northword 2015--12

bc’s top read

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discover what’s new at www.northword.ca

Forgingnew ties

Skiingfor all

Welcomingrefugees

Designingfor snow

Shovellingthe deep

free

www.northword .ca | DEC ‘15/JAN ‘16 | 3

Cover Photo

26 Forging Into the PastCamp worker reignites a family traditionBy Kelsey Wiebe

33 Silverking BasinWinter cabin in the mountainsBy Morgan Hite

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6 Winter CitiesDesigning communities for whatever way the wind blowsBy Norma Kerby

8 Monster SnowfallDigging deep come winter in the NWBy Norma Kerby

10 The Unplanned ExodusSmithers opens doors for refugee familiesBy Amanda Follett Hosgood

12 Have Sticks will TravelExploring the North on skisBy Emily Bulmer

5 In Other WordsEditorial and cartoon from the seasoned and the silly

27 On the FlyFishing in northern BC with Brian Smith

29 Top CultureExplore the rural route to northern culture with UNBC’s Rob Budde

30 CommentPetronas and Lelu Island -- the cutting edge of LNG in BC?By Greg Horne

32 Resource DirectoryServices and products listed by category

34 The Barometer A seasonal reading of the Northwest by Char Toews

Fea tures

Story Commen ts?

“Frosty Tree 1.” Depending on the snow year, it’s either a sapling or the tip of a 12-footer. Photo by Dan Moore. For more photos, check out his web album at mortusee.jalbum.net

Tell us what you’re thinkin’. Comment on any story at www.northword.ca

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4 | DEC ‘15/JAN ‘16 | www.northword .ca

Shannon Antoniak ADVERTISING [email protected]

Sandra Smith LAYOUT DESIGN, NATIONAL ADVERTISING [email protected]

Joanne CampbellPUBLISHER/ADVERTISING SALES [email protected]: 250.847.4600 f: 847.4668toll free: 1.866.632.7688

Amanda Follett [email protected]

Charlynn Toews has published in daily and weekly newspapers, national magazines, and loves a good regional. She writes a regular column for Northword from her home in Terrace.

Facundo Gastiazoro is a freelance designer who focuses on logos, posters, layout and illustrations. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Facundo is currently living in Smithers. His illustrations appear in every issue of Northword Magazine.

Rob Budde teaches creative writing and critical theory at the University of Northern British Columbia. He has published seven books (poetry, novels, interviews, and prose poems). His most recent book is Finding Ft. George from Caitlin Press.

Greg Horne is energy coordinator for the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition. He holds an MA in philosophy, a BSc in neuroscience, and has written for Northword, Watershed Sentinel, and various academic journals.

Amanda Follett Hosgoodis a Smithers-based freelance writer, Northword’s editor and a new mom who refined her nursing-while-editing skills as she worked on this issue.

Norma Kerby is a Terrace-based writer and environmental consultant. Her passions include amphibians, natural ecosystems, sustainable living and adaptations of wildlife and people to northern British Columbia. She occasionally writes poetry about the North’s uncertain future.

Emily Bulmer is a longtime Smithereen who enjoys subjecting herself to unscientific experiments in living. She occasionally records her findings and reports positive results most of the time.

Brian Smith is a writer and photographer who has fly-fished BC’s waters for over 45 years. He recently published his second book, Seasons of a Fly Fisher, and lives with his wife Lois in Prince George.

Kelsey Wiebe is curator of Terrace’s Heritage Park Museum. She’s contributed articles to Hawkair’s in-flight magazine, Muse (BC’s museum journal) and the Terrace Standard, including a series on Lakelse Hot Springs’ history.

Hans Saefkow is an award-winning editorial cartoonist, illustrator and set designer. If you see this man, do not approach him, feed him, or listen to his idle chatter. It is simply best not to encourage him.

Morgan Hite has lived in Smithers for 20 years, makes maps, goes hiking, gets lost, writes articles, reads things and dreams about travel.

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MAIN OFFICE | SmithersBox 817, 3864 2nd Ave, Smithers, BC, V0J 2N0 tel: 250.847.4600

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Northword Magazine is the only independent, regional magazine that covers northern BC from border to sea. Our goal is to connect northern communities and promote northern culture; we put a vibrant, human face on northern life with great articles and stunning images. Northword Magazine—BC’s top read, for a reason.

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What brings you home?

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What brought you here, to this place you call home? If you’re like most Northword readers, you could have found your way here

by any number of means: you came for work and never left. You came as a tourist, left, and came back as soon as your life allowed. Or you were born here and never left or, if you did leave, you came back when you realized what you’d left behind. Whichever your story, something about this place reso-nated with you, something that made it home.

If you’re one of those who came here from away, do you remember what whispered in your ear and said, “you’re home, don’t go… stay”? Was your feeling for home love at first sight? Or a love affair that grew over time? Was it like recognizing an old friend you just hadn’t met yet? Or maybe it was like finally coming home after a long journey.

For me, it was all of the above. It was cresting Hungry Hill for the first time and seeing the Bulkley Valley with her arms spread wide, from the Telkwa Range on one side to the Babines on the other; Quick laid out the welcome mat ahead and Hudson Bay Mountain beckoned on the far left with Brian Boru marking the edge of the valley over her shoulder in the distance. I just knew this was it. The valley’s first big hug was welcoming me home. It was exciting. It was comforting.

Every time I come over that rise, I re-live that first thrill of belonging. When I meet people who are new to town —whether it’s my town or any

of the communities that dot the highways crossing the top half of our prov-ince—I look for that spark in their eyes that reflects how they feel about the place where they’ve moved. Is it home? Or is it home? How does it feel? What does the air smell like to them, how does the water taste? Are their neigh-bours friendly, do the folks at the grocery store treat them well? Do they like the food? Can they handle the snow? Does it feel like they should—perhaps—

stay a while?It doesn’t happen often but occasionally I’m lucky enough to run into

someone who’s been here for a week and simply doesn’t want to go. More often, I’ll talk to people who came for a week 20 years ago and, well, here they are!

If it’s the love-at-first-sight kind of love that enticed you into staying and making this place home, what made you stay after the honeymoon was over? It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the physical beauty we’re surrounded with, it’s hard to resist its charms. After the first sight of the ridiculous beauty of our North and the warmth of that first visual hug, then what? Even when we take the scenery for granted, if we’re here for the long term it’s because we’re compatible. There are lots of beautiful places in the world; time and money willing, we can visit them whenever we want. But how many of them would you call home?

When I read Kelsey Wiebe’s article in this issue about Curtis Hampton, the blacksmith who forged a relationship with Terrace while he was working in camp at Kitimat, it brought home all those first feelings of discovery. Curtis may have gone on to other jobs in other places, but he could well be one of the many who came for work and left only to return. Some day. Or maybe it was just a flirtation.

And the Syrian families who will soon be joining us—in Smithers and across the region—what will be their reactions to these places we call home? My guess is, for them, the whispers of the landscape will be secondary to the warmth of the people who welcome them. Our new friends will bring another meaning to the concept of home that we can only imagine.


by Norma Kerby

[email protected]

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“With s inking stomachs and sore backs, we would stare into the dark morning, hoping some miracle had sent the snow in another direct ion.”

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Books & CappuccinoMountain Eagle Whoever built my former house did not know or understand the direction of the prevailing wind or how drifts are formed. With unfailing regularity, after every winter storm, a two- to three-metre-deep snowdrift lay along the sidewalk against the south wall—a monstrous pile that had to be shovelled away before it melted and leaked water into the foundation and windows. With sinking stomachs and sore backs, we would stare into the dark morning, hoping some miracle had sent the snow in another direction.

The house was not unusual; neither was the drifting snow plugging the residential street where it was located. Rectangular buildings along

W I N T E R C I T I E S

Designing communities for whatever way the wind blows


right-angle street grids have long dominated northern BC communities: streets that often match the direction of winter winds. It is surprising how little attention was given to designing communities relative to the long months of frigid weather.

As the crystalline form of water, snow moves downward with gravity and laterally with air currents. The amount carried by the wind is proportional to wind speed. A drop in wind speed means a portion will be deposited. Simply put, when blizzard winds hit a gulley, cliff edge, hedgerow or corner of a building, their speed decreases and a drift forms. Backcountry skiers are well aware of cornice dangers on cliff edges, formed as drifting snow stretches out from the rock over empty space.

