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Hungerford hopes SIC can find made-in-Savary solutions, without a highly regulated approach promoted by the last version of the OCP. "It's a very special place for our family. Where do you go to heal? Savary. Where do you go when you're having a hard time? Savary. And we're not unique," she said.
The four Hungerford children, now grown, spent every summer on Savary, with dad George commuting to and from Vancouver on the Daddy plane. Hungerford said she never minded that Savary's rustic setting made more work for her than back home in Vancouver.
"At the end of the summer I would burn the boys' socks - they were black," she said with a chuckle. The island's two realtors, Rick Thaddeus and Juanita Chase, both acknowledge that development in the last two decades has raised a new crop of issues.
"Certainly we do have more issues with more people. It's a given, and it's unfortunate, but more people create more problems," Chase said. However, she said, most of the necessary controls already exist - it's just a matter of enforcement. Various provincial agencies can step in to deal with health concerns, dogs harassing the island's deer, environmental issues or problems with the roads. If the OCP creates even more rules, she asked, "Who will enforce them?
'Most people are happy it's not like Vancouver. They just wouldn't buy if it was," said Chase, who moved to the island with her late husband in 1978 to run the Royal Savary Hotel, one of the island's two former hotels. Thankfully, crime hasn't kept pace with growth.
"We still leave our doors open, and that's another thing people can't believe," said Chase, who edits the Savary Island News. "It's very different. It's like a step back in time. I always say I'm stuck in the ‘50s. That same security I felt as a child, I still feel here." While Savary's old-fashioned, out-of-the-way feel had attracted her to the island, Chase points out the irony of cottagers' development complaints: "Some were doing the drawbridge thing. It's like, ‘I'm here, no one else can come in.'"
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