bridge. We have discussed accessible swimming and water-entry facilities at Curtis Point and Aaron Point with Saanich. In 2025, Saanich staff corresponded with VOLWS about presenting the Curtis Point accessible-dock concept to its Natural Areas, Parks and Trails Committee.

Those are not the actions of an organization opposed to docks.

Our position is straightforward:

Follow the law. Respect municipal Official Community Plans and bylaws. Protect the habitat. Respect public ownership. Where a dock is genuinely appropriate, shared and community facilities make more sense than automatically placing a separate private structure in front of every waterfront property.

The problem is not the word dock.

The problem is the wrong dock, in the wrong place, built or retained without a complete accounting of ownership, authorization, habitat, archaeology, public access and cumulative effects.

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Public land can be privatized without ever being sold

Privatization does not always arrive through a formal land sale.

It can happen quietly.

A public road end is left unsigned. A shoreline path is no longer maintained. A hedge spreads across it. A driveway is widened. A garden, shed, boat, lumber pile or vehicle appears. A fence or gate follows. Then a private ramp is poured or a dock is attached.

Finally, someone posts a Private Property sign.

Most members of the public do not carry cadastral maps or survey plans. They see the hedge, gate, dock and warning sign and turn around.

The land may remain publicly owned on paper, but it has become private in appearance, function and daily use.

That is de facto privatization.

A public waterfront access does not cease to be public because a neighbour has landscaped it. Crown foreshore does not become part of a backyard because it has been occupied for decades. Section 8 of British Columbia’s Land Act says that an interest in Crown land cannot be acquired through prescription, unauthorized occupation or colour of right. Section 55 generally preserves the bed and shore below the natural boundary as Crown land unless the original Crown grant expressly provides otherwise. (BCLaws)

The Province states that it owns nearly all freshwater and saltwater foreshore in British Columbia. Private ownership of the adjoining upland does not itself authorize construction on aquatic Crown land. The Province also recognizes a qualified public common-law privilege—or “bare licence”—to access Crown foreshore and requires private moorage not to obstruct public passage along it. (Government of British Columbia)

That public privilege is not unlimited. It does not authorize people to cross private upland, enter reserve land, wander through an active industrial operation, damage habitat or walk through a protected archaeological site.

But private waterfront ownership is not unlimited either.

It does not ordinarily include title to the beach, tidal flat or seabed. It does not create an automatic right to fence the foreshore, prevent public passage, remove vegetation or construct a permanent private dock.

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The UVic ELC documented the public-land problem

VOLWS asked the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre to investigate apparent private occupation of public waterfront land on the Gorge and Portage Inlet.

The resulting report, The Need to Protect Public Waterfront on the Gorge from Private Use and Occupation, was sent to the mayors of Esquimalt and Saanich.

The investigation used:

• CRD cadastral mapping;

• aerial photography;

• historical information;

• geographic coordinates;

• ground-level photographs;

• and field observations.

It identified 11 preliminary locations—nine in Esquimalt and two in Saanich—where publicly mapped waterfront land appeared to be occupied or made inaccessible through combinations of:

• gardens and hedges;

• driveways;

• fences and gates;

• bins and parked vehicles;

• boats and equipment;

• deposited soil, wood and yard material;

• private signs;

• ramps;

• and docks.

The nine Esquimalt locations included:

• De Costa Place;

• Arcadia Street;

• Rhoda Lane;

• Mesher Place;

• Murray Drive;

• Aral Road;

• Glen Vale Road;

• Garthland Road;

• and Rankin Road.

At Glen Vale Road and Garthland Road, the report documented apparent private dock access through public land, barriers, boat storage, altered shoreline vegetation and private signage.

The report did not claim that every apparent encroachment had already been proven in court. It asked the municipalities to establish the actual boundaries, determine whether lawful authority existed and protect public access where the land was confirmed to be public.

That distinction matters.

VOLWS did not ask a university legal clinic to conduct a public shaming exercise. We asked the responsible governments to answer basic ownership and authorization questions.

Saanich reportedly confirmed and addressed some of the encroachments it investigated. Esquimalt acknowledged that legal issues existed, but the records reviewed by VOLWS still do not contain a complete public, site-by-site explanation of how every identified public-land issue was resolved.

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The warning has been on the record for more than 25 years

The 1990s: restoration and public access

During the 1990s, VOLWS volunteers removed abandoned structures and debris, restored shoreline areas and worked to reconnect residents with the Gorge.

At Arcadia Street, VOLWS constructed or restored a shoreline-access path. When the area was later examined during the ELC public-land investigation, that access was no longer evident and parts of the mapped public area appeared to have been absorbed into gardens or used for private storage and dumping.

A March 1999 Victoria Natural History Society greenways inventory had separately identified apparent waterfront encroachment at Murray Drive.

The public-access problem was therefore not invented after the present dock dispute began.

It was already being documented while volunteers were still cleaning up the waterway.

1999–2000: a regional shoreline baseline

In 1999–2000, Norm Clarke and the Gorge Waterway Society produced a report and VHS video documenting docks and habitat through Victoria Harbour, Selkirk Water, the Gorge Waterway and connected waters.

That material is not missing. It remains within the VOLWS historical collection.

At the same time, VOLWS conducted the shoreline survey on the Saanich side of the Gorge and Portage Inlet.

Those records created an early baseline showing:

• the docks that existed at the time;

• shoreline vegetation;

• aquatic habitat;

• public access;

• shoreline alteration;

• and areas that had not yet been occupied by later structures.

The 1999–2000 record can now be compared with current aerial imagery and municipal records to identify later dock construction, enlargement, shoreline clearing and public-land occupation.

March 2000: DFO warned about all four municipalities

A March 17, 2000 Fisheries and Oceans Canada letter concerning a proposed dock at 1019 Arcadia Street in Esquimalt should have ended any suggestion that the cumulative dock problem was unforeseen.

DFO’s historical record identified:

• 59 Esquimalt properties adjoining the Gorge;

• 24 private docks;

• and only three identified foreshore leases.

Those figures were a historical snapshot, not a current count.

DFO nevertheless warned that granting one variance could create pressure for further variances in Esquimalt, Saanich, View Royal and Victoria.

The department raised:

• eelgrass shading;

• seabed disturbance;

• propeller impacts;

• fuel, bilge and sewage pollution;

• antifouling compounds;

• treated timber;

• sediment disturbance;

• weak summer flushing;

• and the inability of individual project reviews to deal with cumulative dock proliferation.

DFO was not warning about one wooden float.

It was warning about a multi-municipal pattern.

2010: docks and public-land encroachments went before Esquimalt Council

A June 2010 VOLWS communication identified private docks and encroachments on public lands as one of the major unresolved Gorge issues.

A formal VOLWS report was subsequently included in the November 8, 2010 Esquimalt Council agenda process, and VOLWS appeared as a delegation. The UVic Environmental Law Centre was included in the correspondence.

By then, Esquimalt had already received years of warnings about docks, public access, shoreline occupation and environmental damage.

2016: the working inventory became more specific

VOLWS’s March 2016 working inventory, Docks and leases, separated the Esquimalt shoreline above and below the Gorge–Tillicum Bridge.

Below the bridge, the working record identified:

• nine docks for which no lease had been located;

• five reportedly constructed since 2000;

• two reportedly enlarged substantially since 2000;

• and one associated with an older lease whose apparent physical footprint had increased.

Above the bridge, it recorded 14 docks:

• two with identified leases;

• one apparently extending beyond the lease area;

• 12 for which no lease had been identified;

• and 11 reportedly constructed after 2000.

These were VOLWS working observations and apparent tenure findings, not final legal determinations.

But they gave government far more than a vague complaint. They provided numbers, locations and construction-history questions that could be investigated.

2016–2017: the problem was photographed property by property

VOLWS correspondence documented concerns at Glen Vale, Garthland, Dellwood, Arcadia, Inlet Road and other locations.

The record included allegations and photographs involving:

• private docks attached through public land;

• unstable or deteriorating structures;

• vegetation clearing;

• shoreline hardening;

• boat storage on public property;

• private signs;

• blocked access;

• and continued construction after complaints had been submitted.

The pattern was no longer theoretical.

The docks, barriers and altered shoreline were visible.

2020: Esquimalt regularized continued private use

In November 2019, waterfront owners made a presentation to Esquimalt Council seeking recognition of existing docks.

On February 3, 2020, Esquimalt Council considered Update re: Docks on the Gorge and chose not to enforce against certain existing non-conforming docks, provided they were maintained and not enlarged or materially reconfigured.

The municipal review reportedly identified approximately:

• 28 docks associated directly with private waterfront property; and

• 10 docks on, connected to or accessed through public property.

Users of docks associated with municipal land were required to enter Licences of Use and Occupation and assume maintenance, liability and insurance obligations.

That arrangement may have addressed part of the municipal land-use and liability problem.

It did not, by itself, prove:

• lawful original construction;

• lawful non-conforming status;

• provincial Crown-land authorization;

• Fisheries Act compliance;

• navigation compliance;

• archaeological authorization;

• migratory-bird sanctuary compliance;

• consultation with affected First Nations;

• or assessment of cumulative effects.

A municipality can decide how it will use its own enforcement discretion.

It cannot use a municipal resolution to grant provincial Crown land, rewrite federal environmental law or retroactively issue authorizations belonging to other governments.

2023–2025: the ELC examined the larger dock-governance failure

The later UVic ELC report, originally titled Challenging Private Docks on the Gorge and published as Better Management of Private Docks on the Gorge Waterway, examined federal, provincial and municipal authority.

The report recorded VOLWS’s estimate of approximately 150 private docks in the Gorge, Upper Harbour and Portage Inlet, with roughly half believed to have been constructed since 2000. Those are VOLWS estimates—not the result of a completed government inventory.

The ELC found a fragmented system involving conditional provincial General Permission, incomplete records, different municipal rules, uncertain historical status and no single waterway-wide cumulative assessment. (Environmental Law Centre)

2026: the questions remain unanswered

VOLWS’s July 2026 formal notice concerning Esquimalt Resolution 20-0035 asked for the actual dock-by-dock records.

Among the unresolved questions were:

• When was each dock originally constructed?

• Was it lawful at that time?

• Was it later moved, enlarged or rebuilt?

• What municipal zoning applied?

• Did it have provincial tenure or satisfy every General Permission condition?

• Was it reviewed under federal navigation legislation?

• Was fish habitat assessed?

• Was the structure inspected at low tide?