What does this have to do with living in the North? Like the house with the monstrous drift, if the configuration of features relative to the direction of the prevailing wind creates a zone in which wind speed drops, then a lot of snow will pile up in a hurry.

Why the snow crossed the roadIn Terrace, a large sports field allows strong northerly winds to pick up snow and deposit it into a dip in the land, which happens to be the road. The drifts in that location are notorious. To eliminate them, snow fencing or a windbreak of evergreens set back from the road’s north side would catch snow before it drifted onto the road. Another solution would be to elevate the road so it would be blown clear, with the snowdrifts forming to the lee side. But the road and the winds remain the same and, after every winter storm, long-term residents avoid travelling down that particular street.

When wind speed increases, the amount of snow it can carry will increase. Wind funnelled between buildings speeds up and will scour snow out of the area. This might be an advantage for snow shovelling, but the wind-tunnel effect and blowing snow make walking difficult. Blasts of

blowing snow can be a hazard on streets oriented into prevailing winds due to low visibility and the need for physical strength.

River valleys, with their strong outflow blasts, are especially susceptible to high winds, which increase wind-chill levels, making frostbite more likely and stressing livestock. Even energy bills increase as blizzards blast heat away from buildings. The lower Skeena Valley is notorious

for strong outflows in mid-winter, winds that roar down Highway 16 and make driving and living cold and challenging. For someone who purchases property in the summer in one of the scenic rural communities along the Skeena River, the gale-force winds of January and February must come as a severe shock.

Changes to buildings and roads to address wind and snow problems, though, are unlikely to occur in most northern towns. We have a historical tendency to transport southern living solutions to northern climates, rather than design for the factors that dominate winter months. The cost of modifying existing infrastructure to increase winter liveability is perceived as too high.

Curbing the coldA few places, though, have embraced winter weather. As part of a global network of larger centres defining themselves as Winter Cities, Prince George has adopted an official community plan (OCP) celebrating its characteristics “defined in part by the cold, snow, and ice of the winter months.” During the OCP’s development, residents identified winter’s recreational and cultural attributes as part of Prince George’s attraction. Rather than fighting our northern seasonal cycles, this OCP declares winter as integral to the city’s identity, with goals set to address winter-specific design. Policies are laid out requiring winter use to be considered in future developments of streets, transportation systems, public spaces and buildings.

Prince George maximized winter liveability by adjusting zoning bylaws, including covered walkways to restrict snow accumulation and increased safety by avoiding sudden snow dumps off roofs and awnings. Large buildings are required to have snow management plans and winter’s limited palette is mitigated through mixed landscaping of evergreens and deciduous trees. Other guidelines encourage buildings to be oriented to maximize sun exposure, especially in the low sun angles and long shadows of winter.

Other Canadian cities have carried the Winter City movement even further. For example, Edmonton has produced design guidelines for mitigating wind and blowing snow for both existing city spaces and new developments with evergreen hedges, street and building orientations in a northwest-southeast direction (to offset the prevailing wind and provide maximum winter sunlight) and sheltered “warm-up” alcoves to encourage outdoor city use. Its Winter City program is designed to increase winter happiness and economic activity through outdoor recreation spaces and programs, increased lighting, playful lighting displays and development of winter community spaces. Edmonton encourages its citizens to ignore the blowing snow and get out and enjoy winter.

Solutions to strong winds and drifting snow are often quite simple. For the house with the chronic snowdrift problem, if only an evergreen hedge had been planted upwind to break the wind, even its problems could have been eliminated. Long after we moved away, I would drive by the house and debate whether I should knock on the door and ask them how they were making out with their huge snowdrifts. But I never did, and the subsequent owners must wonder why all the snow in the neighbourhood ends up along the south wall of their house.

For further information on the Winter Cities movement, check out For the Love of Winter: Edmonton’s Winter City Strategy and the Winter Cities Institute (www.wintercities.com). Edmonton hosted a conference for winter cities last January and the World Winter Cities Association for Mayors meets in Sapporo, Japan in 2016. N

Residents identified winter’s recreational and cultural attributes

as part of Prince George’s

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You can tell when the big snowfalls are coming. After a cold snap, clouds build in the southern

sky and winds switch from blowing downriver to strong blasts out of the southeast. Soon, large, lazy, saucer-sized snowflakes start to twirl out of the sky. Like moose heading for shelter under old-growth trees, old-timers make one last hurried trip to stock up on groceries and park their vehi-cles closer to the road.

Heavy snowfalls are a fact of life if you live in the north coast’s inland valleys. Every winter, residents of Kitimat, Terrace and Stewart, and even the caretakers at the Kitsault ghost town, prepare themselves. With colder winter tempera-tures than coastal communities like Prince Rupert and Bella Bella, these towns sit in the zone where major Pacific cyclonic storms blowing onshore pass over higher land, dropping heavy precipita-tion. If cold air is trapped in the valley bottoms, this precipitation can become massive amounts of snow.

The resulting depths can be staggering. They bring traffic to a stop, crush sheds, rip gutters from roofs, crush greenhouses and isolate residents until the streets and sidewalks are cleared. Local residents joke about having one of the highest per-capita ownerships of snow shovels, snow blowers and four-wheel drives. Local contractors count on snow removal as a major contributor to annual income.

If you live in a less-snowy part of the North, it is hard to imaginet. Think of the hood of your car. On average, it is about 80 cm above the ground. During one record-breaking snowfall on Feb. 11, 1999, over 24 hours an unbelievable 113 cm of snow fell in Terrace. Although my workplace at the time let everyone go early, I could scarcely make it back down my street, past small cars already stuck in the banks. These cars soon disap-peared under the growing snow cover.

By next morning, the snowpack was chest level. With snowshoes, we were able to move around the yard to feed our chickens and rabbits, but had to dig to get in the sheds’ doorways. By noon, the snow was melting and heavy rain was falling. Despite building codes requiring strong, weight-bearing trusses in these snow-belt communi-ties, we decided that shovelling the consolidating snowpack off our roofs was the safest choice. It was like moving chunks of sticky, white cement.

Limited accessThese snowfalls are spectacular reminders of the stormy north coast’s severe winter climate. On a regular basis, large snow dumps change the reality of living in this region. As recently as last February, heavy snowfall reminded industrial developers that the Northwest is not a benign climate when 151 cm fell over two days in Terrace. In Kitimat, it was a staggering 160 cm.

The mobilization of heavy equipment after a snowfall like that is impressive, but the result is often major road closures accompanied by flooding, avalanches and power outages from broken trees. If an industrial catastrophe occurred during an event like the 2015 storm, access to an affected site would be problematic, if not impos-sible.

Big snowfalls that quickly melt are one thing, but what happens if monster snowfalls stay and accumulate? Stewart, at the head of the Portland Canal, averages 570 cm of snowfall per year—

by Norma Kerby

[email protected]

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Two BC Tel workmen shovel snow away from the telephone l ines, March 1972.

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higher than the roofline of many houses. Although some melts during the winter, in many years it builds up deeper and deeper, requiring trailers to have protective roofs and frequently closing the road into Stewart because of avalanches in the Bear Pass.

One early spring a few years back, we had to travel to Stewart. Deep banks of blue snow lined the streets, dramat-ically illustrating why many of the old mining houses have metal roofs and are elevated several feet above the ground. The force of the thick accumulation of wet snow that year tore porches from the fronts of older houses. A bus-sized recreation vehicle sat at the side of a residential street, torqued and twisted by the weight of metres of snow that had accumu-lated on it.

With climate change, will heavy snowfalls become something of the past? Climatic models suggest that, despite winters becoming warmer elsewhere, the future outer-north-coast weather may be wetter and cooler. Inland valleys will still sit in a transition zone between these wet coastal influences and colder continental weather. As in the past, there will be years where snow never accumulates in the valleys, and there will be other years where it will start snowing in November and not melt until March.

People of the SnowThe 1970s are legendary for snow accumulation in Kitimat and Terrace folklore. Not only did it snow a lot, the snow accumulated on the ground until life became very challenging. According to one resident, “The dog was walking around on the roof of the house. We kept shooing him off, but all he did was go back up the snow bank and onto

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the roof again. The fence was buried. We had to dig down into the doorway of the garage, and we just parked the car out at the road. Every day, there was more snow. I was throwing the snow up on to the banks until there wasn’t any more room for snow. It got so bad, people moved away.”

