Photo credit: Magdalena Angel
As the Pacific temperate rainforest’s sacred culture, lands, rivers, streams, and coastlines are threatened by Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project, opposition within the province and around the world is intensifying. According to West Coast Environmental Law’s executive director, Jessica Clog, polls show that nearly 80% of residents in BC are against tanker traffic on our coast.
Within this population of resistance to the oil sands project is a bright, young group of students from Quest University, who, along with youth in the Gitga’at First Nations, will paddle in a loop around Gil Island for 4-6 days during the first week of June 2012. Their paddle, said the project’s originator Magdalena Angel, is something she envisioned as a protest to the Enbridge pipeline, doubling as a way to engage youth and connect to the area’s environment and culture.
I spoke with Magdalena about the upcoming paddle, which has been a journey in the making, beginning with her longtime interests in social justice and environmental sustainability. Magdalena, who lives in Squamish, visited the Great Bear Rainforest’s Hartley Bay in 2009 as part of an ecology class. Love at first sight: she remembers being swept away by the wildlife, including humpback whales, bears, and eagles amongst a lush and verdant backdrop. She wanted to see a spirit bear, and went with a guide named Marvin. They waited eight hours near a stream and saw black bears feeding on salmon. She finally saw two white bears emerge upstream and will never forget the experience.
The students in her ecology class had planned to camp out at a local soccer field, but a high school teacher and community leader, Cameron Hill, generously invited all 18 students into his home to sleep! Cam, as well as Helen Clifton and other band leaders, taught Magdalena and other students about the area’s cultural history and ecology, including what issues they faced, especially concerns about the Enbridge’s Northern Gateway, and from there Magdalena’s interest piqued.
From that experience, Magdalena wanted to return to the Bay and jumped at the chance to do a volunteer stint later at the Cetacealab, also called Whale Point. When she returned to Hartley Bay, she said the first day was cold, foggy, and rainy, but the rest of her two and half weeks there were sunny and clear, perfect for observing and recording whale behavior. It was during this time that she learned even more about the Enbridge project and met folks who would inspire her.
Magdalena met photographers from the iLCP, who were working on what would become Spoil, a documentary that showed what a spectacular place the raincoast is. She also met four kayakers from the Pipe Dreams project, who were also filming a documentary, as well as Norm Hann, who did a 400km stand-up paddleboard journey for the First Nations and the rainforest. He also developed the Standup4Greatbear documentary.
Spoil is produced by EP Films and iLCP and tells the story of threats facing the Great Bear Rainforest as well as efforts by First Nations bands, scientists, and conservationists protecting the area.
Norm Hann completed a 400km stand-up paddleboard expedition along the proposed north coast oil tanker route in British Columbia.
After meeting these motivational folks, Magdalena dreamed of the Great Bear Rainforest Youth Paddle as an awareness-raising project, which will also be filmed. The paddle will consist of youth rowing a 20-man canoe around Gil Island. During their 4-6 day trip, they will stop at campsites that hold cultural significance for the First Nations in the area, including Kiel and Old Town.
Kiel is known for seaweed drying. According to a paper by Nancy J. Turner, “Those Women of Yesteryear: Woman and production of edible seaweed (Porphyra abbottiae) in Coastal British Columbia, Canada,” red laver seaweed has been a critically important food and condiment for the Coast Tsimshian of Hartley Bay, its harvest and processing the exclusive domain of women while men fished. In Kiel, the traditional spring camp (south of Gil Island on Princess Royal Island), the women harvested and worked with the seaweed. The group also plans to camp at Old Town, or Laxgal’tsap, known for its halibut and spring salmon.
Hartley Bay, where the canoe trip will start, is north of Gil Island, which is an isolated spot located west of Whale Channel and at the entrance of Douglas Channel. It is surrounded by many other islands east of the Hecate Straight, the waterway separating Haida Gwaii from the mainland. These channels are the same ones that tankers will need to navigate to get from the Straight to Kitimat and back, and include Gil, Campania, Farrant, Gribbell, Princess Royal, and Fin Islands, among others. Hartley Bay is home to the Gitga’at, members of the Tsimshian cultural group, a matrilineal society.
Photo credit: Magdalena Angel
I asked Magdalena about whether others her age seemed to understand the issues that the Great Bear is currently facing, and she said that she felt blessed to be in a school where students do care about both social and environmental justice. She said that the protest is multi-faceted, in that there are problems at various stages of oil sands production, including the resource-intensive mining to extract the oil, the increased CO2 output of this kind of oil, harmful tailings pond and other refuse, the pipelines themselves—which will traverse ecologically sensitive and rare areas—and, of course, super tankers along the West Coast and into the channels up to Kitimat. Also, First Nations’ resistance to the Northern Gateway Project is growing, and their recent signing of the Save the Fraser Declaration shows several bands’ unity to not allow any tar sands projects to cross their lands, territories, and watersheds or the ocean migration routes of the Fraser River salmon. Magdalena’s main concerns are the overarching environmental impacts and disrespect to the First Nations whose land treaties would be disregarded if the Northern Gateway is built. Magdalena pointed out that the government is not looking out for Canadians’ public interest or our nation’s responsibility to reduce carbon emissions.
Two years ago, Magdalena participated in a global perspective class and saw that someone had written on a chalkboard:
Be the change you want to see in the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi
This encouraged her to take on a personal challenge, and she is only at the beginning of the journey! She is working with a team of others, including Erica Benson, Caitlin Byrnes, Linden J. Fisher, Kirsty Graham, Olivia Morgan, Kelly Mcquade, Brianna Powrie, Net Nirachatswan, Tim Moss, and Julian Grant.
Visit Great Bear Rainforest Youth Paddle to find out more about the project and related events. To donate to this project, please see Indie Gogo or the Youth Paddle website.
See the project’s event page for past and upcoming events. On February 11 will be a “Voice for the Great Bear Rainforest” at The Wise Hall, 1882 Adanac Street, Vancouver. Doors open at 8:30, and a live art show and auction by Jay Peachy begins at 9:30. The evening will also feature music by No Sinner and Jasper Sloan Yip.
I want to thank Magdalena and her friends and colleagues for beginning this journey to help save the rainforest on our coast. Youth can have the strongest voice and most at stake—as they and their offspring are the generations who will be most affected by the loss of culturally significant rainforest and rare ecological habitat. I was very inspired by Magdalena’s story and genuinely honored to be able to tell it!