• Does it rest on eelgrass or mudflat?

• Was shoreline vegetation removed?

• Does it occupy public land?

• Was archaeological screening completed?

• Were affected First Nations consulted?

• Is the structure still used and maintained?

• What happens when the adjoining property is sold?

Calling a structure grandfathered does not answer any of those questions.

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All four municipalities have been put on notice

This is not simply an Esquimalt file.

The VOLWS archive contains historical communications concerning docks, shoreline access, habitat and public lands involving Victoria, Saanich, View Royal and Esquimalt.

A 2011 UVic Environmental Law Centre submission prepared for VOLWS during British Columbia’s Water Act modernization process described the central governance failure:

Management along political boundaries had severed the connection between upstream and downstream activities and created fragmented decision-making between neighbouring jurisdictions.

The submission expressly identified Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich, View Royal and the wider Gorge watershed. It concluded that long-term protection could not continue to depend on volunteers and that the Gorge illustrated the need for watershed-based governance.

The archive also includes:

• historical accounts of multi-agency discussions involving all four municipalities;

• the 1999–2000 shoreline and habitat records;

• the 2000 DFO warning covering all four municipalities;

• the 2017 public-waterfront ELC report;

• correspondence seeking Victoria’s copy or Council record of the Norm Clarke material;

• joint municipal notices regarding contaminated water and recreational exposure in December 2024;

• and later correspondence concerning private docks, public lands, archaeology, the bird sanctuary and cumulative effects.

On January 16, 2025, VOLWS sent Urgent Call for Action on Illegal Docks and Habitat Degradation in the Gorge Waterway and Portage Inlet to all four councils, as well as Songhees Nation and Xʷsepsəm/Esquimalt Nation.

The word illegal in that subject line reflects VOLWS’s position concerning docks believed to lack one or more required authorizations. It is not a claim that a court has ruled every identified dock unlawful.

On September 11, 2025, VOLWS sent a coordinated series of notices to provincial and federal ministers, copied to all four councils and the CRD. The subjects included:

• Municipal Failures Under the Local Government Act;

• Land Act Failures—Docks on Crown Foreshore;

• Heritage Conservation Act Violations—Archaeological Sites at Risk;

• Disregard for First Nations Rights;

• Fisheries Act Non-Compliance;

• and Environmental Protection Failure—30 Years of Restoration Undone.

Each municipality may disagree with VOLWS’s legal characterization of particular docks.

None can reasonably say the underlying concerns were never raised.

Receipt is not investigation. Forwarding is not enforcement. Silence is not compliance.

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Victoria: strong environmental language, acknowledged regulatory gaps

Victoria occupies the lower Gorge, Selkirk Water and much of the working harbour shoreline.

Its current Official Community Plan, Victoria 2050, Bylaw No. 25-045, was adopted in 2025. The plan recognizes trees, healthy waterways and diverse ecosystems as foundational public infrastructure, while also preserving employment lands and the historic working harbour. (City of Victoria)

Victoria now has two principal zoning instruments:

• Zoning Bylaw 2018, No. 18-072; and

• the continuing Zoning Regulation Bylaw No. 80-159, which still applies to many industrial, comprehensive-development, medium- and high-density and waterfront areas.

The older Zoning Regulation Bylaw contains the Gorge Waterway Park District, while other Selkirk and harbour properties operate under different site-specific or comprehensive zones. Whether a particular structure is permitted therefore depends on its precise location, zoning and history. (City of Victoria)

Victoria was part of the 1999–2000 dock-and-habitat record. In 2022, VOLWS asked City planning staff whether Victoria retained its own copy of the Norm Clarke report, VHS or the corresponding Council material.

That was not a search for the only surviving copy. VOLWS retains the historical material. The question was what Victoria had received, reviewed and retained.

On September 17, 2025, VOLWS wrote directly to Victoria Mayor and Council under the subject:

OCP Amendment—Enforce Existing Law and Stop Cumulative Dock Impacts in the Gorge & Selkirk

That letter expressly stated:

“We are not opposed to docks where they comply with policy, legislation, and regulation.”

In June 2026, a Victoria staff response in the VOLWS archive stated that, from staff’s reading, the City appeared to have authority but did not have sufficient language, definitions and requirements in its zoning bylaw.

That is an important admission.

The City has an OCP praising healthy waterways and public space. It has legal authority to zone land covered by water. It has previously enforced its Gorge Waterway Park zoning against long-term private moorage, and the B.C. Supreme Court upheld that authority in City of Victoria v. Zimmerman. (SMS Law)

Yet staff also acknowledged a regulatory-language gap concerning docks.

Victoria cannot place all responsibility on Esquimalt, the Province or Transport Canada. Its shoreline, parks, zoning and public lands are part of the same problem.

There are positive examples. Banfield Park has a public dock serving swimming, paddling and non-motorized access, and the City reports that its expansion underwent aquatic assessment and review by DFO and Transport Canada. That is evidence that VOLWS’s concern is not the existence of docks but the difference between a publicly planned facility and an unverified patchwork of private structures. (City of Victoria)

Victoria’s unresolved issue is the gap between broad OCP commitments and a complete, public accounting of private structures, zoning status, public-land occupation and environmental effects along its portion of the waterway.

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Esquimalt: decades of notice followed by municipal regularization

Esquimalt has the most extensively documented dock record, but it is not the only municipality responsible.

The Township received:

• the March 2000 DFO warning;

• the 2010 VOLWS report and delegation;

• the 2016 dock-and-tenure working inventory;

• years of property-specific complaints and photographs;

• the 2017 ELC public-land report;

• the 2019 waterfront-owner presentation;

• the 2020 staff report;

• and the July 2026 compliance demand.

Esquimalt’s current OCP is Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 2922. Its Natural Environment Development Permit Area applies to new structures and many landscaping activities. The Township states that new development is not permitted within 20 metres of the Gorge high-water mark and directs property owners to consult Development Services before structural work or clearing in the foreshore area. The guidelines address natural features, biodiversity, drainage, erosion, shorelines and native-bird habitat. (Corporation of the Township of Esquimalt)

Its zoning remains governed principally by Zoning Bylaw No. 2050, together with amendments and marine-specific zones. Those marine zones do not create a blanket right for every waterfront property to construct or retain a dock. (Corporation of the Township of Esquimalt)

Esquimalt’s 2020 response did something highly consequential.

Rather than completing and publishing a full multi-jurisdictional compliance record for each structure, the Township decided not to enforce against specified existing docks and entered occupancy arrangements for private docks associated with municipal public property.

That may have provided municipal order where none previously existed.

It also entrenched private use of public waterfront land.

The issue is not that a municipality can never license private use of municipal property. The issue is whether that public asset was treated transparently, consistently with the OCP and with full knowledge of:

• the legal boundary;

• the value of the private benefit;

• the loss of public access;

• the original legality of the structure;

• the status of provincial foreshore;

• the ecological setting;

• and the other approvals still required.

The public-land report had already shown that private occupation was not limited to the footprint of a float. It included gardens, vegetation removal, storage, ramps, signs, barriers and the creation of a private atmosphere around publicly mapped land.

Esquimalt did not create the fragmented legal system.

But it cannot cite that fragmentation as an excuse after using its own authority to formalize continued private occupation.

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Saanich: a strong apparent prohibition without a public dock-by-dock accounting

Saanich is often treated as a secondary player in the dock debate.

It is not.

VOLWS conducted the Saanich shoreline survey during the 1999–2000 regional dock-and-habitat work. The 2017 ELC public-land report was directed to both Esquimalt and Saanich and included two preliminary Saanich encroachment locations.

Saanich reportedly verified and addressed some of the apparent public-land issues. That deserves recognition.

But dealing with selected encroachments is not the same as accounting publicly for every dock, public access, shoreline alteration and Crown-land interest along the Saanich side of the Gorge and Portage Inlet.

Saanich adopted an updated OCP on May 7, 2024. The current online version includes amendments through February 2026 and contains policies and development-permit provisions concerning natural-environment protection. (https://www.saanich.ca)

Its principal land-use bylaw remains Zoning Bylaw No. 8200. (https://www.saanich.ca)

The UVic ELC’s 2025 review concluded that section 5.16(a) of the Saanich zoning bylaw prohibits buildings and structures on the foreshore, expressly including the Gorge Waterway.

That is the ELC’s legal reading of the bylaw. Whether a specific dock is lawful still depends on the evidence:

• when it was built;

• whether it was lawful at that time;

• whether it was later moved, replaced or enlarged;

• whether use was discontinued;

• whether a permit or variance exists;

• and whether provincial and federal authority was obtained. (Environmental Law Centre)

Saanich may therefore have the strongest apparent municipal prohibition of the four jurisdictions.

But a strong bylaw is only as meaningful as the public record showing how it has been applied.

VOLWS has not been given a complete dock-by-dock reconciliation between Saanich’s zoning prohibition and the structures that remain along its shoreline.

Saanich’s correspondence with VOLWS concerning the Curtis Point accessible dock also demonstrates the distinction at the heart of this article.

VOLWS has supported serious discussion of a publicly accessible dock in an appropriate location. We have never argued that the shoreline must be sealed off from people.

The concern is why publicly planned access must undergo visible committee and technical scrutiny while the historical status of numerous private structures remains unclear.

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View Royal: the shallowest waters and the shortest answer

View Royal borders Portage Inlet, one of the most ecologically sensitive parts of the system.

The CRD describes Portage Inlet as a shallow basin averaging less than two metres in depth. It contains intertidal mudflats, approximately 50 hectares of eelgrass, Olympia oysters and important bird habitat. Together, the Gorge and Portage Inlet contain approximately 80 per cent of the eelgrass found in CRD harbours. (Capital Regional District)

Portage Inlet is exactly the kind of place where a private dock may look attractive from the upland but prove impractical and environmentally damaging once the tide, mudflat and eelgrass are understood.

View Royal’s current adopted OCP remains Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 811, as amended. Its current bylaw directory also includes:

• Zoning Bylaw No. 900;

• Parks and Public Places Bylaw No. 986;

• Storm Water Regulation Bylaw No. 902;

• and Tree Protection Bylaw No. 1069. (https://www.viewroyal.ca)

View Royal’s Tree Protection Bylaw protects Town-owned trees, specified nest trees and certain other protected trees, and its watercourse protection setback has been increased from 15 to 30 metres for freshwater and ocean watercourses. (https://www.viewroyal.ca)

The Town is also updating its OCP. Council gave first and second readings to proposed Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 1180 on July 7, 2026, with a public hearing anticipated for September 2026. (Engage View Royal)

That policy activity contrasts sharply with View Royal’s response to the dock issue.

