The Mexican village from the road high in the Sierra Madre Mountains looked like a shining jewel in the middle of a flat ochre valley. The buildings, shades of white and dominated by the rising spire of the requisite Catholic cathedral, glowed in the afternoon sun. Radiating around this tightly clustered core of church, shops and houses were the
farmed fields, a patchwork of different greens identifying the various crops being grown.

More beautiful than the sunlit colours — the brilliant contrast of whites and greens on a rich ochre background— was the design of the village itself, the masterful efficiency of a community planned by the stark necessity of having to minimize distances travelled. The single cluster of buildings looked circular, so that walkers could conveniently visit each other’s homes, or quickly reach the bakery, market or church, all with the fewest possible steps. The surrounding fields, too, were as close as design could place them. Farmers could easily arrive at their day’s work in a few minutes, escape the hot afternoon sun by coming home for lunch, then return in moments for cooler work later in the day.

This village was built before cars encouraged movement, decentralized communities and allowed human settlement to scatter helter-skelter over
the countryside. This logic of dispersal is an invention of the automobile. The casual walk for the Mexican villager has become the suburban commute, an ordeal that needs at least a tonne of machinery, huge supplies of fossil fuel, and highway networks of increasing complexity and cost. But the days of this kind of inefficiency are
numbered.

Several forces are converging to hasten the end of this profligacy. First is the pending shortage of oil as global consumption rises faster than supply — the initial result will be dramatically higher fuel costs. Second is the climate change resulting from rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a threat that will eventually force stringent controls on all CO2 emissions — we are just beginning to see the leading edge of carbon taxing. The eventual result will be the careful redesigning of communities to minimize the need for expensive travel.

Which brings us to the decision of the Vancouver Island Hospital Authority (VIHA) to place the proposed regional hospital at Dove Creek, a 30 minute drive south from Campbell River. Whatever the supporting medical or economic reasons, the site was chosen with an abject disregard for environmental considerations. The first effect is to
decentralize the city of Campbell River, pulling capital investment and social energy away from the urban core — the equivalent of displacing the Mexican village’s crucially important cathedral to a neighbouring valley. The car makes the hospital site reachable but at high costs. The present short jaunt to and from the existing hospital would be replaced
by an hour of driving, an obstacle to everyone associated with the hospital. And how are the busy schedules of local doctors supposed to accommodate an extra hour of travel per day just to visit their hospital patients?

The inconvenience of the extra distance for visiting family members and friends would be a comparable burden. Sick people need comfort of soul as well as body. Visiting them is both necessary and obligatory. The sick and dying benefit from the frequent company of their loved ones. No one can legitimately say, “Sorry, I couldn’t visit you at our local hospital because it was too far away.” Or, “I would come more often but I’m generating too much carbon dioxide.” Because hospitals hold both
patients and their families as hostages, they should be located to make visiting convenient and efficient.

And what of these carbon costs? Calculating a modest total of 100 return trips by car per day from Campbell River at present fuel efficiencies, travellers to the proposed hospital would produce between 438 and 547 tonnes of additional carbon dioxide per year. (One litre of burned gasoline generates about 2.4 kilograms of CO2.)

But the Dove Creek site poses other environmental costs. Rural land which could be used for agriculture or forestry would be converted to buildings, roads and parking lots. Additional infrastructure such as
electricity, water and sewer would have to be added. Supplementary businesses would be attracted to serve the needs of the new hospital.
Such development between existing communities would encourage in filling, exactly the kind of urban sprawl that is an inefficient use of human time and natural resources. From this perspective alone, the Dove Creek site could not have been more badly chosen — and even a Black Creek location would remove few of these disadvantages.

Such a bad choice is made even worse by TimberWest’s gift of 40 acres of land to accommodate the proposed hospital. Considering this corporation’s declared shift to real estate development in the Dove Creek area, its generous gesture can only be construed as self-serving and unhelpful.

As for VIHA, the organization that proposed the Dove Creek site for a regional hospital, its planning has been rendered obsolete by the recent sea-change in environmental awareness sweeping the province, country and world. All thoughtful governments are now adjusting policy to concur
with this new imperative; their agencies should be reflecting a similar shift in attitude.

With efficiency as the new watchword, the hospitals in Campbell River and the Comox Valley should be updated to meet local needs. As for the land at Dove Creek — or Black Creek — it should be used to grow trees or food, the latter becoming more important as rising oil prices and transportation costs will inevitably increase the importance of locally grown vegetables, fruits, grains and livestock. And a little Mexican village high in the Sierra Madres begins to look like a perfect model for our communities of the future.