The photo and caption above have been lifted from a March 5 , 2021 reposting on the website of the Environmental Law Clinic (ELC) at the University of Victoria. The happy scene of an early fall gathering in 2005 in Lillian Hoffar Park (on the shore of Tsehum Harbour and within the 1931 Shoal Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary) is a precursor of similar events including the Friends of Shoal Harbour All Buffleheads Celebrations held in mid-October on Roberts Bay..

Here is a link to the March 5, 2021 ELC post: https://elc.uvic.ca/tshehum-inlet-lagoon/

Friends of Shoal Harbour are indebted to the Environmental Law Clinic for the 2005 event and for the guidance provided to FOSH in the years that followed.

Your editor (Farrell Boyce) was present at the 2005 Lillian Hoffar Park outing and at the North Saanich public hearing referred to in the abovementioned ELC post where a proposal to expand a marina in the Tsehum Lagoon (adjacent to Highway 17 as it approaches Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal) was shouted down by a noisy majority of attendees…Thanks to the shaky legal position of this proposal revealed by the ELC and the vigorous public opposition, the proposal was refused.

Here is a link to a report summarizing a September 19, 2016 presentation by Friends of Shoal Harbour to North Saanich Council: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y1iN65CnDSxDT8gQaYcY-sHQ_Lqy7G3h/view?usp=sharing

This report will move the story ahead from the events of 2005 to the founding of Friends of Shoal Harbour in 2011 and beyond to where once again the ELC was of great service to us in 2013 through a study of municipal, provincial and federal legislation pertaining to the foreshore.