Climatic records bear out these descriptions of the ’70s. For example, from November 1971 to the end of March 1972, Terrace received 715 cm of snow. That is over 23 feet: the height of a power pole. In

Kitimat, there was an astounding 1,016 cm of snowfall during the same period. The snow was so deep, it touched the hydro lines and some residents used their second-storey windows to go in and out of their houses. Driving down the roads was like driving through a white tunnel. These marathons of snow continued through the 1970s. One can still come across logging settings harvested at this time, with tree stumps sitting two or three metres above ground level, where timber had been cut during the deep snow.

The inland coastal valleys have a long history of monster snowfalls. According to Gordon Robinson, historian for traditional Haisla knowl-edge, Kitimaat got its name People of the Snow from the shoulder-deep snow of the area. Historic records show the amazing snowfalls and deep snow covers have long been recorded as a consis-tent factor of living in this transitional snowbelt zone.

Looking backFor records of average and extreme snowfalls and snow depths, the Environment Canada website, www.weather.gc.ca, has daily, monthly and historic information going back to the 1900s for certain communities in northern BC. For a higher elevation site (900 m), check out Unuk River Eskay Creek. The amazing snow depths make fascinating reading.

The snow was so deep, it touched

the hydro lines and some residents used their second-storey

windows to go in and out of their houses.

Last February, as we watched the snow in our driveway become an impassable barrier, the lights flickered, then went off. “Better wrap the deep freezers in the sleeping bags,” someone said.

“This might be a long one.”

A man shovels the roof of h is house on Wi l l iscroft Street in Kit imat. I t ’s bel ieved this photo was taken after the big snowfal l winter of 1971-1972.

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Every morning, Akram Khalil and Montaha Awil awake to social media. The reality that greets them is a far cry from their quiet existence with two daughters, Norma, 17, and Natalie, 13, in Smithers: displacement, loss and loved ones directly in the line of fire as rebel forces move in on their hometown of Sadad, Syria.

“They’ve given up planning for the long term,” says Awil, “Mona” to her Canadian friends. “They survive day by day.”

The Syrian conflict began in 2011, creating a refugee crisis in Europe as more than 10 million residents—nearly half the population—fled the country. Two years ago, Awil began inquiring with local organizations about sponsoring family, but was unable to raise interest. Then there was the photo.

The image is well known, compelling in both its innocence and tragedy: toddler Alan Kurdi laying facedown on a beach after the boat in which his family fled Syria capsized in the Mediterranean on Sept. 2. Though hard to look at, it caused the crisis to explode in the news and on social media.

“This image is one from a million images,” Khalil says.

“It’s not the worst,” Awil adds.Indeed, it was unique only in that it brought

the plight of refugees to the attention of Cana-

dian residents and decision makers. It wasn’t long before a Smithers group formed to sponsor a Syrian family.

Community comes together“I decided I needed to do something,” Smithers resident Pauline Mahoney says. She wasn’t alone. An initial meeting, called in early September, resulted in five individuals who volunteered to be legally responsible for the family. In government lingo, this process of refugee sponsorship is known as G5.

While the five will be financially, emotionally and physically responsible for the refugees for one year, they have an entire community behind them. That initial meeting turned out everyone from counsellors and therapists to nurses and an ESL teacher, all wanting to contribute. Offers of help include accommodation, employment, a lawyer to review paperwork and fundraising plans. Mahoney walked away with an email list of nearly 60 people interested in being involved.

“I’m still getting calls and emails several times a week with specific offers of help,” she says.

“It’s huge.”Perhaps not surprisingly, negotiating govern-

ment bureaucracy has been one of the greatest challenges. Once the paperwork to sponsor a family was complete, the group realized they

needed to attach refugee information before submitting.

“Then you suddenly realize you have to have a refugee,” Mahoney says.

After chasing their tails with government services that had been discontinued, the search began for a local Syrian family who might be able to connect them with someone overseas.

Finding family“That’s a funny story,” Awil laughs. By the time Mahoney approached her, the G5 group had learned about a dental hygienist in Houston, a woman working at a Smithers optometrist’s and a student at Smithers Secondary School, all from Syria. “They were all talking about the same family,” she says.

The couple, who has lived in Smithers five years after a year in Houston, has been back to Syria twice since leaving in 2000 and is in daily contact with family in Homs and Sadad, sometimes speaking with them to the sound of bombing in the background. The high cost of living in Syria and up-front funds needed to claim refugee status make it hard to leave.

“I hope more people will get motivated to bring people over,” Awil says. “You can no longer sleep when (rebels) are 10 km away from you.”

Sadad, located 60 km south of Homs, is a Chris-tian town surrounded by Muslim communities. Its location is strategic, sitting near the highway that runs between Homs and Damascus. Two years ago, an attack by rebel forces killed 46 of Sadad’s 3,500 residents.

This October, ISIS militants came within three kilometres of Sadad, only to be pushed back to Mahin, 17 km away. At press time in mid-November, the situation in Sadad was evolving daily, with the town continually under threat. Awil’s mother had been evacuated to Homs, but Khalil’s father, who is blind, was unable to leave and was being looked after by another son.

Does the couple wish they could be closer? “I wish they were closer to me!” Awil manages

to laugh through the painful helplessness. The couple is already sponsoring two families—Awil’s

by Amanda Follett Hosgood

[email protected]

IntegrIty

QualityProfes sionalism Community

SuCCeS S.

Working

L o c a t e d i n S m i t h e r S & S e r v i n g t h e r e g i o n • 2 5 0 . 8 4 7 . 4 3 2 5 • w w w . e d m i S o n m e h r . c a

for

Akram Khal i l ( lef t ) and Montaha Awi l share a photo

of Awi l ’s cousin’s fami ly, who is being sponsored to come to Canada by a group of Smithers

residents. The fami ly lost everything when their home in

Homs, Syr ia was burned.

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A group of Smithers residents, known by government as the “G5,” meets to discuss sponsor ing a Syr ian fami ly to come to the community.

the unplanned exodusSmithers opens doors for refugee families


lies of their own, who are now scattered across Europe.

“We can provide as many families as you want,” she laughs.

Starting overA strong woman with piercing blue eyes, after more than two hours telling her story Awil’s solid veneer begins to exhaust itself.

“It’s not easy to talk about,” she says. Instead, she scrolls through her smartphone, showing me images on social media of those who have been killed in their small, close-knit community: this woman was her schoolteacher; this man a member of her extended family; here, the image of a boy, only 15, who was struck by debris. She knows them all.

She and Khalil immigrated by choice. They had time to plan their move and build a life. Refugee families leave everything behind—their posses-sions, their homes, everything they’ve worked for, even their careers—to start over.

Yet, it’s still better than the alternative. For more information or to donate to Smithers’

refugee sponsorship group, visit www.bvsponsor-shipgroup.weebly.com.

The group is planning a Get to Know Syria Night, Saturday, Nov. 21, 5:30 to 8 p.m. at Bulkley Valley Christian School. The evening is by dona-tion and includes Syrian food, a slide show, belly dancing, games and a dessert auction. All proceeds go toward sponsorship.

It’s hoped the first family will arrive in the Bulkley Valley by spring. The plan is to allow them some time to settle in, then hold a welcome gathering and potluck so they can meet the community that so desperately wanted to bring them here.

N

sister and Khalil’s brother—to come to Canada. Having community support to bring more (and, at this point, any Syrians feel like family) provides some levity in what has been a difficult few years.

“With war comes everything, crimes and kidnappings,” Awil says. “To see something so beautiful here—I’m speechless.”

Leaving it all behindWhen the G5 approached them, the family they suggested for sponsorship was Awil’s cousin, Saied Assaf, his wife, Eviet Danbar, and their three children, Julie, 12, Jessica, 15, and Yousef, 5, who were living in Homs when the conflict began.

“They left and their house was burned,” Awil says. They lost everything, crossing into Lebanon to await new identification papers and at one stage needing to return to Syria for a medical appointment, briefly putting their opportunity to immigrate in jeopardy.

By mid-November, the G5 had completed its paperwork and was waiting on the family’s new passports to submit it to the Canadian govern-ment. The group had already raised half of its original $40,000 fundraising goal, including contributions from children who have donated birthday money and weekly allowances.

“I’ve had several children who have given half or all their birthday money,” Mahoney says. “I think it’s really important for children to have compas-sion, to know what goes on in the world, and know they have power to do something about it.”

