Fore!

As part of their ongoing penance for their disgusting attempt to subject aboriginal treaty rights to the tyranny of the majority five years ago, Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals are considering ceding the University Golf Club, located in Campbell's riding of Vancouver - Point Grey, to the Musqueam First Nation.

Every now and then the vicious little overfed blind squirrels in Victoria find a nut that makes sense, and this page wouldn't mind seeing this one cracked open. As most regular readers are aware, I greatly enjoy a lot of sports, but there are two endeavours this page wouldn't mind having wiped from the face of the earth: auto racing and golf. If you can find another sport where gargantuan tracts of arable land are commandeered for the enjoyment of an elite few, I'll hate that sport too. Skiing comes close, but unlike golf courses, America's ski resorts don't consume more water in a year than the country's farms*.

The duffing elites who can afford the $70 greens fee are already screaming "betrayal" at the government. They're bitching about the loss of natural green space, oblivious to the facts that one, Pacific Spirit Regional Park (free admission) is nearby, and two, A coastal rainforest doesn't have sand traps or shaved grass.

If the Liberals do go ahead with transferring the land, there is little doubt that the Musqueam would shut down the golf course - the land is just waaaay too valuable in Vancouver's extra-terrestrial inferno of a real estate market. Closing the golf club creates a few opportunities to stick it hard to the richie-rich NIMBYs in Point Grey with a few projects:

• Fair market housing for aboriginal people,
• Leasing retail space to service the exploding population in the UBC area (and at the same time curtailing commercial development on campus)
• Ceding a right-of-way to the UBC, the largest commuter destination in the Lower Mainland, making it that much easier to finally build mass transit to campus

As for the gold card-flashing, SUV-driving, Mike Weir wannabe suckholes in Point Grey: if they don't like it, let 'em vote NDP and book a tee time at the Stanley Park Pitch n' Putt.

*Harper's index