ROSES AND ROTTEN TOMATOES: Roses to Doug for quietly keeping our Surrey neighbourhood clean

Published 7:00 am Saturday, September 12, 2026

• Roses to Doug: I would like to acknowledge a wonderful local citizen named Doug. This gentleman patrols a large area of our neighbourhood picking up litter.
My husband met him for the first time this morning when Doug asked if he could empty his bag in our garbage can before he continued on his route (of course he can). He said he had been doing this for quite a while, but he doesn’t get as far as our property very often. He began to pick up litter on his daily walks because he said complaining doesn’t change anything, but action does. Roses to Doug! You are the best!

• Rotten Tomatoes to those that sit on the benches at Hawthorne Park and smoke cigarettes and leave the butts all over the ground, especially around the duck ponds. Do you not care about your surroundings? This park is now turning into a terrible mess. I am forever cleaning up garbage from those that love to have family picnics and leave the area with discarded wrappers, balloons, ribbons. The park gardeners and garbage collectors are not your cleaners. They work hard at having a clean park. You are not privileged, we are grateful and respectful we have parks.

• Roses to the mayoral candidate who said he would install sidewalks. Many older areas (like 50 years) have no sidewalks or missing sidewalks where streets have been pushed through. Thank you to this candidate, you get my vote.

• Stinky, rotten tomatoes to the new homeowners that bought the house behind our house. They thought that they could cut down trees in their backyard, doing it without a permit. Not happening. Unfortunately, they cut down three trees in the backyard. But we caught them trying to cut down the tree behind our fence, destroying our privacy. We demanded to them to produce a tree permit. They couldn’t provide it. They stopped cutting the rest of the trees in their backyard after I threatened to call bylaws and the non-emergency number to report it. Please know we welcome new homeowners and follow bylaws, but if they think that they can do whatever they want, cutting down healthy trees without a tree permit, it’s not going to happen on my watch.

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