The January 16, 2025 VOLWS joint letter concerning docks, habitat, public land and archaeology was placed on the January 21 View Royal Council agenda.

On January 22, the Town advised VOLWS that Council had received the correspondence and:

“No further action will be taken.”

That may be a procedurally clean answer.

It is not a substantive answer to the environmental, public-land or legal questions raised.

Portage Inlet’s eelgrass, tidal flats, shallow water, stormwater discharges and cultural sites do not become less important because correspondence was received for information.

A municipal inbox is not a watershed-management system.

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Official Community Plans are not decorative language

Each municipality has an OCP containing commitments relating to environmental protection, parks, public spaces, shoreline values, natural assets or ecological resilience.

An OCP is not itself a building permit, dock approval or direct order against a landowner.

Section 478 of the Local Government Act says that an OCP does not commit or authorize a municipality to proceed with every project described in it. But it also says that bylaws enacted and works undertaken after adoption must be consistent with the plan. (BCLaws)

That creates a legitimate public question:

What does it mean for a municipality to promise shoreline protection, public access and ecosystem conservation while private occupation and unverified structures are allowed to persist without a complete public accounting?

An OCP cannot substitute for zoning, permitting or enforcement.

But neither should it be treated as campaign literature that can be forgotten whenever the affected land is valuable or the enforcement file is politically uncomfortable.

“Grandfathered” also has a legal meaning

Section 528 of the Local Government Act protects certain non-conforming uses only where the land, building or structure was lawfully used when the later land-use regulation was adopted. The legislation also addresses discontinuance and limits surrounding non-conforming uses and structures. (BCLaws)

Old does not necessarily mean lawful.

Tolerated does not necessarily mean lawful.

A decision not to enforce does not necessarily prove lawful non-conforming status.

And even valid municipal non-conforming status would not automatically establish compliance with provincial Crown-land law, federal navigation law, fish-habitat protection, archaeological law or the migratory-bird sanctuary.

Not every old dock is unlawful.

Some may have valid historical approvals, Crown tenures or lawful non-conforming status.

That is exactly why the actual records matter.

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Many docks were built where docks do not work

The upper Gorge and Portage Inlet are not deep-water marinas.

Portage Inlet averages less than two metres in depth relative to chart datum. Broad mudflats and eelgrass beds lie beneath waters that appear deep enough at higher tide but may become exposed or nearly exposed during lower tides. (Capital Regional District)

VOLWS’s long-term field observations and correspondence describe a recurring pattern.

A waterfront property changes hands. The new owner sees the water and imagines convenient private boating access. A dock is built, rebuilt or enlarged.

Only afterward does the owner discover that:

• the summer daytime tide is frequently too low;

• the float settles onto the bottom;

• the approach crosses eelgrass or soft mud;

• a boat cannot enter or leave safely for much of the day;

• and the practical use of the structure is far more limited than expected.

Some docks then receive little use.

Some deteriorate.

Some appear abandoned.

Yet their physical and ecological footprint remains every day of the year.

VOLWS has observed many such structures. We should not claim a verified majority until every dock has been inspected and a denominator established.

The absence of that number is not evidence that the concern is imaginary.

It is evidence that no complete waterway-wide inventory has been produced or provided to the public.

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Eelgrass is not empty space waiting for a dock

Portage Inlet contains approximately 50 hectares of eelgrass. Together, the Gorge and Portage Inlet contain about 80 per cent of the eelgrass within CRD harbours. The meadows support juvenile salmon, marine invertebrates and bird feeding and help trap sediment and reduce shoreline erosion. (Capital Regional District)

Peer-reviewed research has repeatedly documented dock effects on eelgrass.

Burdick and Short found depressed eelgrass shoot density and canopy structure beneath and immediately beside docks. Floating docks generally caused more severe effects than elevated structures, while height, width and orientation influenced the amount of light reaching the plants. (UNH Scholars Repository)

A later Swedish study found average reductions of 42 to 64 per cent in eelgrass cover beneath and within six metres of docks. Floating structures affected larger areas and produced stronger reductions than elevated docks. (ScienceDirect)

British Columbia’s Pender Harbour investigation found that increasing dock density was associated with adverse changes to algae, kelp, fish abundance and eelgrass. The affected eelgrass area beneath docks and moored boats was estimated at 2.6 to 5.4 times the physical dock footprint. (British Columbia News Archive)

The lesson is not that every dock produces the same damage.

The lesson is that the environmental footprint can extend far beyond the deck.

It includes:

• the float;

• the ramp;

• the shadow;

• the moored boat;

• anchors and chains;

• propeller tracks;

• the access corridor;

• and associated shoreline clearing.

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A dock lying on the tidal flat is not harmless

A float that repeatedly settles onto the bottom can:

• crush eelgrass;

• compact soft sediment;

• disturb worms, clams, crustaceans and other benthic organisms;

• move across the bottom in wind or wake;

• drag anchors and chains;

• resuspend sediment;

• and enlarge the affected patch over time.

A systematic review of boating and mooring effects found that floating docks produce particularly strong shading and that conventional chains can damage a bottom area many times larger than the mooring point itself. (Springer)

In the Gorge and Selkirk area, seabed disturbance carries an additional concern.

The waterway has received sewage, stormwater, industrial waste and urban runoff for generations. Transport Canada is still addressing historical and continuing pollution in Victoria Harbour and is developing a source-control and sediment-management approach extending to the Selkirk Trestle. It expressly identifies stormwater, sanitary waste and working-harbour sources as continuing concerns. (Transport Canada)

Transport Canada has also identified legacy sawmill-related pollutants that remain along the Cecelia Cove shoreline. (Transport Canada)

Docks did not create all that contamination.

But piling installation and removal, anchoring, propeller scour, dredging and repeated grounding can disturb sediment already carrying metals, PAHs, petroleum products, PCBs, dioxins, furans and other historical or urban contaminants.

The dock issue cannot be separated from source control.

The Gorge receives runoff from heavily urbanized watersheds through 84 identified stormwater discharges. Portage Inlet has 49. (Capital Regional District)

The shoreline is therefore being stressed from both directions:

• pollution arriving through the watershed; and

• physical alteration occurring at the water’s edge.

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The trees are removed before the dock is even used

A private dock is rarely just an overwater structure.

It often brings:

• a cleared sightline;

• stairs or a ramp;

• removal of shrubs;

• pruning or removal of shoreline trees;

• retaining walls;

• bank stabilization;

• shoreline armouring;

• lighting;

• boat storage;

• and a path through the riparian area.

VOLWS correspondence and photographs document repeated concerns about trees and shoreline vegetation being removed for access or a clearer private view.

Those trees are not decorative clutter.

They stabilize banks, intercept runoff, provide shade, contribute insects and organic material to aquatic food webs and offer nesting, resting and escape habitat for birds and other wildlife.

The scientific literature shows that shoreline armouring and overwater structures can alter fish communities, reduce feeding and interrupt movement along shallow-water migration corridors. Juvenile salmon have been observed avoiding heavily shaded areas beneath piers, with lower presence and feeding beneath those structures. (British Ecological Society Journals)

Esquimalt’s OCP recognizes the ecological importance of retaining shoreline trees and native vegetation. View Royal’s tree bylaw protects specified shoreline trees and expands watercourse setbacks. Saanich’s OCP includes natural-environment development-permit provisions. Victoria’s new OCP identifies healthy waterways and natural assets as foundational public infrastructure. (City of Victoria)

The concern is not a lack of policy language.

The concern is what has happened on the ground.

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“I see fish and birds on my dock” does not prove a habitat benefit

Waterfront owners often make a sincere observation:

Fish gather around the pilings, and birds sit on the float. Therefore, the dock must provide habitat.

It proves that an animal was observed using a structure.

It does not prove that the structure:

• created more fish or birds;

• increased survival or reproduction;

• replaced the eelgrass it shaded;

• replaced the mudflat it occupied;

• restored shoreline vegetation;

• increased food production;

• or produced a net ecological benefit.

Animals use human structures constantly.

Birds perch on streetlights. Seals rest on log booms. Barnacles grow on discarded tires. Fish shelter under boats.

Ecologists distinguish between attraction and production.

A structure may attract or concentrate animals already present while the ecosystem’s overall productive capacity declines.

Research on overwater structures has found that intense shade can reduce fish abundance, feeding and shoreline movement even where fish remain visible beside the structure. (British Ecological Society Journals)

The correct question is not:

Did someone see a fish beside the dock?

It is:

What habitat existed before construction, what functions were lost, and what is the net effect after accounting for shading, grounding, vegetation removal, sediment disturbance, vessel activity and all the other nearby docks?

A bird on a railing is not a cumulative-effects assessment.

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The entire area is a migratory-bird sanctuary

The Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary was established in 1923.

It encompasses approximately 1,840 hectares of marine and estuarine waters below the high-water mark in:

• Portage Inlet;

• the Gorge Waterway;

• Selkirk Water;

• Victoria Harbour;

• and adjoining coastal waters.

Approximately 270 bird species have been recorded in the sanctuary. Its habitats include eelgrass, mudflats, shellfish beds, tidal marshes, kelp, rocky shorelines and fish and krill nursery areas. (Canada)

The sanctuary is not a decorative designation.

Federal sanctuary rules prohibit activities harmful to migratory birds, their eggs, nests or habitat unless authorized.

That does not mean every dock is automatically prohibited.

It means the sanctuary question cannot simply be ignored.

The ecological effect of a dock includes more than whether a bird can still land on it. It includes:

• loss of feeding habitat;

• disturbance of resting birds;

• removal of shoreline trees;

• night lighting;

• increased human and pet access;

• effects on eelgrass-supported prey;

• and the combined disturbance from neighbouring structures.

The sanctuary protects habitat—not merely the continued presence of birds willing to adapt to its alteration.

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The Gorge is an Indigenous cultural landscape

The federal sanctuary description places the area within traditional Lekwungen territory and identifies it as the “place to smoke herring.” (Canada)

The CRD records that the Kosampson people lived near Portage Inlet and that shell middens close to the Gorge Bridge confirm more than 4,000 years of use. (Capital Regional District)

VOLWS’s historical records and field experience identify dozens of recorded or suspected archaeological locations, including shell middens, around the Gorge and Portage Inlet.

The precise locations should not be published casually.

