Kindness extends to people, animals
Nicholas Read, Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, March 21, 2006
VANCOUVER - When you travel south along Blenheim and cross 49th Avenue into Southlands, you enter a piece of Vancouver like no other.
It is just as much a part of the city as Kerrisdale or Champlain Heights, but it is as different from those districts as wood is from marble.
Because even though Southlands falls entirely within the city limits, it is to all intents and purposes the country.
You can see that clearly from Jennifer Maynard's rambling 1955 split-level house. Nearby there are paddocks with horses in them. There is a riding ring. There is a chicken coop with hens rescued from battery cages, and a large field where Maynard's pet ducks forage for food.
"It's unique," she says of her neighbourhood, an 80-odd-hectare spread of flat, wet, intermittently wild agricultural land near the mouth of the Fraser, where up to 500 horses live and more than 5,000 people ride. "I've been to all kinds of different places in the world, but there's no place like Southlands."
In 1985, however, a proposal was made to change the way Southlands works.
Some residents suggested that individual one-hectare lots be allowed to be subdivided into smaller lots, thereby paving the way for more ostentatious houses, driveways and cars.
Opponents of the plan said it would have wrecked the essence of Southlands, but in 1988 a compromise was reached. The one-hectare restriction would stand, but residents would be permitted to build a second, smaller house on their properties that could be strata-titled.
The horses, wild birds and ditches full of frogs and fish got their reprieve.
But for how long? That is Maynard's constant concern and the reason she formed the Friends of Southlands Society conservation group.
If you subdivided it, it would be just for rich people," she says of Southlands. "The way it is now, it's like a community centre because everyone can come here and enjoy it."
Maynard and her husband, Rick, own a tack shop and run the Southlands Equestrian Centre where people "from every postal code in the city" come to ride, they say.
Many are kids with a passion for horses and no money to support it. But Maynard enables them indulge that passion by allowing them to help out in the stables in exchange for riding time.
The centre also provides employment for two men with special needs, Gordon Walker and Doug Harrison, who clean the stables and water the horses.
Walker's father, Chuck, says of Maynard: "She took a chance on hiring my son. Gordon has limited abilities. But she hired him and gave him a chance."
Maynard also has given over part of the centre and its horses to a riding club for the disabled she helped found two years ago with its current president, Debbie Roberts. They have just been granted charitable status for the club, which helps young children with a variety of disabilities learn to ride.
Kindness also extends to animals. Many of the Maynards' 24 horses were rescued from auctions where their previous owners were selling them for meat. Such horses are rehabilitated and then sold to other stables, thereby making more room for more rescues. One of the Maynards' stalls, which they could rent to a horse owner for $600 a month, is home to a population of rescued rabbits.
Southlands has been Maynard's home since she was 14. Her house is the one she inherited from her parents. It has been a life of privilege, she admits, but with that privilege has come responsibility. It's why she does what she does.
"And also I'm kinda selfish," she adds, "because I really like it here."
If you know of someone who does extraordinary things for his or her community, please tell us. Write to The Vancouver Sun, Attn. Local Treasures, 1-200 Granville St., Vancouver V6C 3N3 or e-mail us at suntreasures@png.
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