The response has been so overwhelming the group recently decided to double their efforts, bringing a second family over, this time through a government-sponsored program. There is no shortage of refugees needing help: Awil alone has three sisters, all with children who have fami-

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Montaha Awil suggested sponsoring her cousin, Saied Assaf, and his family (wife Eviet Danbar, daughers Jul ie, 12, and Jessica, 15, and son Yousef, 5) to come to Smithers. The family was l iving in Homs when the confl ict began and lost everything when their house was burned.

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by Emily Bulmer

adventuremi [email protected]

have sticks, will travelExploring the North on skis

NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

My breath hangs in frozen bursts and dissipates behind me. My legs and arms pump in a steady rhythm and, leaving two straight lines of track behind me, I think of myself as a steady, slow-moving locomotive. “I think I can, I think I can.”

The world outside is silent and the only thing I can hear is the sound of blood pumping through my eardrums. Winter is back and I could hardly wait to put on my skis.

As a kid, I would snug up my three-pin bindings on my hickory skis and zig-zag my way through the backyard or around an open lake. Racing my brother down the icy stretches and pulling my sister up a hill with an outstretched pole mark my family ski memories. There was no Gore-tex, spandex or much technique beyond a stiff-legged herringbone to get up the really steep hills.

“That’s it, just keep moving!” my parents encouraged as we shuffle-trudged our way across the landscape in our checked wool jackets and wrap-around scarves. Though my technique has improved since those days, the advice to keep moving is still sound.

Whether cross-country or backcountry, the hiss of skis on snow is a special kind of motivational soundtrack. So long as you hear that sound, you are making progress. Skiing is a wonderful way to stay in shape, enjoy the outdoors and explore unknown territory. It really does offer a true range of adventure, from family excursions around a flat trail with a kid in a backpack to technically challenging routes requiring ropes, avalanche knowledge and the patience to bushwhack uphill through deep snow. While every trip isn’t for everyone – take note that some areas require experience and knowledge or avalanche travel – certainly the North has something to offer for every skier’s idea of a good time.

A skier descends the r idge above Hankin-Evelyn Backcountry Recreat ion Area’s day-use shelter. The area offers cut runs, glades and alpine ski ing without the crowds—or l i f ts—of a ski resort .

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For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visitnorthernbctourism.com

Thanks to our many other funders, sponsors and our fabulous volunteers!

The Devin Cuddy Band The Matinée Còig

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NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA14 | DEC ‘15/JAN ‘16

WellsThe Bowron Lakes chain, near historic Barkerville and the small community of Wells, is well known for multi-day canoe trips. When the lakes freeze and a deep blanket of snow covers the land, they can be traversed by skis. Multi-day ski trips can be a fantastic way to explore this vast landscape.

The area also offers 15 km of groomed ski trails, many of which are regu-larly track set, in addition to hundreds of kilometres of marked, non-motor-ized trails. Some of the trails are steeped in history, including the Cariboo Wagon Road from Stanley to Barkerville, which is about 25 km. In addition to a wide variety of ski trails, Wells hosts the Wells Gourmet Ski Tour and Inter-national Mountain Film Festival, where you can sample international foods while burning off the calories as you go. Detailed maps and descriptions of each trail around Wells, including length and elevation profiles, are available at wellsbarkervilletrails.com/trails.

QuesnelQuesnel’s main cross-country area is at Hallis Lake, with a trail network of about 75 km. In addition to track-set trails, some of the first dog trails in the area provide a place for four-legged ski partners to run. A warming hut, washrooms and rental shop make the trails easy for everyone to enjoy. The Cariboo Ski Club also maintains two backcountry huts, on Mount Murray and Mount Cariboo. Since the cabins can be tricky to find, it is a good idea to get a local to show you around.

www.caribooski.ca

Wel ls hosts the Wel ls Gourmet Ski Tour and Internat ional

Mounta in F i lm Fest iva l , where you can sample internat ional

foods whi le burn ing off ca lor ies as you sk i .

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... continued from Page 12

The Wells area offers 15

km of groomed ski trai ls,

as well as hundreds of

ki lometres of non-motorized

trai ls, many of which are

steeped in local history.

The Bowron Lakes, known

as a summer canoe loop,

can also be tackled on

cross-country skis once the

lakes freeze.



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Prince GeorgeSugarbowl-Grizzly Den Provincial Park is a popular destination for Prince George ski-touring enthusiasts. With relatively easy access from Highway 16, this area provides good day excursions. Longer overnight trips into the Grizzly Den or Raven Lake cabins are also possible, though the Hungary Creek Road is not maintained in winter. Take note: there is serious avalanche terrain above treeline.

www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/sugarbowl

Located on Otway Road in Prince George, the Otway Ski Trails have it all: night skiing, 45 km of groomed trails, a rental shop, dog trails and a lodge. Just minutes from the city, Otway is a quick getaway to nature. In addition, the Cranbrook Hill Greenway Trail is accessible from here and consists of 25 km of trails between Otway and the University of Northern BC.

www.caledonianordic.com • www.cranbrookhillgreenway.bc.ca

Located along the upper Fraser between Prince George and McBride, the railway settlement of Penny is the starting point for a ski tour up Red Mountain.

A cabin has been maintained here since the early 1960s and, with a significant renovation in 2005, it is a cozy getaway. Access takes about five hours of skiing through interior cedar hemlock forest. The trip to Penny can be made by road or train, though you will have to be flexible and prepared because of road maintenance and train schedules not being strictly observed.

www.penny-redmountain.ca

VanderhoofWaterlily Lake near Vanderhoof has more than 24 km of easy-grade trails for cross-country skiing. The trails pass a variety of scenery, including lakes, wetlands, open meadows, aspen and pine forest, and rocky bluffs. The recreation site offers views over the Nechako Valley toward Blue Mountain, and trails are natural and not groomed.

www.vanderhoofchamber.com/pdf/Chamber_Point/WaterlilyLake.pdf www.sitesandtrailsbc.ca/resources/REC1342/sitemaps/Waterlily_XC_SKI_Trails.pdf



The Wel ls area offers 15 km of groomed ski t ra i ls , as wel l as hundreds of k i lometres of non-motor ized tra i ls , many of which are steeped in local h istory.

Otway Nordic Centre, home of Caledonia Nordic Ski Club, is

located minutes west of Prince George and has 55 km of cross-country ski trai ls, including f ive

km of l i t trai ls, for al l ages and abi l i t ies.

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www.northword .ca | DEC ‘15/JAN ‘16 | 17NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visitnorthernbctourism.com

INTRO TO BACKCOUNTRY SKIING January 8-15, 2016

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HoustonThe Morice Mountain ski trails are all about community participation and inclusiveness. There is a wide range of terrain, from easy to challenging. In a beautiful, natural setting, skiers often see moose and even shy lynx are regularly spotted. There are two large lakes within the trail network and several viewpoints overlooking the nearby mountains. The trails are groomed regularly for both classic and skate, and the warming hut is a welcome retreat. In addition to two km of dog trails and two km of lit trails, there is an overnight cabin on the east side of Morice Mountain that is accessible through the trail network. There really are no excuses to not get out there, since the club has 50 full sets of gear available to rent, from the smallest child to the largest adult.

sites.google.com/site/moricemountainnordicskiclub

Burns LakeOn Highway 35 just south of Burns Lake, the Omineca Ski Club recreation area rolls over the hills, forests and meadows of the Lakes District. With an extensive trail network, motivated skiers can log 45 km without ever repeating or backtracking their route. A lodge, wax cabin, three km of lit trails, a three-km dog loop and a biathlon range are all part of the experience. Trails are groomed for both skate and classic skiing on a regular basis. The new routes over Spud Mountain provide views and extra hill challenges to hone climbing technique. Omineca Ski Club also hosts a slush cup in the spring—leave your fat skis and snowboards behind and join them to test your balance and your grit.

www.ominecaskiclub.ca ... continued on Page 20


Trai ls at Morice Mountain include two

km of dog trai ls and two km of l i t trai ls for

night ski ing.

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The Morice Mountain Ski Area offers a wide range of terrain, f rom easy to chal lenging, in a beaut i fu l , natural sett ing.

Morice Mountain, near Houston, boasts an overnight cabin that is accessible through a network of groomed classic- and skate-ski ing trai ls.