Provincial archaeological information is restricted because disclosure can expose sites to looting, vandalism and further disturbance. (Government of British Columbia)

A shell midden is not a disposable pile of shells.

It can contain evidence of:

• habitation;

• food harvesting;

• tools;

• fire use;

• trade;

• ceremony;

• and burial practices.

British Columbia confirms that recorded and unrecorded archaeological sites are protected on public and private land. Any activity disturbing a protected site requires authorization under the Heritage Conservation Act. Shell middens are expressly identified as archaeological sites. (Government of British Columbia)

A dock-related disturbance can include:

• excavating for stairs;

• pouring a ramp foundation;

• building a retaining wall;

• trenching;

• driving piles;

• placing anchor blocks;

• removing shoreline soil;

• and landscaping through a midden.

Where is the consultation record?

VOLWS has repeatedly asked for evidence that the historic expansion and regularization of private docks was accompanied by consistent:

• archaeological screening;

• referral to affected First Nations;

• consultation concerning Aboriginal rights and title;

• consideration of cultural access and harvesting;

• and assessment of cumulative effects.

No complete public dock-by-dock record has been produced.

That does not prove that no consultation occurred on every individual file.

It means governments have not provided a record demonstrating that consultation and archaeological review occurred consistently.

The Supreme Court of Canada held in Haida Nation v. British Columbia that the Crown has a legal duty to consult where it knows of a potential Aboriginal right or title and contemplates conduct that may adversely affect it. General policies or unrelated discussions cannot substitute for consultation concerning the decision actually being made. (Supreme Court of Canada)

The public should not be asked to assume that consultation occurred simply because several governments had jurisdiction.

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Riparian rights are real—but they are not ownership of the foreshore

“Riparian rights” are frequently raised as though the phrase ends the discussion:

I own waterfront property. I have riparian rights. Therefore, I have a right to build and keep a dock.

That is not an accurate description of the law.

A riparian owner has certain rights associated with land adjoining water. In tidal waters, the central right is generally reasonable access between the upland property and the water, including crossing the intervening foreshore.

That right can be significant.

But it is not the same as:

• ownership of the foreshore;

• ownership of the seabed;

• exclusive possession of the beach;

• the right to exclude the public;

• the right to remove shoreline vegetation;

• the right to dredge or fill;

• the right to interfere with navigation;

• or an automatic right to construct a permanent wharf.

In District of North Saanich v. Murray, the B.C. Court of Appeal recognized a riparian owner’s right to access the water across Crown foreshore but did not recognize an automatic right to build a wharf on that foreshore without provincial authority. The broader American idea that a waterfront owner necessarily has a right to construct whatever is needed to make access “effective” was not adopted. (William O'Hanley)

Other cases confirm that valid local land-use regulation can apply to long-term moorage and floating structures.

In West Kelowna v. Newcomb, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld municipal zoning of long-term moorage while preserving temporary moorage directly incidental to active navigation. (VLex)

In City of Victoria v. Zimmerman, the B.C. Supreme Court upheld Victoria’s zoning restrictions against long-term moorage in the Gorge Waterway Park zone. (SMS Law)

In Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee v. B & B Ganges Marina Ltd., the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld application of a local land-use bylaw to a large floating structure functioning as a building rather than as a vessel engaged in navigation. (VLex)

The principle is not complicated:

Riparian access is a qualified property right. It is not a private veto over Crown ownership, public navigation, municipal zoning, fish-habitat protection, archaeology or public passage.

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The legal framework is not one permit

A private dock can comply with one level of government and remain non-compliant with another.

The principal legal questions arise under the following laws and policies.

The Land Act

The Land Act governs provincial aquatic Crown land and foreshore.

Current provincial policy states that private docks require authorization through a valid tenure or, where every condition is met, General Permission. If any General Permission condition is not met, a Specific Permission or lease application is required before the dock can be authorized.

The Province also states that non-compliance with local zoning makes a dock ineligible for Land Act authorization. (Government of British Columbia)

General Permission does not mean there are no rules.

It means authorization is conditional.

The Fisheries Act

Sections 34.4 and 35 prohibit unauthorized works, undertakings or activities that cause fish death or the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat.

Section 36(3) prohibits deposits of deleterious substances into waters frequented by fish unless authorized.

Dock construction and use can engage those provisions through:

• eelgrass shading;

• grounding;

• pile installation;

• propeller scour;

• sediment disturbance;

• dredging;

• fill;

• fuel and oil;

• uncured concrete;

• treated materials;

• and construction debris.

The Fisheries Act also requires cumulative effects to be considered in specified authorization decisions.

The Canadian Navigable Waters Act

Docks, floats, piles, buoys and other works in navigable water are subject to federal navigation law.

Some structures may qualify as minor works, but only where all statutory and regulatory conditions are satisfied.

An old approval cannot automatically be assumed to cover later relocation, enlargement, rebuilding, new piles, boat lifts or a changed footprint.

The Migratory Birds Convention Act and sanctuary regulations

The Gorge and Portage Inlet are within the Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

Activities harmful to migratory birds, eggs, nests or habitat are prohibited unless authorized.

The Heritage Conservation Act

Recorded and unrecorded archaeological sites are protected on public and private land.

A building permit, municipal licence, waterfront title or old dock does not authorize disturbance of a protected midden, burial place or archaeological deposit. (Government of British Columbia)

Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982

Section 35 recognizes and affirms Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Provincial and federal Crown decisions concerning Crown foreshore, navigation, fisheries, heritage and habitat can engage the duty to consult and, where appropriate, accommodate affected First Nations.

The Species at Risk Act

Federal species-at-risk requirements may apply where a listed species or legally protected critical habitat is affected.

Portage Inlet supports native Olympia oysters, a species of Special Concern, as well as other species and habitat of conservation interest. (Capital Regional District)

The Environmental Management Act

Pollution, contaminated sediment, construction waste, spills and releases can engage provincial pollution-control and contaminated-sites law.

The Water Sustainability Act and riparian legislation

Where associated work affects a creek, stream channel, estuary or protected streamside area, provincial water and riparian requirements may apply.

Their application depends on the precise location and activity; they do not automatically govern every marine dock.

The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999

CEPA is not the ordinary residential-dock permitting statute.

It may become relevant where federal lands, regulated toxic substances or federal environmental responsibilities are involved.

The Local Government Act and Community Charter

Municipalities can regulate zoning, development permits, land use, structures, trees, public property and the surface of water within their lawful jurisdiction.

They also control municipal parks, road ends and shoreline parcels.

A municipal decision cannot replace an authorization belonging to the Province or federal government.

Municipal OCPs and bylaws

Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich and View Royal each have their own OCP, zoning, development-permit and public-land rules.

That is part of the problem.

The same eelgrass meadow can lie beneath four different municipal approaches while remaining subject to the same federal and provincial environmental laws.

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Cumulative effects include the loss of public access

Cumulative effects are often discussed only in ecological terms.

But the cumulative loss of public access is just as real.

One dock may leave room for someone to pass.

One hedge may appear harmless.

One private sign may seem trivial.

One public-land licence may occupy only a narrow corridor.

Repeated along the shoreline, however, they can create:

• a continuous atmosphere of private ownership;

• fewer places to launch a kayak;

• fewer shoreline viewpoints;

• fewer places to fish or watch birds;

• fewer public swimming and paddling locations;

• greater pressure on the remaining accesses;

• and a public perception that the water belongs mainly to the properties beside it.

The privatization of public land is therefore both physical and psychological.

A member of the public should not require a lawyer, surveyor and environmental consultant simply to determine whether a road end or strip of shoreline is public.

Nor should every public access necessarily become a busy recreational site. Some locations should remain quiet because of habitat, archaeology, cultural values, operational industry or safety.

The issue is whether restrictions are based on legitimate public reasons—or private convenience.

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Four municipalities, one cumulative result

The environmental footprint of private docks includes:

• eelgrass shading;

• grounded floats;

• damaged mudflats;

• anchors and chains;

• propeller scour;

• shoreline clearing;

• bank hardening;

• noise and lighting;

• fuel and maintenance products;

• sediment disturbance;

• abandoned structures;

• and fragmented public access.

No one dock creates the entire problem.

No one municipality owns the entire problem.

That is precisely why the current system has failed to resolve it.

Victoria can point toward Esquimalt’s regularized docks.

Esquimalt can point toward the Province’s Crown foreshore.

Saanich can point toward its zoning prohibition.

View Royal can receive the correspondence and take no further action.

The Province can point toward municipal zoning.

DFO can point toward project-specific fish-habitat review.

Transport Canada can point toward navigation.

Environment and Climate Change Canada can point toward sanctuary rules.

The Archaeology Branch can point toward Heritage Conservation Act permits.

Every agency can identify the piece it does not control.

The waterway receives the combined outcome.

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Why the Conservation Authority question keeps returning

The dock issue is one of the clearest examples of why VOLWS has advocated some form of Core Area conservation authority for more than three decades.

That history did not begin with the latest debate.

The 2011 ELC submission for VOLWS described a watershed split among numerous governments, with decisions made along political rather than hydrological boundaries. It warned that long-term protection could not continue to depend on volunteer organizations filling the gaps between agencies.

The Gorge Waterway Initiative now provides valuable collaboration across Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt and View Royal. Its published role is community-driven, multi-stakeholder and consensus-based. (Capital Regional District)

The CRD Core Area Harbours Service monitors, maps, reports, educates and coordinates on harbour and shoreline issues. (Capital Regional District)

Those are useful functions.

They are not the same as one publicly accountable body capable of presenting a complete answer to basic questions such as:

• Who owns the land beneath each dock?

• Which structures were lawfully built?

• Which occupy municipal land?

• Which block public access?

• Which lie on eelgrass or tidal flats?

• Which are abandoned?

• Which were screened for archaeological sites?

• Which have complete federal and provincial approvals?

• How much shoreline vegetation has been lost?

• What is the cumulative effect across the whole waterway?

The Conservation Authority issue is not simply a demand for another office or another logo.

It arises from the evidence that no existing body is presently responsible for bringing all those questions together in one public record.

This article does not attempt to dictate the structure, powers or funding of such an authority.

It shows why the idea has refused to go away.

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Our concern is not private ownership—it is private entitlement over public resources

Waterfront owners have legitimate property rights.

They may have riparian access rights.

They are entitled to fair treatment, clear rules and decisions based on evidence rather than assumption.

Many inherited docks they did not build.

