In London, an old bylaw makes it illegal for a person with the plague to flag down a cabby, or for carriages to carry corpses or rabid dogs.
Some bylaws should stay on the books. The plague could come back.
Others bylaws have outlasted their intent.
In 1965, the British began to erase some of theirs. Like the one in York that says it’s okay to shoot a Scotsman with a crossbow, except on Sunday.
“However, any Scotsman caught drunk or with a weapon can still be shot on Sunday, except with a bow and arrow.”
This bylaw was written in medieval times, when most foreigners were invaders. The Scots and English are getting along better now.
Obsolete bylaws are everywhere. In Canada, many towns had bylaws prohibiting boarding houses from renting to single women. School teachers were forced to live with families. Individual rights and freedoms can give way to the temporal moral code of the day.
One of Australia’s Top 10 ridiculous bylaws says pigeon owners may only exercise their birds during the hours in which they are most vulnerable to eagles. There’s another that requires property owners to get permits costing a $100 before erecting backyard tents for the kiddies.
That one sounds like the Maple Ridge zoning bylaw that Robin Morgan, of 207th Street, ran into. He got a letter from municipal hall saying to remove the canvas cover over his 16-foot boat or be fined $300 a day. If there was a ruling like that in Port Moody, there’d be no ambulance service. Currently, tents are the only way they can house their vehicles.
But canvas covers are dangerous, according to Maple Ridge bylaw inspection officer Liz Holitzki. They could blow away, damage a neighbor’s property. Moreover, a heavy snowfall could collapse a tent, damage a boat. Insurance companies might not honor your policy.
All these possibilities were explained to Mr. Morgan as justification for the bylaw that saves us from weighing the consequences of decisions we used to make for ourselves. One day we might have a bylaw that says look both ways before crossing a street or pay a fine.
Mr. Morgan wondered if our zoning bylaw prevents him putting up a tent in the backyard for his grandchildren. It does, but it doesn’t matter. He can’t get a pup tent permit, even for $100.
Apparently, though, movie producers can get permits. At least, they seem not to worry about the white canopies we see downtown when they’re filming. There were a few on the Baptist Church parking across from The Caring Place recently. I wonder if the bylaw officer realizes that a big wind could come up and whip one of those huge things down the Lougheed onto the wind shield of a garbage truck. I hope no concerned citizen files a complaint. Complaints drive enforcement of some bylaws here instead of common sense.
Of course, bylaws are necessary if we are all to get along.
Most of them do make sense. Cats should be sterilized to protect the animals, and keep residents from being awakened by one in heat at two in the morning.
Bylaw frenzy, on the other hand, reduces individual freedom and the quality of life in a community. For example, it may not really be necessary to have a law that says you can’t feed the ducks – period. I’m glad we don’t have one yet. For a lot of folks, that’s a highlight of the day.
Common sense and relevance should always be seen in bylaws. They need to be reviewed about every two years, and discarded or amended when they become outdated. In Ottawa, there’s a bylaw that says you can’t play phonographs at certain times of the day. If you asked a teenager about phonographs, you’d get a blank stare. That is, if he heard the question over the noise from his iPod.
Our zoning bylaw, like the one that says Englishmen can shoot a Scot with a longbow, is due for a second look. Maybe, instead of sending Universal Studios a nasty letter, we might amend our bylaw to say that all tents must be securely anchored. The bylaw inspector could do an on-site inspection, beginning with the movie tents downtown in the heart of traffic. If she has time, she might check out a few illegal secondary suites above Morse Creek.
Jack Emberly is a retired teacher, local author and environmentalist.