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http://www.ominecaskiclub.ca



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SmithersCanyon Creek Cross-country Ski Area offers a combination of terrain for both cross-country and backcountry skiers. Located at the 21.5 km marker on Babine Lake Road, the area is close enough to town to make an easy day and far enough away that you may have the trails all to yourself. Though some of the trails are flat groomed, there are no set tracks. Offering natural trails that wend their way through snow-laden trees and up to magnificent views of the surrounding mountains, these trails are free and maintained by volunteers.

www.bcnorth.ca/canyoncreek/default.asp

At Bulkley Valley Nordic Centre, 45-plus km of ski trails wind through Smithers Community Forest on either side of Hudson Bay Mountain road, just outside Smithers. Two dog trails have become a popular attraction, providing six km of pooch paradise. The Pine Creek Trail extends beyond the 2.5 km dog loop, offering five-, 7.5- and 10-km loops with few climbs. For more of a challenge, the Chris Dahlie Trails will get your heart pumping on the hills. A new road underpass connects the two sides of the recreation area, so skiers can go back and forth without worrying about traffic or taking off their skis. Amenities include a fully equipped ski lodge, waxing cabin, lighted trails and a biathlon range.

www.bvnordic.ca

East of Smithers, high up on Tyee Mountain, the McDowell Lake Trails will get you above the clouds and into the winter sunshine. About 30 km of trails cover

beginner to intermediate terrain. They cross both private and Crown land, and are maintained by property owners. Tracks are set about once a week and updates can be found on the website.

www.tyeemountaintrails.com

Located just west of Smithers, Hankin-Evelyn Backcountry Recreation Area offers cut runs, glades, a warming hut (day use only, please) and lots of comeraderie—but no lifts. The ski area is a perfect place to get some practice on climbing skins. It stops being friendly above treeline, though. While not very big, the steep windloaded NE-facing terrain produces large avalanches. There are five alpine bowls and 13 cut runs, providing a variety of terrain. Nearby, the Hankin Fire Lookout Cabin has been recently renovated for overnight stays.

www.hankinmtn.com • www.bbss.ca

Also near Smithers, Babine Mountains Provincial Park is not specific to skiing, but many of its peaks are accessible on backcountry skis. You can choose between mellow ski tour days or head out for some longer descents. Rewards include stunning views, solitude and a chance to see some winter wildlife. The Babines, too, have steep terrain that produces avalanches in some conditions. (See our article on Silverking Basin, p. 30 of this issue.)

www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/babine_mtn... continued on Page 22


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F ive alpine bowls

and 13 cut runs

provide a variety

of terrain at

Hankin-Evelyn

Backcountry

Recreation Area

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The only way is down

Signs point the way for skiers exploring Hankin-Evelyn

Backcountry Recreation Area, just west of Smithers.

Skiers make their way along a r idge above the warming hut at Hankin-Evelyn Backcountry Recreat ion Area.

http://www.bbss.ca/



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This is Our Mountain

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KitimatLocated halfway between Terrace and Kitimat, the Onion Lake Ski Trails are the place to go for cross-country skiing close to the coast. Snow Valley Nordics Ski Club maintains over 35 km of trails, a warming hut and washroom facilities. Five kilometres of lit track for night skiing can be turned on manually and stay on for two hours after activation. The Moose Hut, an overnight cabin, is available to members. Trails are suitable for beginner to advanced skiers and you can glide past several small lakes and fabulous valley views as you wind your way along.

www.snowvalleynordics.com

TerraceFor big snow and big terrain, the Terrace area has a lot to offer. The backcountry around Shames Mountain Ski Area has 26 routes that are perfect for day tripping. This is steep and serious mountain terrain that requires a solid grounding in technique and knowledge. This phenomenally easy-to-access area is also a great way to meet people, get involved with the ski community and participate in courses on safe backcountry travel. Lift tickets to access the backcountry are available for purchase on the condition of signing a waiver. Please respect the rules of the ski hill, found on the Shames website.

www.ski-shames.ca/mountain/backcountry

Larsen Ridge, located just southwest of Terrace, is another nearby getaway. Most often accessed by a quick helicopter ride, the cabin is an excellent base from which to explore the alpine and is maintained by the Mount Remo Backcountry Society.

www.mtremo.ca


The easy-to-access backcountry at Shames Mountain is a great way to meet people in the ski community and participate in courses on safe backcountry travel.

The Terrace area is renowned for big snow and big terrain.

The backcountry around Shames Mountain Ski Area

has 26 routes of varying diff icult ly that are perfect

for day tr ipping.

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Skiing is the perfect way to experience the

winter landscape.

www.northword .ca | DEC ‘15/JAN ‘16 | 23NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visitnorthernbctourism.com

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StewartThe coast offers dramatic landscapes, glacier skiing and an unlimited number of places to explore. Todd Creek is a quick heli ride from Stewart and is surrounded by skiing opportunity. This is one example where destinations are really only limited by your imagination and willingness to make it happen. Be sure to carry avalanche and glacier gear—and know how to use it—before heading out.

Skiing is the perfect way to experience the winter landscape. Though it is lovely to be immersed, avoid being absorbed by the ice, snow and cold temperatures by being prepared. Whether it is a few hours, all day or overnight, bring the gear appropriate to the level of risk and exposure to the elements. Always understand the avalanche danger when skiing in natural areas, bring safety equipment and ensure you either have the expe-rience to navigate terrain or buddy up and go with someone who knows the area. Current avalanche reports can be found at

www.avalanche.ca.

Most ski areas mentioned have been developed and maintained by a vast network of tireless volunteers. One of the best ways to find that secret powder stash is to help maintain a local site. There is always trail clearing, glading, cabin upkeep and firewood to chop and help is usually appreciated.

Ski ing near Stewart offers dramatic landscapes and l imit less descents.

Stewart is known for i ts glaciers and Todd Creek, just a short

hel i r ide away, offers l imit less tour ing and backcountry turns.

(below) Todd Creek, near Stewart, offers backcountry ski ing for those famil iar with glacier travel and avalanche safety.

(above) For the true adventurer, Todd Creek near Terrace offers ski touring that’s l imited only by your imagination.

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NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

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“Hey, does that smithy work?” Curtis Hampton asked a summer student at Terrace’s Heritage Park Museum three years ago.

“What’s a smithy?” the hapless student replied.As it turns out, a smithy is a blacksmith’s forge

and, yes, it does work—as Hampton would prove over the next three years. The 26-year-old camp worker created a home for himself in the museum’s blacksmithing shop, which was constructed in 2009 to house master blacksmith Don Parmenter’s donated tool collection and only used a handful of times before Hampton’s work as an electrician and welder brought him to Kitimat.

A self-taught blacksmith who also dabbles in flint knapping and bow making, Hampton grew up on a small farm an hour from Kamloops. Being homeschooled allowed him to explore hobbies like blacksmithing. After moving to the North-west, he at first stayed in a small, well-appointed room in camp featuring a brand-new television and a shared bathroom. Every time he left for a week turnaround, his room rotated; he’d leave his stuff at the front desk and move into a new room upon return.

“Camp life isn’t bad as long as you get out of it,” he says. “If you have hobbies that you can do, it makes it a lot more enjoyable and passes the time when you’re not working.”

He often fished or hiked after work and came to Terrace occasionally, hoping to buy something at the tackle shop or the health food store. Neither was ever open on Sundays, his single day off in the project’s early days, and eventually he made his way to Heritage Park Museum.

Most museum visitors spend an hour or so perusing the buildings. Hampton spent six hours and felt like he had barely scratched the surface. For weeks afterward, he interrogated museum staff about the origin of an old hand planer or the precise function of some strange-looking piece of machinery.

It didn’t take long for Hampton to ask to rent the smithy. The board of directors decided that if he would agree to follow safety rules and demon-strate his craft for tourists, he was welcome to use it for free. Some context: other historic sites pay qualified blacksmiths upwards of $35 an hour to do interpretive blacksmithing, when they can find them.

Thus began a fruitful partnership that lasted three years.

Chip off the anvil Hampton honed his craft in the blacksmith’s shop, forging hooks, knives, ornaments and belt buckles out of scrap metal he sourced from the

FORGING INTO THE PASTCamp worker re-ignites a family tradition in blacksmithing

by Kelsey Wiebe

curator@her i tageparkmuseum.com

dump, the scrapyard and friends’ backyards. His favourite part about blacksmithing, he told staff, was “taking a raw piece of metal and turning it into something useful.” He began coming so frequently (every Sunday, every turnaround day, some evenings after work) that he was once caught sleeping in the shop so he could get an early start the next morning.