Some relied on municipal tolerance or incomplete advice. Some genuinely believed that riparian rights included a right to a permanent dock. Some may hold valid approvals that are not easily found in online records.

This is not an argument that every waterfront owner has acted improperly.

It is an argument that waterfront ownership must not become a claim of entitlement over:

• public foreshore;

• municipal parkland;

• public road ends;

• public shoreline access;

• eelgrass beds;

• tidal flats;

• Indigenous cultural sites;

• or the habitat of a migratory-bird sanctuary.

A private address beside public water does not convert the adjoining public land into a private yard.

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Our position

VOLWS remains supportive of docks that serve legitimate public, community, accessibility, residential, commercial or working-harbour purposes where they are:

• in suitable locations;

• consistent with municipal OCPs and bylaws;

• properly authorized;

• compatible with navigation;

• respectful of First Nations rights and cultural sites;

• protective of fish and bird habitat;

• and not dependent upon the quiet privatization of public land.

We support community docks.

We support properly located shared docks serving several neighbouring properties.

We support accessible public-waterfront facilities.

We support responsible private docks where the location and full legal record support them.

We support properly managed industrial and commercial docks as part of a functioning working harbour.

What we do not support is the assumption that every waterfront lot is entitled to a separate private structure regardless of tide, habitat, archaeology, public ownership, OCP policy or cumulative effects.

We do not accept that:

• seeing a fish beside a piling proves habitat gain;

• riparian rights include automatic ownership of the foreshore;

• old means lawful;

• tolerated means grandfathered;

• a municipal licence supplies every other approval;

• an OCP can promise protection while remaining disconnected from decisions;

• or a public shoreline can be lost one hedge, one sign and one dock at a time.

Victoria has been told.

Esquimalt has been told.

Saanich has been told.

View Royal has been told.

The Province and federal government have been told.

The scientific evidence exists. The OCPs exist. The bylaws exist. The legislation exists. The historical correspondence exists.

What remains absent is a complete public account of what has been built, what has been authorized, what habitat and access have been lost and who is responsible for the cumulative result.

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The Gorge is public

The Gorge Waterway and Portage Inlet are not a collection of private backyards joined by water.

They are a public waterway, a fish corridor, an Indigenous cultural landscape, a migratory-bird sanctuary, a recreational resource and a connected part of the Salish Sea.

The public paid for cleanup.

Volunteers gave decades to restoration.

First Nations have maintained relationships with these waters since time immemorial.

Municipalities adopted plans promising environmental protection.

Governments enacted laws protecting fish, birds, archaeology, navigation, Crown land and public interests.

Those commitments should mean something.

The Gorge is public.

It is time every municipality began answering for its part in what has happened to it.

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Selected VOLWS historical record relied upon

• 1999–2000 Norm Clarke/Gorge Waterway Society dock-and-habitat report and VHS video.

• 1999–2000 VOLWS Saanich shoreline survey.

• March 17, 2000 DFO correspondence concerning 1019 Arcadia Street.

• November 2010 VOLWS report and delegation to Esquimalt Council.

• March 2011 UVic ELC Water Act Modernization submission for VOLWS.

• March 2016 VOLWS working inventory, Docks and leases.

• 2016–2017 site correspondence and photographs concerning public waterfront, docks, vegetation and access.

• 2017 UVic ELC report, The Need to Protect Public Waterfront on the Gorge from Private Use and Occupation.

• 2022 VOLWS correspondence with Victoria concerning the Norm Clarke report and Council records.

• March 2023 draft ELC report, Challenging Private Docks on the Gorge.

• January 16, 2025 joint letter to Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich, View Royal and affected Nations.

• September 2025 legal and environmental notices copied to all four councils.

• September 17, 2025 Victoria OCP and dock correspondence.

• July 2026 VOLWS Esquimalt compliance notice concerning Resolution 20-0035.

The legal status of an individual dock depends on its location, original construction date, title and Crown-grant history, natural boundary, later alterations, zoning, tenure, federal and provincial authorizations and environmental conditions. VOLWS field observations and estimates are identified as such. This article presents public-interest information and is not legal advice.

The Gorge Is Public

Four municipalities, sixty years of warnings—and the quiet privatization of a public waterway

The first correction is historical.

This issue did not begin with the Veins of Life Watershed Society. It did not begin with Esquimalt’s 2020 decision to grandfather private docks. It did not begin with the latest UVic Environmental Law Centre report.

Concern over the Gorge Waterway, Portage Inlet, shoreline development, public access and weak municipal coordination reaches back generations.

In 1965, an open letter to the people of Greater Victoria described a broad public demand to preserve the Gorge for recreation. It argued that cleaning up and protecting the waterway was a community responsibility. Some of the engineering proposals in that document belong to their time, but its central message remains familiar: the Gorge was a shared public place, its deterioration concerned the whole region, and no single municipality could deal with it alone. The CRD’s historical collection also preserves a 1970 Gorge Waterway report and the 1996 history Next to the Gorge. (Capital Regional District)

The debate is therefore much larger than one society, one dock, one waterfront owner or one municipality.

It is about whether public waterfront land will remain public in practice—not merely on a map.

It is about whether private access will continue to expand while public access becomes harder to find.

It is about whether four municipalities will continue to apply four different versions of enforcement to one connected tidal ecosystem.

And it is about whether laws, Official Community Plans, zoning bylaws, development-permit rules and habitat protections mean what they say when the affected property is valuable waterfront land.

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We are not against docks

That must be stated clearly.

VOLWS has removed abandoned and dangerous docks, but it has also offered to help develop public and accessible docks. We support properly located public, community, shared, commercial, industrial and private marine access.

Victoria’s public dock at Banfield Park is an example of the kind of facility that can provide broad community benefit. It serves swimmers, paddlers and non-motorized watercraft, was subjected to aquatic assessment and federal review, and improves access to deeper water rather than functioning as an exclusive extension of one private backyard. (City of Victoria)

Esquimalt is also examining public multi-use dock locations along its shorelines. Its current project recognizes that a community dock must be considered in relation to public land, safety, ecology, cultural significance and public use. (Corporation of the Township of Esquimalt)

The reasonable position is not “no docks.”

It is:

Follow the law. Follow the municipal OCPs and bylaws. Respect public land. Avoid sensitive habitat and cultural sites. Build docks where they will actually work. Where several neighbours need access, consider one common facility rather than several separate structures.

Some locations are suitable for docks.

Some are suitable only for shared or public access.

Some should remain undisturbed.

The problem is what happens when that distinction is never made.

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The warning came from the community long before it came from VOLWS

The preserved 1995 Gorge Waterway Society Values, Visions & Planning Strategies Report is particularly important because it destroys the idea that shoreline-development concerns were invented by environmental activists after the fact.

The report was based on a 1994 community process. Its “composite member,” representing more than 60 per cent of survey respondents, was a waterfront owner.

Those residents were worried about:

• continued pollution;

• disappearing shoreline trees and shrubs;

• rock walls and hardened banks;

• private wharves and marinas;

• loss of public access and views;

• weak development control;

• abandoned vessels;

• and municipalities continuing to work independently of one another.

The report said that many shoreline trees and shrubs had already disappeared and that too few were being replaced. It described concern that natural shoreline would be replaced by stone walls, steep banks, large buildings and asphalt. It also recorded frustration with municipal development controls and the belief that coordinated planning would remain futile while governments worked separately.

Its list of public concerns included public walkways, fish and bird habitat, storm-drain pollution, beach restoration, access to water, regulation of private wharves, public boat launching, abandoned vessels and governmental coordination.

This was not an anti-waterfront-owner report. Waterfront owners were a substantial part of the group asking for protection.

Read the preserved 1995 Gorge Waterway Society report

The CRD’s present-day Gorge Waterway Initiative continues that broader community history. Established in 2005, it brings together municipalities, community organizations, landowners, educational institutions and other participants across Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt and View Royal. (Capital Regional District)

The record has therefore been built by residents, waterfront owners, naturalists, environmental organizations, federal fisheries officials, municipal staff, legal researchers, scientists and volunteers.

VOLWS is part of that record. It is not the whole record.

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The early shoreline baseline

In 1999–2000, Norm Clarke and the Gorge Waterway Society prepared a report and VHS record documenting docks and habitat in Victoria Harbour, Selkirk Water, the Gorge Waterway and connected waters.

That material is not missing. It remains in the VOLWS historical collection.

During the same period, VOLWS conducted shoreline-survey work on the Saanich side of the Gorge and Portage Inlet.

Together, those records provide an early visual and documentary baseline against which present conditions can be compared:

• which docks existed;

• which were constructed later;

• which became larger;

• where shoreline vegetation remained;

• where tidal flats and eelgrass occurred;

• how public road ends appeared;

• and where later landscaping or development changed the shoreline.

The Victoria Natural History Society was also documenting public-access concerns. Its March 1999 greenways inventory identified apparent encroachments at waterfront rights of way in Saanich and raised concerns at locations later revisited by the Environmental Law Centre.

This is why present-day claims that a structure has “always been there” require evidence. We have historical photographs, surveys, maps and reports capable of testing those claims.

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DFO warned all four municipalities in 2000

In March 2000, Fisheries and Oceans Canada wrote to Esquimalt about a proposed private dock at 1019 Arcadia Street.

DFO did not treat it as merely an Arcadia Street matter.

It warned that permitting one exception could establish a precedent, encourage further applications and increase pressure for private docks in Esquimalt, Saanich, View Royal and Victoria.

At that time, DFO identified:

• 59 Esquimalt properties directly adjoining the Gorge;

• 24 private docks; and

• only three identified foreshore leases.

Those figures are a historical snapshot, not a present count. Their importance lies in what they show: questions about dock authority, tenure and cumulative effects were already known a quarter-century ago.

DFO identified potential effects on:

• eelgrass;

• intertidal habitat;

• fish habitat;

• sediment;

• water quality;

• navigation;

• and the Gorge’s limited seasonal flushing.

It also raised pollution from boat motors, bilges, sewage, antifouling products and treated construction materials.

Most importantly, DFO recognized that reviewing one structure at a time could not manage the cumulative effect of dock proliferation across a confined waterway.

Read the recovered March 2000 DFO correspondence

The problem was identified.

The responsible governments were warned.

The regional response never caught up.

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Public land can become private without ever being sold

Privatization does not always involve a formal sale or transfer of title.

It can happen by slow occupation.

A public road end is left unsigned. A hedge spreads across it. A neighbour extends a garden or driveway. Boats, bins, wood, trailers or yard material are stored there. A gate appears. A private ramp crosses the land. A dock is attached at the shoreline. A “Private Property” sign is installed.

