For more than 39 years I have lived in Powell River: 27 years on Cranberry Street, serenaded by motorcycles, trucks and beaters roaring up the hill from the Mowat Avenue turnoff, then 12 years on the corner of Ash and Marine avenues, living above Patricia Theatre, with emergency vehicles added to the symphony of exhaust pipes and squealing tires.
In all those years, as much as I may have been annoyed by the gratuitous, but only intermittent, noise of all this traffic and may have jokingly talked about putting out speed bumps to slow everyone down, I have never, until now, been driven to take my rant to the streets.
What is happening out there this year? What makes this the summer where all common sense and courtesy gets thrown under the bus? Never, and I am talking about 12 years of 24/7 living, working and relaxing (that is what I call gardening) in this same spot, has there been so much unnecessary traffic noise.
It is not the trucks grinding their way up the hill from the new barge terminal, nor the mill trucks on their way to Wildwood, nor the emergency vehicles.
It is the “civilian” vehicles operated by our fellow Powell River-ites, who should know better, that are treating this stretch of Highway 101 (Marine Avenue) and the Ash Avenue corridor as their own private speedway: drag racing with themselves; laying rubber either direction from the only stop signs on the whole highway; deliberately switching the quiet, “city” mufflers on their motorcycles to the raunchy, look-at-me-you-losers-I’m-living-the-biker-dream mufflers; revelling in the obnoxiousness of their about-to-fall-off-the-old-beater-but-still-technically-there exhaust systems and roaring engines.
There seems to be no legislated maximum decibel level for traffic noise that I have been able to ascertain. Powell River RCMP advise a complainant to report the licence plate number, make and colour of an offending vehicle and they will watch out for it. The city is in the process of reviewing its traffic bylaw, but there are apparently no noise standards currently established.
Maybe there is no simple answer to my question. It may, in fact, turn out to be yet another emerging symptom of societal dysfunction and breakdown, akin to tagging private property with spray paint in order to assert some kind of vandal primacy. We could call it “tagging” private air space and label noisemakers the same way we label taggers.
My preference, however, would be for us all, as a community, to become more aware of the thoughtless actions of ourselves, our family members and our neighbours and grow a little courtesy again.
Notice it; comment on it to each other; don’t tolerate the rudeness; grow some healthy boundaries, too, the kind that not only keep others’ crap out, but our own crap in.
We talk a lot to each other and visitors about things that make Powell River such a special place. Taking responsibility for growing a community of courtesy and integrity is part of the richness of our special place, because no one is going to do it for us; we have to pitch in and make it happen, as always.
Ann Nelson is the co-owner/operator/steward of the Historic Patricia Theatre in Townsite.
