974 Followers and a Closed Door

Between 2022 and 2025 the Islands Trust closed Mayne Island's walk-in office and ended print newspaper public notices, leaving islanders to track development decisions through a website and a Facebook page the local paper noted had 974 followers. Mayne's own elected trustee had already told Trust Council that "people are not happy with the Islands Trust" — an unease with a paper trail on the island going back to at least 2011.

How does an islander watch a government that no longer prints its notices and no longer keeps a door open?

On Aug. 6, 2025, the Islands Trust's Executive Committee passed motions ending print newspaper public notices for Mayne, Saturna and North Pender: as the Gulf Islands Driftwood reported, "islanders on Mayne, Saturna and North Pender islands will soon only be able to find public notices when staff publish them online".^[1] Notices for development permits and rezoning applications — the paperwork that decides what gets built on the island — now appear online and on the Trust's Facebook page, which the Driftwood noted had 974 followers.^[1] Not every Trust island was affected; the motions covered these three.^[1]

The print notices were the second channel to go. Three years earlier, the Trust closed its walk-in Mayne office effective July 1, 2022, part of a round of budget-cut closures that also ended office access on Saturna, North Pender and Denman.^[2] The savings across all four offices: $12,300.^[2] The Trust's position was that access survived the closures: "Staff and trustees will continue to be available for on-island visits by request, or to meet via other means such as phone or video conferencing."^[2] That is a real mitigation — access was reduced, not eliminated — but it converts a door you could walk through into a meeting you must request.

The unease is not confined to critics outside the tent. In March 2022, Mayne's elected trustee Jeanine Dodds spoke against a budget increase at Trust Council and told her colleagues, "we are in a time right now when people are not happy with the Islands Trust."^[3] She argued the organization had drifted beyond its core functions: "We are trying to be all things to all people, and it is time to get back to some real simple basics."^[3] Council approved the $9.1-million budget — carrying a two-per-cent property-tax increase — over her objection.^[3] This cuts both ways: a sitting trustee pressing for restraint from inside is evidence the institution's internal accountability can function. It is also evidence that the budget rises anyway.

The complaint has a long paper trail on Mayne. In September 2011, the Mayne Island Residents & Ratepayers Association's newsletter described island life "under the appointed guardianship and administrative program of forces too-often based outside our communities."^[4] Its August 2011 newsletter had warned of pending bylaws that would "categorize Mayne down to individual ecosystem 'polygons'," the resulting database feeding "blanket DPA (development permit areas) regulations," and posed a question that still hangs over the Trust's regulatory style: "We question whether this is all in response to an identified problem, or in fact is becoming a problem in itself."^[5] Those newsletters are roughly fifteen years old and speak for one residents' association at one moment, not the island today — and the same association urged islanders to engage assertively with trustees and elections rather than reject the institution: "Don't be shy about asking candidates where they stand; you have the power, until you hand it to them."^[4]

The machinery, meanwhile, leans on volunteers it struggles to find. Ahead of the October 2026 Trust election, the Friends of the Gulf Islands Society issued a public appeal for candidates across the thirteen Trust islands — two trustee seats each, Mayne's included — conceding that "Being a Trustee takes a lot of time, doesn't pay well and, may subject one to criticism," and pleading: "We can do better only if some of you step up and run."^[6] That is a Trust-wide recruitment appeal, not a report of empty ballots on Mayne — but it is a conservation-minded ally of the Trust, not an opponent, describing what the role costs the people who fill it.^[6]

Mayne's trustees are elected; that is not in dispute, and one of them appears above doing exactly what elected representatives should do. The documented pattern is narrower: in the same era its own trustee said publicly that people were unhappy, the Trust closed Mayne's walk-in office as part of $12,300 in shared savings and moved the island's public notices from the local paper to a website and a 974-follower Facebook page.^[1][2][3] Islanders can still watch this government work. It has simply become harder to see.

^[1]: Gulf Islands Driftwood, "Some Trust islands axe newspaper notices," Aug. 13, 2025. https://gulfislandsdriftwood.com/some-trust-islands-axe-newspaper-notices/ ^[2]: Gulf Islands Driftwood, "Islands Trust offices to close on Mayne, Pender, Saturna," June 19, 2022. https://gulfislandsdriftwood.com/islands-trust-offices-to-close-on-mayne-pender-saturna/ ^[3]: Gulf Islands Driftwood, "Trust Council approves $9.1-million Islands Trust budget," March 16, 2022. https://www.gulfislandsdriftwood.com/news/9-1-million-islands-trust-budget-approved/ ^[4]: Mayne Island Residents & Ratepayers Association, September 2011 Newsletter. https://maynebc.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/ ^[5]: Mayne Island Residents & Ratepayers Association, August 2011 Newsletter. https://maynebc.com/2011/09/august-2011-newsletter/ ^[6]: Friends of the Gulf Islands Society, "Candidates Urgently Needed," July 10, 2026. https://www.friendsofthegulfislands.ca/news-updates/candidates-urgently-needed/