His co-workers at the Kitimat Modernization Project looked on Hampton with bemusement. He cajoled several into coming to help move heavy steel or learn to hammer basic pieces. Around camp, rumours about his blacksmithing circulated, as did his lengthy list of requests. His fellow camp workers jokingly labelled his toolbox “City Boy”—clearly a misnomer for the blacksmithing, flint knapping, bearded young man who could jerry-rig pretty much anything.

Hampton expanded the blacksmith’s shop by building a larger, portable forge, which allowed for larger projects, using donated steel from Kitimat Iron and A.J. Forsyth. He cobbled together his own toolset from blacksmiths who had retired or passed away, including well-known Terrace blacksmith Ted Johnston. He tracked down and learned from other locals, like Don Parmenter,


Curt is Hampton blacksmiths in the dark on Hal loween, 2014. Over his three years at the museum, he volunteered his t ime explaining the ant iquated craft to v is i tors in exchange for using the shop.

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Winter blues and good hobbies

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mnOn the Fly

by Brian Smith

f ly f ish ingnut47@gmai l .com

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It’s happened to me every year for the past 50: that lonesome feeling I get when my favourite lakes and rivers have worn me out and gone to sleep for the winter.

For them, it’s a welcome chance to relax from their summer cycle of mass production and growth that sustains their fish and wildlife; for me, it’s a time to reflect on the year that was, take a crack at designing or tweaking some new fly patterns for next year, and perhaps get some writing done in order to nudge lingering projects out of the way for the upcoming season.

Fly-fishing, next to my family and friends, keeps me enthusiastic about life and gives me reason to suspect that my present 68 years and good health could possibly lead to 90 or so.

Good fly patterns take many years to develop; many are knock-offs and have sprung from the thoughts and patterns of original inventors, which in all likelihood also came from the ideas of others and so on—most of mine do. The Elk Hair Caddis was the brainchild of Pennsylvania fly-tier Al Troth, who developed it in 1957 for his eastern streams.

Troth moved to Montana in 1973 and began a fly-fishing guiding business on the big Montana rivers, where he introduced his pattern to friends and clients and finally published his fly in Fly Tyer magazine in 1978. From there, it became more popular and has now found a place in every fly tier’s favourite box of dry-fly patterns. Troth died in 2012, but his famous pattern will live forever.

I call my pattern the “Caddis, CDC Emerger.” It’s designed along the same profile as Troth’s caddis, but with several differences: over-wing of deer hair instead of elk, a trailing shuck of whole CDC (Cul de Canard) feather and a dubbing colour of my choice with corresponding hackle.

I use deer hair for my over-wing because it is suppler than elk, so easier to work with on very small flies, and because deer is available in a multitude of dyed colours and coarseness; I like medium-length hair and texture for my river flies. CDC forms the trailing shuck and is made of duck oil gland feathers that float like a cork to create a

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dragging effect that suggests an emerging or fleeing caddis fly, which I think triggers a quick “should I?” response from a fish that sees it. Dubbings and hackles can be various colours depending on the species of hatching caddis—I use a tan body with brown hackle and naturally light or bleached deer hair wing 90 percent of the time.

The size of your caddis is important. Early in the season, June and July, I start my fishing with a size 14, but

later in the year as rivers drop and the flow ebbs I’ll drop several sizes, even to a 22 or 24, much to the delight of the trout and me.

Good fly patterns take many years to develop; many are

knock-offs and have sprung from the

thoughts and patterns of original inventors.

The Caddis, CDC Emerger has a trai l ing

shuck of Cul de Canard, which is made of duck oi l

gland feathers that f loat l ike a

cork to create a dragging effect.

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Norm Hayduk, Adam Thomas and Marty Eisner, who trained as a farrier.

Although descended from a line of Scottish blacksmiths, the most recent was his fourth great-grandfather and Hampton feels like he is continuing an inter-rupted family tradition. He has infinite patience for the work and sometimes spends days heating up metal, hammering it until it begins to cool down and repeating the process, ad nauseam.

When the blacksmith shop’s coal stock ran out, Hampton tracked down an unmined coal seam on a turn-of-the-century map and drove to Telkwa to pickaxe it himself. The coal turned out to be sulphury, so

he drove to Ridley Terminals in Prince Rupert, only to discover the coal terminal doesn’t sell to individuals. A kindly foreman took pity on Hampton and loaded up his bucket for free when he found out that Hampton was a volunteer blacksmith. Since then, the terminal has supplied the museum with smooth-burning coal.

Finding his placeAs Hampton runs the forge, he pauses to explain to tourists what he’s doing. Blacksmithing

shows people “how it could have been done in the past. It’s a more real and personal experience than just reading about it or watching a movie

on the subject,” he says. The blacksmith’s shop was crucial to an early pioneer community, when settlers needed axes, saws, hammers, nails and horseshoes to clear land, transport, chop firewood and build houses.

“If there wasn’t a blacksmith, there couldn’t be a town,” Hampton reflects. “Blacksmiths were needed to make everything, even the tools and implements for the local dentist and doctor.”

During special events, a queue of onlookers peeks over the blacksmith shop’s half doors, drawn in by the fire, the clanging and the esot-erism of the craft.

“It’s a dying art,” Hampton tells people curious about why anyone in an age of social media and iPads would spend days hammering red-hot steel.

“I might as well keep it alive while I can.” Is there a place for blacksmithing in today’s

society? Hampton thinks so: “There’s still a demand for high-quality, hand-made tools and implements. A lot more people are trying to go back to simpler ways where certain tools and implements that they need cannot be made any other way.”

At Heritage Park Museum, Hampton found his niche. “I didn’t feel like I fit into the commu-nity before I started blacksmithing,” he reflects. Through the exploration of an ancient, dying trade, he found a way to integrate himself into the Northwest and pursue his own interests while assisting a museum. As the work at the Kitimat Modernization Project dwindled out, Hampton left town to find work elsewhere, following the migration of workers across the province—and the country—in search of well-paying industrial jobs.Unit 9 - 3167 Tatlow Road, Smithers • 250-847-3799

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If you have hobbies that you can do, it makes (camp life) a lot more enjoyable and passes the

time when you’re not working.Curtis Hampton

Curt is Hampton blacksmiths dur ing Her i tage Park Museum’s Canada Day Celebrat ions, 2013. Dur ing special events, a queue of onlookers would peek over the blacksmith shop’ hal f doors to watch Hampton work.

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Master blacksmith Don Parmenter v is i ts the blacksmith’s shop at Her i tage Park

Museum, summer 2011. Behind him is the Parmenter Col lect ion, comprised of tools

and pieces he forged or used dur ing his tenure as a blacksmith in Rosswood.


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On the Wedzin Kwa

colu

mnTop Culture

by Rob Budde

[email protected]

Indigenous solidarity begins with recognition of land rights and respect for the host culture.

Standing at the checkpoint on the bridge over the Wedzin Kwa (Morice River), four women (two settler allies, one indigenous elder and one indig-enous youth) meet me and ask questions in accor-dance with traditional protocol upon entering Unist’ot’en—a part of the Wet’suwet’en—terri-tory. The moment is both a personal “checkpoint” and a microcosm of a moment in the history of the land. The Unist’ot’en’s Free, Prior, Informed Consent Protocol asks where you are from, what you can offer to help the people defending their

land, and whether you have worked for resource extraction companies.

When I answer the ques-tions, the last ends up being the most complicated for me. Of course, I don’t work for Chevron, but I can easily see how a post-secondary institu-tion like the one where I work functions as a “resource extrac-tion company.” Instead of oil, minerals or lumber, universities extract knowledge and endanger indigenous cultures by not properly recognizing and respecting their ways or giving proper credit to traditional knowledge holders.

The Unist’ot’en camp is a peaceful expression of legal rights and rightful occupation of traditional lands (as confirmed by the 1997 Supreme Court of Canada decision Delgamuukw/Gisday’wa, Tsilhqotin Nation v. BC). It is not a blockade but a re-estab-lishment of a tradition of protocol when entering another’s lands. The land is untreatied and unsur-rendered territory. Being permitted to enter is a bit like going through customs from one nation to another, without the pat-down, except you are travelling to a smaller nation that has had to survive 150 years of injustice and pressure to give up its rights. And so the question: “What can you offer to help the Unist’ot’en?”

I didn’t have much to offer so I washed dishes. Lots of dishes. It made me think of postcolonial

African literature in which there is a symbolic representation of Africans working in white man’s kitchen—it meant you had sold out to the colonials. It seemed rather fitting, then, that I was working in a First Nation’s kitchen, selling out to the resistance, helping to serve a counter-colonial meal.

