What they’re doing to the Okanagan

Apparently a few years back, an economic development guy with experience branding Napa and Sonoma as the North American equivalents of Tuscany, was invited to the Okanagan, Kelowna in particular, to advise them on how to become Napa North. In his presentation apparently he touched on the elephant in the room by stating: “you have a problem with ugliness.” That pretty much says it. An absolutely stunning natural inheritance, graced historically with beautiful vineyards, orchards, and some small historic town fragments, destroyed by an everspreading dreckscape of motordom from Vernon to Penticton. Should there ever be a decision to punch the road through from Kelowna to Penticton on the east side of the lake, one might as well right off the Naramata Bench, now, one of the few areas north of Penticton that actually has most of the ingredients right, including a charming rural landscape that miraculously manages to get by on old rural one and two lane roads. One would have thought the major fires of the past decade would put an end to these kind of suburbs, but evidently not.