Nude beach, Penticton: posted "No Trespassing"

[Dawnland]

Hey fluffy, why don't you come to the beach and find out?

Look all you want at maps but you will have a tough time seeing the work and community that has been built in the area.
I have spent my share of days at the beach and find it quite charming. I find one of the main attractive points about the beach is the number of older people who have been coming to the beach for decades. They have some wonderful stories.

As it is clothing optional, feel free to dress however you want.

[Drip_Torch]

Peaches and beaches... seems both are getting a little harder to find - doesn't it?

[fluffy]

I'm not a lawyer and I believe it to be fluid and open to interpretation, however, my understanding is indecent exposure happens when there is intent to offend another person or persons.

It could be that same fluidity that puts the law on the property owner's side. I don't think it's so much the intent to offend as it is whether or not viewers find it offending. What I've read says that it is illegal to expose your genitals in public but that there is no intent to prosecute people for swimming nude in isolated locations. That's the meat of it, this area is not as isolated as it once was. I'm not against soaking in a little sun in the altogether but I always pick truly isolated, out-of-town locations when I choose to indulge. Even though the practice has been going on at Three Mile Beach for decades it is only just recently that it has become a problem for the property owners. All other considerations aside, should the owners be forced to take a financial hit to accommodate what are, in effect, a group of squatters ?

[Atomoa]

Nude beach from the 1930's is undone because "a extremely wealthy person from Alberta" basically doesn't like the BC vibe.

Nobody owns the water, man.

[fluffy]

Very articulate. You should lead the legal challenge to halt this travesty.

[Drip_Torch]

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

[fluffy]

At the root of this discussion are the rights that go along with property ownership. The current owner certainly isn't winning any popularity contests, but from all I've read so far he is well within the law. Things change, and it's a completely human trait to resist change, but it appears that in this case resistance won't lead to much success in keeping things they way they were. Still, having access to a private beach for free for some eighty odd years is a pretty good run wouldn't you say?

[Fancy]

Thought I heard on the news tonight the owner isn't preventing anyone from using the foreshore - just don't trespass. Also that a prospective buyer was chased off by the trespassers

[Drip_Torch]

I chose to believe in two things... "Santa Claus" and "the system" ... I've never really seen either of them work.

[coolworx]

“When you start separating people from their rivers [and lakes], what have you got? Bureaucracy! ” ~ Jack Kerouac

I come from Cape Cod.
And there, landowners aren't privy to the place where land meets water.
That is a sacred place allowed to all.

Does anyone remember what that arrogant Mel Reeves did to Sickle Point on Skaha?
Have we learned anything?

[pentona]

“When you start separating people from their rivers [and lakes], what have you got? Bureaucracy! ” ~ Jack Kerouac

I come from Cape Cod.
And there, landowners aren't privy to the place where land meets water.
That is a sacred place allowed to all.

Does anyone remember what that arrogant Mel Reeves did to Sickle Point on Skaha?
Have we learned anything?

I believe that when the water levels in the lake go down in the Summer, the beach will be a fair bit bigger and from the high water mark downwards, the landowner won't have any entitlement. Access and how people get to that point is the critical thing. If its through private lands then they might be considered trespassing but if city lands, its likely fair game. I haven't been there in some time but I believe the city owns part of it including a stairway down to the beach. I've seen this kind of thing before where landowners complain about the public being on their beach front or wharf; only to have the Government look into the matter and discover that their dock was never legal.

[fluffy]

If there is enough beach between the high water mark and the lake to make it usable then there really is no argument. What was bugging me is the apparent attitude of some posters that a special interest group should be able to restrict a property owner's right to choose what goes on on his land.

[pentona]

If there is enough beach between the high water mark and the lake to make it usable then there really is no argument. What was bugging me is the apparent attitude of some posters that a special interest group should be able to restrict a property owner's right to choose what goes on on his land.

That's the whole point here, Fluffy. His land does not extend below the high water mark. Anyone coming above that is definitely trespassing. Below that and there is little he can do other than perhaps file a complaint of public nudity on crown or city land.

[Drip_Torch]

This was never about clothing optional beach use.

[coolworx]

*removed*