The camp is run on prin-ciples that are in keeping with

traditional values: respect for the land, coopera-tion and sharing, honouring elders and teaching Wet’suwet’en ways. In my view, this was as much an act of resistance as the gate across the bridge. The lifeblood of the camp is its water, the huckle-berries collected, the vegetables from the permac-ulture garden and the deer meat on the table. It is crystal clear how a pipeline or a pipeline rupture would destroy this community. Both physically, conceptually and socially in the path of pipeline development, the Unist’ot’en represent the most coherent argument for a new way of thinking about land in settler-named British Columbia. I have no doubt there will be more sites of resis-tance like this, with this camp serving as a healthy model.

For the settler-guest, the question becomes: how will you answer the questions, standing at the gate on that bridge across cultures?

Ruth Murdoch MC, CCC, RCAT

certified counsellorregistered art therapist

LOCATED in Telkwa ph. 847-4989

www.ruthmurdochcounselling.com

The lifeblood of the camp is its water, the huckleberries

collected, the vegetables from the permaculture garden and the deer meat

on the table.

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Petronas and Lelu Island: The cutting edge of LNG in BC?

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Wrapped in north coast fog, a small island in the Skeena River estuary 15 km south of Prince Rupert has become a lightning rod for Christy Clark’s strained liquefied natural gas (LNG) ambitions.

“I’m really at the boiling point already,” says Yahaan (Donnie Wesley), Lax Kw’alaams hereditary chief of the Gitwilgyoots tribe, standing on the edge of Lelu Island, his traditional territory. “I am willing to take on that drilling boat and get arrested or whatever it is going to take to make the world know that this is going on. The salmon and seafood of the entire Skeena River are in jeopardy.”

Salmon central The focus of Yahaan’s concern is the shallow Flora Bank next to Lelu Island, a sandy eelgrass bed that is one of the most vital habitats for juvenile salmon,

steelhead and shellfish in the entire Skeena system.

Smolts exiting the river in spring migration instinc-tively turn north into Flora Bank for shelter, feeding ,and protection from predators for weeks at a time while they adapt from fresh to salt water. Research reveals that 88 percent of Skeena salmon, or 330 million smolts per

year, rely on Flora Bank. The majority of eelgrass in the estuary is on Flora Bank and 20 times more salmon use Flora Bank than other estuary eelgrass. Genetics show smolts from the entire watershed—the traditional territories of 10 First Nations—use Flora Bank.

This is of weighty importance, especially considering the Skeena supports the second largest salmon run in Canada, bringing in $100 million from commercial and sport fishing every year, not to mention being the cultural backbone of a dozen First Nations. Unfortunately, Flora Bank is also ground zero for the front-running LNG proposal in BC.

LNG on Lelu IslandAn international consortium led by Malaysian oil giant Petronas is proposing to build the $11 billion Pacific Northwest (PNW) liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on Lelu Island.

Responding to community feedback, PNW LNG revised its design in October 2014 to include less dredging, a 1.6-km bridge straddling the edge of Flora Bank and 1.3-km trestle to berth. The plant would fill a supertanker per day.

Significant concerns remain. A study commissioned by Lax Kw’alaams Band shows the sediments of Flora Bank are held in place by an equilibrium of complex river and tidal currents and that proposed bridge supports, trestle pilings and tanker traffic could disrupt this balance, eventually degrading and destroying the habitat by erosion or deposition.

The new bridge and jetty are wider (now 27 m, previously 15 m) and 300 m longer. Research shows that young salmon avoid swimming under bridges

in estuaries. The planned PNW bridge lies directly across the young salmon migration path.

There was no public comment period for the revision, nor federal funds for independent review of it, as available in the first application.

A scathing report released in October by the Skeena Fisheries Commis-sion and Simon Fraser University concludes that the updated PNW proposal

“disregards science” and “poses significant and unacceptable risks to Skeena salmon and their fisheries.”

This is not the first time LNG has been proposed for Lelu. In 1977, Dome Petroleum’s plan for an LNG plant there was rejected based partly on 1973 DFO science that deemed development on Lelu Island an unacceptable risk to fish habitat.

“If you had to pick one place on the whole north coast that is more perilous to wild salmon, I’m not sure you could find one,” Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen says.

Who is Petronas? If we believe Clark’s vision for the “world’s cleanest and safest LNG,” Petronas is an eyebrow-raising partner.

In July, Andrew Nikiforuk reported in The Tyee that “BC’s gas export hopes face ‘scandal that ate Malaysia.’”1 According to the article, Petronas president Najib Razak, who is also Malaysia’s prime minister, was accused of stealing $700 million and covering up $11 billion in debt.

According to DeSmog Canada (“B.C. ought to consider Petronas’ human rights record before bowing to Malaysian company’s LNG demands”)2, the company also has a dubious human rights record: in Borneo, gas pipeline route details were withheld from indigenous populations until construction.

In September, the Vancouver Sun ran the article “Energy giant Petronas faced ‘catastrophic’ safety issues,”3 which reported that a leaked safety audit revealed offshore oilrigs in catastrophic states of disrepair up to 2013, routine inspections overdue 20 years and problems with the potential to cause human death. The same article reported that, last year, the above-mentioned Borneo gas pipeline exploded because it was built on unstable soil.

Lax Kw’alaams rejects $1.15 billion In early May, Petronas made an unprecedented offer to the small community of Lax Kw’alaams of just over $1 billion for permission to build on Lelu Island.

Given only a week to decide, community members rose from their chairs to unanimously reject the offer in each of three community votes. The Lax Kw’alaams Band named salmon protection as their motivation.

The bluntness of the company shocked Yahaan most: “We asked the repre-sentative, ‘Why are you building in the Skeena estuary? Why not in some little cove where it’s not going to harm anything?’ He didn’t care. He said, ‘It’s the cheapest location to put an LNG plant.’”

A red carpet for PetronasOn June 11, Petronas announced a conditional final investment decision in the project. Following its attempt to buy First Nations’ consent, Petronas acted as if consent was irrelevant, as did the BC government, who on July 13 held a rare summer session to approve the project.

Designed as attractive amidst a depressed global gas market, the LNG Projects Agreements Act locked in an LNG tax rate of 3.5 percent, half that originally desired by Clark, with no taxes until after capital cost recovery—a process that could take some time. Australia’s Gorgon LNG plant has run $17 billion over budget, making critics worry it will never return profits. Further, should any future government change this agreement within 25 years, Petronas could collect damages. Former Liberal politician Martyn Brown

by Greg Horne

greghorne@gmai l .com

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Luutkudzi iwus, a Gitxsan hereditary house group, is f ighting in court the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipel ine, which would supply gas from northeast BC to the plant on Lelu Island.


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trashed the plan as “environmentally reckless, fiscally foolhardy and socially irresponsible.”

BC has also agreed to allow foreign workers to build LNG plants. Petronas will use 40 percent foreign workers to build its $11 billion plant and $8 billion of this will be spent overseas.

It is hard to imagine a better deal for Petronas. For Clark, it’s a desperate plea to uphold a flagging election promise.

Perhaps most disturbing is that, of the 20 LNG proposals in BC, this is the only one with both a conditional final investment decision and legislative approval. Construction on this project could begin first.

Tsimshian re-occupy Lelu IslandOn Aug. 25, Yahaan and Tsimshian supporters moved onto Lax U’u’la to stop the rejected proposal from progressing. The camp has received overwhelming regional support.

Drilling boats have been turned away. The Prince Rupert Port Authority, a federal agency without local or provincial oversight, gave permission to Petronas to conduct geotechnical work for the Canadian environmental assessment process, the final regulatory hurdle facing Petronas.

Significantly, the Lax Kw’alaams Band announced a legal title action regarding Lelu on Sept. 16. If successful, this court case could trump Petronas’ proposal.

Madii Lii Luutkudziiwus, a Gitxsan hereditary house group, is fighting in court the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline, which would supply gas from northeast BC to the plant on Lelu. Thirty-two km of the pipeline is proposed for Madii Lii territory, near Hazelton.

“We were not consulted on the project, nor was adequate data collected on cumulative impacts. We were given no acceptable means, funds or time to assess it,” Madii Lii spokesperson Richard Wright says.

If successful, the judicial review could cancel the Environmental Assessment Certificate and BC Oil and Gas Commission permit granted for the pipeline.