Nothing may have changed in the land-title register.

Everything has changed for the person standing at the road end.

The public sees the hedge, gate, driveway, dock and private sign and assumes the land is private. Most people will not carry a cadastral map or natural-boundary survey with them. They turn around.

That is de facto privatization: public land remains public in title but becomes private in appearance, function and use.

British Columbia owns nearly all freshwater and saltwater foreshore. The Province states that adjoining private ownership does not authorize development on aquatic Crown land and that the public retains a qualified common-law privilege—sometimes described as a “bare licence”—to use Crown foreshore. (Government of British Columbia)

That public privilege is not unlimited. It does not authorize people to cross private upland, enter reserve land, walk through dangerous industrial operations, damage sensitive habitat or disturb archaeological sites.

But the reverse is equally important:

Owning the upland does not make the adjoining intertidal beach or seabed part of the private backyard.

Section 8 of the Land Act says that an interest in Crown land cannot be acquired through unauthorized occupation, prescription or colour of right. Section 55 generally preserves the bed and shore below the natural boundary for the Crown unless the original Crown grant expressly provides otherwise. (BCLaws)

Leaving a garden, fence, ramp or dock in place for decades does not, by itself, convert public Crown land into private property.

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The UVic Environmental Law Centre documented the public-access problem

VOLWS later asked the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre to examine apparent private occupation of public waterfront land.

The resulting report, The Need to Protect Public Waterfront on the Gorge from Private Use and Occupation, was directed to Esquimalt and Saanich.

It combined:

• CRD cadastral mapping;

• aerial photography;

• historical records;

• geographic coordinates;

• field observations;

• and ground-level photographs.

The report examined 11 preliminary locations: nine in Esquimalt and two in Saanich.

The Saanich sites were at Grange Road and Glenwood Avenue.

The Esquimalt sites included:

• De Costa Place;

• Arcadia Street;

• Rhoda Lane;

• Mesher Place;

• Murray Drive;

• Aral Road;

• Glen Vale Road;

• Garthland Road;

• and Rankin Road.

The apparent private uses included:

• gardens and hedges;

• driveways and parking;

• bins and stored materials;

• fencing and other barriers;

• boat storage;

• dumping;

• ramps and docks;

• and private signs on or beside apparently public land.

At Glen Vale Road and Garthland Road, the report documented docks apparently attached to or accessed through public waterfront land. At Garthland Road, “private” signage reinforced the appearance that the public shoreline belonged to the dock user.

The ELC did not accuse every neighbouring owner of deliberate wrongdoing. It expressly asked the municipalities to verify the boundaries, determine what authority existed and restore public access where private occupation was not authorized.

Read the 2017 UVic ELC public-waterfront report

The report also entered the View Royal public-meeting record in March 2018. That matters because it confirms regional notice: this was not simply an Esquimalt bylaw complaint hidden in one municipal file. (ViewRoyal)

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Four municipalities, four administrative answers

Esquimalt’s own January 2020 staff report, titled Private Use of Public Land—Docks, contains one of the clearest summaries of the regional failure.

The Township reviewed the practices of its three neighbouring municipalities and reported:

• View Royal dealt with docks case by case and through complaints. It reportedly received few, if any, complaints about existing docks. New docks required an environmental development permit and compliance with provincial and federal requirements.

• Saanich also used complaint-driven, case-by-case enforcement. According to Esquimalt’s report, Saanich referred private-moorage complainants to the Province because the Gorge foreshore was provincial jurisdiction, although new docks still required federal, provincial and municipal compliance.

• Victoria was described as complaint-driven. The report said Victoria had received no complaints concerning its limited private moorage and therefore had taken no action.

• Esquimalt acknowledged that its own historical enforcement had been sporadic and that no previous enforcement effort had resulted in removal of private moorage.

That single municipal report captures the jurisdictional loop.

View Royal rarely received complaints.

Saanich directed complainants to the Province.

Victoria said it had no complaints.

Esquimalt acknowledged sporadic enforcement and moved toward municipal licensing.

Meanwhile, the docks, foreshore, public road ends, eelgrass and tidal flats remained part of the same connected waterway.

A complaint-driven system also proves very little when:

• the public cannot identify public land;

• road ends are unsigned;

• people assume private signs are legally correct;

• municipal departments refer callers elsewhere;

• records are split across planning, parks, engineering and bylaw files;

• or historical correspondence is not connected to a current complaint.

The absence of a complaint in one departmental database is not evidence that the environmental or public-access problem did not exist.

It may simply mean the concern arrived by email to Council, through another department, in a delegation, in a report, in a planning process or in a file that was never coded as a dock complaint.

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Victoria: public access celebrated, private impacts poorly inventoried

Victoria has some of the strongest positive examples of public water access.

Its Banfield dock demonstrates that a well-used public facility can support swimming, paddling and community connection. The project underwent aquatic and safety assessments and review by DFO and Transport Canada. (City of Victoria)

Victoria also has a long civic-record history. Its Archives hold municipal records dating from the City’s incorporation in 1862, including records from Parks, Engineering, the City Manager, the Mayor’s Office and the Solicitor’s Office. Those archives contain many records that are not available through ordinary keyword searches of current agendas. (City of Victoria)

The City cannot therefore rely only on a statement that a particular department had received “no complaints” by 2020.

The 1995 Gorge Waterway Society report had already documented concern over development control, public access, shoreline trees, private wharves and weak inter-municipal planning. VOLWS’s preserved correspondence also shows that Gorge and Selkirk concerns were repeatedly circulated beyond Esquimalt.

Victoria’s shoreline differs from the largely residential portions of Portage Inlet. It includes public parks, commercial marine facilities, marinas, transportation infrastructure and working-harbour lands. That does not eliminate the need to distinguish lawful industrial and commercial facilities from private residential occupation, nor does it eliminate cumulative effects.

Victoria’s current Official Community Plan, adopted in 2025, describes healthy waterways, trees and diverse ecosystems as foundational natural infrastructure. It also protects the historic and continuing importance of the working harbour and employment lands. Those principles are compatible: properly managed marine industry and environmental protection belong in the same harbour. (City of Victoria)

What remains missing from the public record is a transparent Victoria and Selkirk inventory showing the legal status, ownership, environmental footprint and public-access implications of every private dock and long-term private moorage facility.

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Esquimalt: the municipality that finally counted—and then grandfathered

Esquimalt has the most visible municipal paper trail because it eventually attempted to regularize the structures.

Its 2020 process identified 28 docks associated with private waterfront property and 10 docks associated with public land that lacked proper municipal zoning.

Council decided to grandfather existing docks associated with private property, provided they retained their existing size and configuration and were safely maintained.

Docks associated with public municipal property were also allowed to remain, subject to a Licence of Use and Occupation, a reported $300 fee and transfer of liability and maintenance responsibility to the private user. (Vic News)

This was not a sale of municipal land.

But it was a formal municipal decision allowing private use of public waterfront property to continue.

That is why “privatization” remains an accurate concern even where legal title stayed with the municipality.

The licence arrangement may have addressed some municipal zoning and liability issues. It did not, by itself, establish that each structure had:

• provincial Crown foreshore authorization;

• Fisheries Act compliance;

• navigation compliance;

• lawful original construction;

• lawful non-conforming status;

• archaeological review;

• migratory-bird sanctuary compliance;

• First Nations consultation;

• or a cumulative-effects assessment.

Esquimalt’s own staff report said Council recognized that public lands should remain firmly in the public realm and that encroachment required formal agreement. Yet the deeper public question remains unanswered:

When a member of the public can no longer use or even recognize the public land because it supports an exclusive private dock, in what practical sense has that land remained in the public realm?

Esquimalt’s current OCP makes the contradiction sharper. The Township’s Natural Environment Development Permit Area applies to new structures and many landscaping changes. New development is generally prohibited within 20 metres of the Gorge high-water mark, and the guidelines emphasize natural features, biodiversity, drainage, erosion, shoreline protection and native-bird habitat. The Township specifically advises residents to consult Development Services before structural work or foreshore clearing. (Corporation of the Township of Esquimalt)

The question is not whether the OCP contains good language.

It does.

The question is how decades of docks, shoreline clearing and public-land occupation were reconciled with that language dock by dock.

VOLWS’s July 2026 notice asks Esquimalt to produce the underlying records rather than relying on the word “grandfathered.”

Read the July 2026 Esquimalt notice

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Saanich: a municipal prohibition followed by referral to the Province

Saanich occupies much of the Portage Inlet shoreline and the upper Gorge. That shoreline contains shallow water, broad intertidal areas and extensive eelgrass.

VOLWS conducted shoreline-survey work there in 1999–2000. The Victoria Natural History Society had already identified possible public-right-of-way encroachments. The later ELC public-land report documented concerns at Grange Road and Glenwood Avenue.

The 2020 Esquimalt staff review nevertheless described Saanich’s approach as complaint-driven and said complainants were generally referred to the Province because the Gorge foreshore was provincial jurisdiction.

That answer addresses only one part of the jurisdiction.

The Province may own the aquatic Crown land, but Saanich still controls:

• municipal public roads and road ends;

• municipal parkland;

• land-use zoning;

• development permits;

• tree and vegetation regulation;

• building-related work;

• and municipal enforcement within its legal authority.

The later ELC dock report concluded that section 5.16(a) of Saanich Zoning Bylaw No. 8200 prohibits buildings and structures on the foreshore, expressly including the Gorge Waterway. That conclusion means the status of each Saanich dock depends on evidence: when it was built, whether it was lawful at the time, what later changes occurred and whether any variance or other authority exists. (Environmental Law Centre)

Saanich adopted a new OCP in May 2024. The current version includes amendments through February 2026 and identifies protection of the natural environment as a central municipal responsibility. It also includes environmental development-permit guidelines. (https://www.saanich.ca)

A municipal prohibition is only as effective as the municipality’s inventory, records and enforcement.

Referring the foreshore question to the Province does not answer whether public Saanich land has been occupied, whether upland trees were removed, whether a municipal development permit was required or whether a supposedly old dock was later rebuilt or enlarged.

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View Royal: “few complaints” beside one of the most sensitive reaches

View Royal borders Portage Inlet and the Craigflower estuary, including shallow habitat that cannot reasonably be managed separately from Saanich and Esquimalt.

Esquimalt’s 2020 staff report described View Royal’s enforcement as complaint-driven and stated that the Town rarely, if ever, received complaints about existing docks. New docks required an environmental development permit and compliance with provincial and federal requirements.

