That's about what I figured. No doubt Boundary Bay has a few minor problems (like everywhere else), but there is no apparent reason to suspect that those contributed to the accident.
As a low-time pilot (ca. 200 hours), I would not feel comfortable loading up a C-172 with three buddies and blasting off; not without doing some pretty careful W&B calculations, anyway. Sounds like this guy was just out of his depth.