The Petronas mega-projectThe PNW plant would be supplied with gas from Petronas-owned fracking operations in northeastern BC via two pipelines Petronas contracted TransCanada to build—the 300 km North Montney Mainline pipeline feeding the 900 km PRGT pipeline. Total investment is $40 billion.

According to an article by Andrew Nikiforuk in The Tyee, the Harper government balked in 2012 when Petronas proposed to buy Calgary-based fracking company Progress Energy on the grounds that it is not in Canada’s

“net interest” to have a single foreign company frack, pipe, liquefy and ship gas to Asia. In the end, the purchase was allowed.

Whether Petronas will move its terminal away from Flora Bank is unknown at this point.

What is clear is that the cutting edge of Christy Clark’s vision of clean, safe and prosperous LNG is a plan that puts the second largest wild salmon run in Canada at risk by a company with a spurious safety and corruption record, governed by a rock-bottom tax regime and blocked by two First Nations. This isn’t a great start to the LNG dream in BC. It sounds more like a nightmare.

Based on a piece published in the Watershed Sentinel, November-December 2015.

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1 thetyee.ca/News/2015/07/24/BC-Gas-Malaysia-Scandal/2 www.desmog.ca/2014/10/23/bc-ought-consider-petronas-human-rights-bowing-malaysian-

companys-lng-demands3 www.vancouversun.com/energy+giant+petronas+faced+catastrophic+safety+is

sues/11354054/story.html?__lsa=cc64-6d0e

Lelu Is land and Flora Bank l ie at the mouth of the Skeena estuary and provide important habitat for juveni le salmon, steelhead and shel l f ish. Proposed LNG could put th is habitat at r isk.

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SILVERKING BASINWinter cabin in the mountains

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by Morgan Hite

morganjh@bulk ley.net • more maps at bvtra i lmaps.ca

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One of the most popular summer hikes near Smithers is the Silverking Basin. Prospectors who tried to make a go of a silver lode from the 1920s to 1980s left an old track that leads to this lovely valley cut deep into the Babine Mountains. Today, the provincial park provides horse corrals and a two-storey log cabin where you can stay for $5 a night. Even in winter hardy travellers can go in there, on skis or snowshoes, and enjoy the cabin’s cozy ambience and firewood supply.

The Joe L’Orsa Cabin is named after the man who led the campaign to create the park, which he proposed in 1973, suggesting it include all the land in the Babines above 1300 m. This was the idea of the celebrated BC conservationist Ric Careless, who told L’Orsa that it might help bring Smithers’ Pacific Inland Resources (PIR) mill—which might otherwise be opposed to the designation of a park—onside, timber above this elevation not being so valuable in those days. Both mining and forestry representatives on the Community Resources Board had to sign off on

the park boundaries; it was in this process that the Cronin Mine site and the Big Onion were removed from the planned park and, in compen-sation, other areas added.

The Babine Mountains Provincial Park was approved by cabinet in April 1998 as part of the local Land and Resource Management Plan, a document that still guides public land use in the valley. Sadly, L’Orsa died a year later, in April 1999, just before the park was officially designated in June. The new cabin was constructed and named for him, and PIR paid for a lot of it.

In summer, the cabin is an 8.5-km hike from the main trailhead at the end of Driftwood Road, some 20 km from Smithers. However, in winter the road is only plowed as far as the park boundary, so your ski or snowshoe is 13.5 km. It is, admittedly, a bit of a slog as you pull your gear behind you on a sled (expect it to take about five and a half hours), so spend a couple nights to make it worthwhile. The route is very gradual, rising only 600 metres in that 13.5 km and the big

advantage of skiing in, rather than using snow-shoes, is that coming out is a relatively quick downhill coast.

The trail is not entirely free from avalanche risk. In the last 1.5 km, the old road emerges from the forest and passes under open slopes. The risk here can be easily managed, avoiding the slide paths by looping out into the meadow. However, you should be educated about avalanche terrain and managing risk while travelling in such terrain, and check avalanche conditions before you go at the Canadian Avalanche Centre (avalanche.ca). Also note that the avalanche risk in the terrain beyond the cabin gets serious in a hurry.

The cabin has a wood stove (and a copious supply of firewood in the shed out back, although be prepared to buck it yourself with a handsaw). It sleeps up to 20 on a first-come, first-served basis. Bring your own stove and cook on the metal-covered counters. You can melt snow for water, but at times it’s also possible to chop a hole in the ice on the creek out back. Smoking and alcohol

The route into Si lverking Basin is gradual , r is ing only 600 metres in 13.5 km, making the

ski out a re lat ively quick downhi l l coast.


The stuff in stuffing: A health conundrumco

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by Charlynn Toews

edi tor ia [email protected]

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Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book (1950) offers this recipe: 12 cups bread, cubed; 1 cup butter; 3/4 cup minced onion; 1 1/2 cups chopped celery; 2 tsp salt; 1 tsp pepper; 1 tbsp sage, with mushrooms and chicken broth optional.

In the 1950s, America was in the throes of a heart disease epidemic, arising out of nowhere to become the number one killer. President Eisen-hower had a heart attack in 1955. Is this kind of recipe the culprit?

On June 24, 1956, the American Heart Associa-tion broadcast a show on the three major televi-sion networks. It presented a new theory on heart disease: that is was caused by cholesterol.

The major proponent of this theory was an economist named Ancel Keys, who called it the lipid hypothesis. The idea was that meat, eggs and butter were bad for you and should be replaced by corn oil, margarine and lots of carbohydrates: cold cereal, bread, pasta.

Two weeks after the TV broadcast, the Amer-ican Heart Association adopted the cholesterol

theory of heart disease and later that year Keys was featured on the cover of Time magazine as a health pioneer and hero.

Manufactured vegetable oil consumption more than tripled. The next year, 1957, sales for marga-rine, the “cholesterol-free” substitute for butter, exceeded butter sales for the first time in history. So nix the full cup of butter in the recipe, right?

Hmm, maybe not.In the 1940s, Norman Borlaug, an Amer-

ican scientist interested in agriculture, began conducting research in Mexico and developed new disease-resistant, high-yield wheat varieties. By combining Borlaug’s wheat varieties with new mechanized agricultural technologies, Mexico was able to produce more wheat than was needed by its own citizens, leading to it becoming an exporter of wheat by the 1960s.

In 1970 Borlaug was named a Nobel Laureate, honoured for his work in the “Green Revolution,” which increased agricultural production world-wide and saved millions of lives from famine in India, Mexico and the Middle East.

However, the new semi-dwarf wheat developed during this time (and now planted almost exclu-sively in North America) cannot grow without the help of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation. Uh-oh.

Then, thanks to modern processing and the desire for a light, fluffy loaf, manufacturers added

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protein (gluten) and removed whole grain, bran, “middlings” (course ground), wheat germ and wheat germ oil. The oil is super nutritious but goes rancid quickly—thus “give us this day our daily bread” means grind your own grain then bake with it immediately.

Go gluten-free? Unfortunately, gluten-free versions of traditional wheat products can contain rice starch, cornstarch, tapioca starch and potato starch. These are the same kind of highly refined industrial starches that spike blood sugar just like modern flour does. That spike leads to visceral fat (“wheat belly”), type 2 diabetes and—uh-oh!—heart disease.

Finally, modern bread is baked with yeast rather than using the long, slow sourdough process. Traditional sourdough kills toxic fungi, especially on extra-nutritious rye, pre-digests a lot of the starch and reduces gluten. John Letts, a Canadian farm-boy-turned-archeologist with degrees in environmental science, biological archaeology and agricultural botany, grows ancient grains like those found in 600-year-old thatched roofs in the UK.

Okay, keep the 12 cups of bread—that you have baked yourself after rising for two days with sour-dough using fresh ancient rye berries you have ground yourself with a stone mill. And reinstate the butter—grass-fed, of course.

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• Ardene• Bea’s Flowerland• Bentley Bag & Luggage• Bootlegger• Chill Out• Cooks Jewellers• Dollarama• Ella

• Northern Reflections• People’s Drugs• Save On Foods• Shefield Express• Sportchek• Suzanne’s• The Source• Telus• Winners• Warehouse One

Over 18 stores under 1 roof

OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK!

Coming Soon • Wings

for hours & more info:

4741 Lakelse Avenue, Terrace, BC/skeenamall @skeenamall

Late night shopping & Santa Claus photos during the Holidays.

northword 2015--12

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