But a low complaint count is not an ecological assessment.

It does not reveal:

• how many docks exist;

• how many ground at low tide;

• how many shade eelgrass;

• how many are still actively used;

• how many have complete authorization records;

• how many were rebuilt;

• or how public shoreline access has changed.

View Royal had regional notice of the broader public-land problem. The ELC public-waterfront report appeared in its March 2018 meeting material, even though the report’s detailed sites were located in Saanich and Esquimalt. (ViewRoyal)

The Town is also in the middle of replacing its long-standing OCP. As of August 2, 2026, Council had given first and second readings to proposed OCP Bylaw No. 1180, while the existing Bylaw No. 811 remained the operative plan pending completion of the statutory process. (Engage View Royal)

The policy documents may change.

The shoreline will remain part of the same Portage Inlet ecosystem.

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The OCP promises belong to the whole public

An Official Community Plan is not a dock permit.

It is a municipality’s adopted statement of long-term land-use objectives and policies. Zoning bylaws, development permits, licences and site-specific approvals provide the more direct regulatory controls.

But an OCP is not decorative literature either.

Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich and View Royal all recognize, in different language, the importance of:

• natural shorelines;

• parks and public spaces;

• environmental stewardship;

• biodiversity;

• climate resilience;

• cultural resources;

• water access;

• and protection of sensitive natural areas. (City of Victoria)

When governments approve, tolerate or license private occupation of public shoreline, the public is entitled to know how that decision is consistent with those plans.

When trees and shrubs are removed from the shoreline for private views, the public is entitled to know whether the required permits were obtained.

When a dock appears to sit in an area where municipal zoning prohibits foreshore structures, the public is entitled to see the legal basis for allowing it to remain.

When a dock crosses public land, the public is entitled to know the term, fee, insurance, public-access conditions and public-interest justification.

The issue is not that every historical structure must automatically be removed.

The issue is that no structure should be granted legal status by assumption.

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Riparian rights: an access right is not ownership of the foreshore

“Riparian rights” are frequently presented as the end of the discussion.

The argument usually goes like this:

“I own waterfront land, so I have a riparian right to a dock.”

That is not what the law says.

Riparian rights are rights associated with land adjoining water. In a tidal setting, the central right is a qualified private right of access between the upland property and the water.

It may include crossing the intervening Crown foreshore to reach the water. It may include temporary mooring associated with loading and unloading.

It does not ordinarily provide:

• title to the foreshore;

• ownership of the seabed;

• exclusive possession of the beach;

• the right to exclude the public from Crown land;

• the right to fill or dredge;

• the right to remove shoreline vegetation;

• or an automatic right to build a permanent wharf.

In District of North Saanich v. Murray, the British Columbia Court of Appeal rejected the broader American idea that a waterfront owner automatically has a right to construct a wharf simply to make access more convenient or “effective.” Canadian law recognizes the access right, but not an automatic right to build on Crown foreshore without Crown authority. (William O'Hanley)

That distinction is critical in the Gorge.

An owner may have a legitimate private right to reach the water.

That does not determine:

• where a permanent dock may be placed;

• how large it may be;

• whether it may occupy public land;

• whether eelgrass may be shaded;

• whether a midden may be disturbed;

• or whether municipal zoning may be ignored.

Riparian rights are part of the legal analysis.

They are not a trump card over every other law.

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“Grandfathered” is not a magic word

The other frequently used defence is that a dock is “grandfathered.”

A lawful non-conforming structure generally must have been lawful when the later municipal restriction came into force.

The important word is lawful.

Age alone does not establish lawful non-conforming status.

Neither does:

• long municipal tolerance;

• lack of enforcement;

• a structure appearing in an old photograph;

• a property changing ownership;

• or a Council decision not to enforce one municipal bylaw.

A municipal non-enforcement decision also cannot create a provincial Crown tenure, a federal Fisheries Act authorization, an archaeological permit or navigation compliance.

The historical footprint matters as well.

Even where an original structure was lawful, that does not automatically answer whether it was later:

• moved;

• widened;

• lengthened;

• rebuilt;

• provided with new pilings;

• converted from seasonal to permanent use;

• or replaced after deterioration.

“Grandfathered” should be a conclusion reached after examining the record.

It should not be a substitute for the record.

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One dock may require several independent legal approvals

There is no single “dock permit” capable of replacing every other law.

A structure may need to satisfy several overlapping regimes.

Provincial Crown land

Under the Land Act, a dock on provincial aquatic Crown land requires valid authority. Depending on the circumstances, that may involve General Permission, Specific Permission, a licence, a lease or another Crown disposition.

General Permission is not an exemption from the law. It is conditional authority available only while every applicable condition is satisfied.

Provincial policy also makes clear that adjacent ownership does not authorize construction on aquatic Crown land. (Government of British Columbia)

Fish and fish habitat

The federal Fisheries Act prohibits unauthorized activities that cause the death of fish or the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat. It also prohibits unauthorized deposits of deleterious substances into water frequented by fish.

Dock construction can engage these provisions through shading, pile installation, grounding, excavation, sediment disturbance, propeller scour, treated materials, fuel, uncured concrete and construction debris.

Navigation

The Canadian Navigable Waters Act applies to works placed in navigable water. A structure may qualify as a minor work only when it meets all applicable requirements. Reconstruction, enlargement, relocation or a changed footprint may require renewed consideration.

Migratory birds

The whole Gorge–Portage system below the high-water mark lies within the Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary. Activities harmful to migratory birds, nests, eggs or habitat are prohibited unless authorized under the applicable federal rules. (Canada)

Archaeological sites

The provincial Heritage Conservation Act protects archaeological sites on public and private land, including sites that have not yet been formally recorded.

A private title, municipal licence or old dock does not authorize disturbance of a protected midden, burial place or other archaeological site.

Municipal land use

Municipal zoning, OCP development-permit areas, tree bylaws, parks bylaws and public-land rules remain relevant even where the Province owns the seabed.

One authorization cannot silently stand in for all the others.

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An Indigenous cultural landscape—not an empty shoreline

The Gorge and Portage Inlet are within the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, represented today by the Songhees Nation and Xʷsepsəm/Esquimalt Nation.

The federal description of the Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary identifies the area as the lək̓ʷəŋən place to smoke herring. (Canada)

VOLWS’s historical records and field knowledge identify dozens of recorded or suspected Indigenous archaeological locations, including shell middens, around the Gorge and Portage Inlet.

Exact locations should not be published. Public disclosure can expose sites to vandalism, artifact removal and further disturbance. A definitive current count should come from the Nations, the provincial archaeological-site registry and qualified archaeological review.

A shell midden is not simply a pile of old shells.

It can contain evidence of:

• habitation;

• harvesting;

• trade;

• tools;

• food preparation;

• fire use;

• ceremony;

• and burial practices extending over generations.

A dock project can disturb such a site through a shoreline ramp, stair foundation, retaining wall, utility trench, concrete footing, anchor block or pile.

The concern is not limited to proposed docks. Major reconstruction of an existing dock and its access can create new disturbance.

No complete public dock-by-dock record has been produced showing consistent archaeological screening and consultation for all existing structures.

That does not prove no consultation ever occurred.

It means the public record does not demonstrate that it occurred systematically.

Given the density of recorded and suspected cultural sites, that absence is serious.

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A century-old bird sanctuary treated like ordinary waterfront

The Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary was established in 1923.

It covers approximately 1,841 hectares and includes Portage Inlet, the Gorge Waterway, Selkirk Water and Victoria Harbour below the high-water mark. Approximately 270 bird species have been recorded within it, together with more than 75 plant and animal species of federal or provincial conservation concern. (Canada)

The sanctuary contains:

• eelgrass;

• kelp;

• mudflats;

• shellfish beds;

• tidal marshes;

• estuaries;

• fish nurseries;

• and shallow feeding habitat.

The sanctuary designation does not mean every dock is automatically unlawful.

It does mean that a dock should not be considered merely as a property amenity.

The ecological questions include:

• whether a feeding flat is occupied;

• whether eelgrass supporting bird prey is shaded;

• whether shoreline trees used for nesting or roosting were removed;

• whether night lighting changes habitat use;

• whether people and pets gain access to previously sheltered areas;

• and what happens when the same disturbance is repeated along the shoreline.

A bird resting on a dock does not establish that the dock benefited the sanctuary.

The bird may be using a convenient perch while the structure shades or displaces the feeding habitat below it.

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Portage Inlet is shallow habitat, not a deep-water marina

Portage Inlet is a shallow estuarine basin connected to Victoria Harbour through the Gorge.

It contains extensive intertidal mudflats, salt marshes, native Olympia oysters and approximately 50 hectares of eelgrass. The CRD states that the Gorge and Portage Inlet together contain about 80 per cent of the eelgrass found within CRD harbours. Craigflower and Colquitz creeks—both important salmon systems—flow into the inlet. (Capital Regional District)

This physical setting matters.

A waterfront property may appear to offer convenient boating access at high tide. A new owner may construct or inherit a dock without appreciating what happens during lower daytime tides in the summer.

VOLWS has documented many docks that:

• rest on exposed tidal flats;

• settle onto mud or vegetation;

• are accessible only during limited tidal windows;

• provide little practical daytime summer access;

• or appear neglected, unused or abandoned.

We have not completed a present-day government-quality census establishing what percentage of all docks fall into those categories. It would therefore be premature to claim a verified majority.

But “many” is supported by long-term observation and photography.

The practical problem is obvious: the structure can continue shading, grounding and occupying public foreshore even when its recreational value is small.

A dock that cannot function without lying on the seabed for part of each tidal cycle is not merely an inefficient private investment.

It is a continuing physical disturbance of shared habitat.

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The damage begins before the dock reaches the water

The visible float is only part of the footprint.

A private dock may also involve:

• clearing shoreline trees and shrubs;

• creating a view corridor;

• building stairs or a ramp;

• installing retaining walls;

• armouring a bank;

• storing boats and equipment;

• adding lighting;

• and repeatedly crossing the riparian area.

The 1995 Gorge Waterway Society report was already warning about the loss of shoreline trees and shrubs and their replacement by stone walls, steep banks, larger buildings and asphalt.

VOLWS’s later correspondence and photographs document the same pattern: trees and vegetation removed to create private views or direct access to the water.

That vegetation is part of the habitat.

