Oh my. I haven’t made any progress in understanding Vancouver at all. There are byways and back eddies that I’ll never penetrate or understand. Depressing. Totally.
Thanks to Councilor Andrea Reimer for this tweet.
Yacht owners, it seems, had an affordability problem at some point that called them to action. I do know that “BOAT” is an acronym (“Bring On Another Thousand”). And that such boats are often described as holes in the water that you throw money into.
But forming a low-cost alternative yacht club?? It seems we were a much different but still very first-world city way back then.
Here’s the hash tag for collecting further hilarious examples. #AltYacht
I was in Kits a couple of weeks ago, and there were kids with a tent set up on 4th Ave raising money for St. George’s private school. Tuition there is something crazy like $20,000/yr. One mom was wearing a Canada Goose parka.
Meanwhile, public schools are trying to raise money for provincially mandated playground replacements and school supplies.
I don’t know what St.George’s is raising money for. Maybe they’re trying to upgrade their field trip from First Class to private 747? Lol.
Christy Clark never met a millionaire she didn’t like. And that goes double for their little darlings.
Clark showed her love for private schools on the last day of the most recent sitting of the legislature by tabling legislation permanently exempting them from municipal property taxes, which have not historically been collected. This while the Vancouver School Board has to go into hock to the tune of $1.6 million to build a needed downtown school.
Take the St. George’s senior campus (the junior school is nearby), an exclusive high school for 700 boys located in Vancouver’s affluent Dunbar neighbourhood. The premier’s son attends “Saints”, as it’s known to aficionados of the local peerage. Annual tuition ranges from $22,000 for local boys to $58,000 for international boarding students. That adds up to a minimum $25 million in tuition revenue, over and above applicable provincial subsidies.
… the fields and grounds of Saints’ senior school are roughly equivalent in size to 2.5 city blocks. Add in the slightly smaller junior school property and the total comes to nearly five full city blocks. The total value of both properties, based on assessments of neighbourhood land values, would come close to $300 million, not including buildings and improvements.
Thankfully, the premier knows things aren’t as rosy for the rich as lots of people think, so they’re safe from paying any school property taxes so long as she’s in the big chair.
And trust me on this, when you’re considering a school like Saints for your fresh-faced progeny, tuition is just the beginning. Right now the school’s raising $40 million for expansion and new dormitories. At these schools there is always a capital campaign so you have to budget for tuition as just a down payment. You don’t want to be known as one of those deadbeats who only pays the $22,000 per child tuition, do you? Nope, you do not — not when school references can make or break that Harvard admission.
Sandy Garossino, ‘Taxes Are For Little People’, The Vancouver Observer, 2015,
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/opinion/taxes-are-little-people
PS: Christy enrolled her son at St George’s.
Actually, KYC is a really excellent club for people with small boats who want to sail in English Bay. It’s a racing based club, the boats are either portable or on dollies, and their storage rates are reasonable, meaning that somebody can keep a small sail boat there (like a Laser or even a kayak) for a few dollars a month. It’s about the farthest thing from a Royal Van style ‘yacht club’ imaginable. Looks like they’re trying to get a liquor license for their clubhouse…
http://www.kitsilanoyachtclub.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=125850&module_id=126086
Which provides some perspective on this Ezra Levant rant about David Suzuki:
“Secret Suzuki is the one who lives on Vancouver’s elite Point Grey Road, on a double lot, overlooking English Bay, right above the exclusive Kitsilano Yacht Club.”
And of course there is the Jericho Sailing Centre. Plus in Ladner there is an essentially co-op yacht club where I moored my sailboat for many years.
People seem to react strangely to ‘yacht’, in quite a different way than if you said that you had a similarly priced RV or summer cabin. ‘Boat’ seems to get a more moderate reaction.
Ron Richings
Boats are not inherently fancy or expensive. You can get used sailboats quite cheaply. Even ‘yachts’. The Kits club has mainly storage for small boats as far as I know. You can buy a used dinghy (or build one yourself) for less money than a good bike.