Shoreline trees and shrubs:

• stabilize banks;

• intercept rain and runoff;

• filter pollutants and sediment;

• contribute insects and organic material to the food web;

• shade shallow water;

• and provide nesting, resting and protective cover.

Scientific reviews of shoreline armouring and overwater structures have found altered fish communities, reduced feeding, loss of shallow refuge and interruptions to shoreline migration. Visually oriented fish can be less abundant and feed less under heavily shaded structures. (British Ecological Society Journals)

The complete impact of a dock is therefore the float, ramp, access route, cleared vegetation, bank alteration, associated vessel use and continuing maintenance activity.

Assessing only the square footage of the deck hides much of the impact.

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Eelgrass is not vacant water

Eelgrass is a flowering marine plant that creates underwater meadows.

Those meadows provide:

• nursery and refuge habitat;

• surfaces for algae and invertebrates;

• feeding areas for fish and birds;

• sediment stability;

• wave-energy reduction;

• nutrient cycling;

• and carbon storage.

Research has repeatedly found that docks and other overwater structures can reduce light, eelgrass density and habitat function.

British Columbia’s Pender Harbour investigation found that increasing dock density was associated with adverse effects on algae diversity, kelp cover, fish abundance and eelgrass. Eelgrass was absent beneath docks and moored boats because of shading, and the affected eelgrass area was estimated at 2.6 to 5.4 times the dock’s physical footprint. (British Columbia News Archive)

Experimental research has also shown that shading-induced seagrass loss can reduce sediment organic matter, release stored carbon and reduce future carbon-sequestration capacity. The implications extend beyond the plants directly visible beneath a dock. (British Ecological Society Journals)

A few grated deck panels may reduce shading in some circumstances.

They do not prove that a dock placed over eelgrass has no impact.

Avoiding sensitive habitat is more reliable than attempting to engineer around a poor location after the decision to build has already been made.

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“I see fish and birds there” does not prove habitat benefit

One of the most common arguments made by dock owners is:

“Fish swim under my dock and birds sit on it, so the dock must provide habitat.”

That observation may be sincere.

It is not evidence of a net ecological benefit.

Animals use many artificial structures. Fish shelter beneath boats. Birds sit on railings, streetlights and pilings. Seals rest on log booms.

The scientific distinction is between attraction and production.

A structure may attract or concentrate animals that were already present without increasing the total population, food supply, survival or reproductive success.

The proper comparison is not between “a dock with a fish beside it” and “no fish visible to the observer.”

It is between:

• habitat conditions before and after construction;

• the dock site and an undisturbed reference site;

• eelgrass and invertebrate production;

• fish feeding and movement;

• bird access to tidal feeding areas;

• shoreline vegetation;

• and the cumulative effect of nearby structures.

Peer-reviewed studies have found that shade beneath overwater structures can reduce fish feeding, alter distribution and interrupt shoreline movement, even though fish remain visible beside the structure. (British Ecological Society Journals)

A heron using a dock as a perch does not demonstrate that the dock replaced the mudflat, eelgrass or shoreline vegetation affected by its presence.

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Cumulative effects: the impact is the pattern, not one structure

A single dock may appear small on an individual drawing.

The cumulative shoreline pattern is not small.

It includes:

• repeated eelgrass shading;

• grounding on tidal flats;

• anchors and chains moving across the bottom;

• propeller scour;

• removal of trees and shrubs;

• bank armouring;

• noise and lighting;

• boat fuel and maintenance products;

• treated lumber and flotation materials;

• growing human and pet disturbance;

• and repeated occupation of public foreshore.

The social cumulative effect is equally important.

One public road end may be blocked by a hedge.

Another may appear to be a private driveway.

A third may support a dock marked “private.”

A fourth may be unsigned and overgrown.

No individual site appears to eliminate public access to the whole waterway.

Together they can make a substantial shoreline effectively inaccessible.

That is why the dock issue cannot be understood one property at a time.

The waterway experiences every structure, access corridor, cleared shoreline and barrier together.

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Municipal licences do not erase the public loss

A licence may be a lawful way for a municipality to permit limited private use of municipal land.

But a licence is also a public-policy decision.

It can turn land purchased, dedicated or retained for public purposes into the access route for an exclusive private amenity.

The critical questions are therefore not limited to whether a licence document exists.

They include:

• What public use was displaced?

• Was the land advertised or visibly identified as public?

• Could the site have served a public access or community dock?

• Was the private benefit independently valued?

• Was public passage retained?

• Was the OCP considered?

• Were habitat and cultural resources assessed?

• Does the licence end when the adjoining property is sold?

• Is the municipality monitoring compliance?

• Can the public see the agreement?

Esquimalt’s reported $300 licence fee may transfer some liability and document the private use.

It does not answer whether the public is receiving fair value for losing practical use of waterfront land.

Nor does it establish that all provincial and federal requirements have been met.

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The historical archive is still incomplete

The online search has pushed the documented history back to at least 1965.

But an online search is not a complete archival review.

Victoria’s Archives contain permanent municipal records dating to 1862, including Parks, Engineering, Solicitor, Mayor’s Office and City Manager records. Many records must be identified through archival descriptions and viewed by appointment. (City of Victoria)

Saanich maintains archived agendas and minutes through a separate legacy system while records are migrated to its newer platform. (https://www.saanich.ca)

Esquimalt’s online Legistar archive generally covers material from 2014 onward, while earlier agendas, staff reports, correspondence and property files may require municipal archive or information requests. (Corporation of the Township of Esquimalt)

View Royal’s digital meeting record is also incomplete for the earlier period, and its archives contain local-government and community records not necessarily indexed by ordinary website searches.

The remaining historical work includes:

• original Council submissions;

• correspondence attachments;

• planning files;

• development-permit records;

• road-closing and land-disposition files;

• licence agreements;

• early shoreline surveys;

• Crown tenure records;

• and pre-digital municipal minutes.

Absence from an online search is not evidence that a complaint, report or discussion never occurred.

That caution applies equally when a municipality says it received “no complaints.”

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Why this belongs in the Conservation Authority discussion

The dock and public-land history illustrates the structural problem behind the proposed Core Area Conservation Authority.

The Gorge Waterway and Portage Inlet form one natural system.

Rain, creeks, fish, birds, contaminants, tides and public shorelines do not stop at the Victoria–Esquimalt, Esquimalt–Saanich or Saanich–View Royal boundary.

The administrative system does.

For decades, the public record has been divided among:

• four municipalities;

• the CRD;

• the Province;

• DFO;

• Transport Canada;

• Environment and Climate Change Canada;

• archaeological authorities;

• parks departments;

• planning departments;

• bylaw departments;

• and Crown-land offices.

The Gorge Waterway Initiative has provided valuable regional collaboration since 2005, but it is a consensus-based partnership, not a single operating or enforcement authority responsible for the final outcome of every public-land, dock and habitat file. (Capital Regional District)

The Conservation Authority discussion is therefore not simply about creating another environmental office.

It arises from a much more basic question:

Who is responsible for the whole waterway?

At present, one municipality counts complaints, another redirects them, another licenses the occupation and another says it received none.

The public is left trying to determine which level of government owns the land, which bylaw applies, which federal law protects the habitat and whether anyone followed up.

That fragmentation is the issue.

The dock history shows why regional conservation cannot continue to depend on volunteers maintaining decades of photographs, reports, email chains, maps and agency referrals merely to keep the public record from disappearing.

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The issue is not access to water—it is unequal access to a public waterway

Waterfront owners have legitimate interests.

So do:

• paddlers;

• swimmers;

• fishers;

• birdwatchers;

• neighbouring residents;

• Indigenous Nations;

• industrial harbour users;

• children;

• people with disabilities;

• and members of the public who do not own waterfront real estate.

A private owner’s riparian access must be respected.

So must the public’s land.

A lawful working-harbour dock has a legitimate role.

So does a public swimming dock.

So may a properly located shared residential dock.

What cannot be justified is the assumption that every waterfront property is entitled to its own permanent occupation of public foreshore, regardless of depth, habitat, public access, municipal policy or cumulative effect.

The Gorge should not become a line of private backyards extending to the water while the public is left searching for the shrinking spaces between them.

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Our position

We are not asking for a waterway without docks.

We are asking what governments should already be able to demonstrate:

• that a dock is in a lawful location;

• that public property has not been quietly annexed in practice;

• that riparian rights have not been exaggerated into ownership of the foreshore;

• that municipal OCPs and bylaws were followed;

• that Crown authority exists;

• that fish and bird habitat was considered;

• that archaeological sites and Indigenous interests were not ignored;

• and that cumulative effects were assessed across the whole waterway.

We support community docks.

We support shared docks.

We support accessible public docks.

We support responsible private docks.

We support the working harbour and properly managed marine industry.

But private convenience cannot automatically outrank public ownership, intertidal habitat, cultural resources and a century-old bird sanctuary.

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The Gorge is public

The Gorge did not become public because a modern planning document declared it so.

It has been a cultural, ecological and food-gathering place for thousands of years.

It has been treated as a shared recreational waterway for generations.

Governments and communities have acquired, protected, restored and cleaned public shoreline for more than a century.

The public has repeatedly been promised cleaner water, protected habitat, maintained parks, natural shorelines and improved access.

Yet access can still disappear one hedge, one garden, one private sign, one ramp, one licence and one municipal non-decision at a time.

The ecological loss happens just as quietly:

one tree,

one eelgrass shadow,

one grounded float,

one hardened bank,

one disturbed tidal flat,

one dock considered too small to matter.

The cumulative result is neither small nor private.

It belongs to everyone.

The Gorge is public.

It is time every municipality treated it that way.

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Primary historical documents

• 1995 Gorge Waterway Society—Values, Visions & Planning Strategies

• March 2000 DFO Arcadia dock correspondence

• UVic ELC—The Need to Protect Public Waterfront on the Gorge from Private Use and Occupation

• UVic ELC—Challenging Private Docks on the Gorge

• VOLWS July 2026 Esquimalt dock and public-land notice

This article is public-interest commentary, not legal advice. The legal status of an individual structure depends on its construction history, location, title and Crown-grant records, municipal zoning, development permits, provincial authorization, federal compliance and present environmental conditions. VOLWS field observations and numerical estimates are identified as such and should be tested through complete government records and site inspection.

A video done in 1996 with the municipality of Saanich, we new then that things where changing so we video the shore line of Saanich 1996 

This video was done by Gorge Waterway Protection Society by Norm Clarke and Friends in 1997, This is the Esquimalt / Vic West Side