On a Pilgrimage through the wastelands of civilization towards the living Cathedral called the Fairy Creek watershed
Part one of a three part series describing my experiences and what I learned while exploring the Fairy Creek ancient forest watershed on Vancouver Island
(This post serves as the 34th post which is part of the (Stacking Functions in the Garden, Food Forest and Medicine Cabinet : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Apothecary series).
Okay my friends, I want to invite you to take a journey with me into a sacred place. We will be adventuring to bear witness to one of the last watershed scale ancient temperate rainforest ecosystems left on the planet Earth.
Firstly, I want to highlight the importance of the truth that is emphasized in the phrase “Context Is Everything”.
The journey to reach that destination was not easy (physically challenging yes, but that part was a welcomed gift for me, in this context, I mostly mean emotionally and psychologically challenging).
In order to reach a watershed scale primary ancient forest ecosystem I had to travel across most of the face of Turtle Island (as most of the primary forests here where I live in the east, were clearcut over a century ago. Most of the old growth biodiverse forests have not grown back here, these ecosystems were replaced with “civilization”. Only fragments remain, and these tiny islands of ancient beauty no longer retain the full spectrum of biodiversity that the Creator intended for these communities of life to thrive and perform their intended function.)
For those not familiar with the ecological history of “southern Ontario”, this is where we live and embarked on our journey westward from:
In what is now called southern Ontario in the Eastern Woodlands of Turtle Island, 99.98% of the primary Carolinian Forests and old growth food forests that once dominated the landscape from horizon to horizon have been cut down in the last 150 years.
What was once a thriving forest ecosystem with Paw Paw (Asimina triloba) groves thriving underneath a 100 foot high plus super canopy of Butternut, Eastern White Pine, Sycamore, Black Walnut, American Chestnut, Giant Oaks, American Beech, Shagbark Hickory, Sugar Maple and Tulip trees with large tracts of anthropogenic food forest mixed in is now mostly GMO soy and corn fields, strip malls, hydroponic greenhouses, factories and concrete. Based on my research and field expeditions I estimate that no more than one tenth of one percent of the original forests (untended primary Carolinian Forest, which stretched from horizon to horizon as well as anthropogenic old growth food forests, which used to cover tens of thousands of acres here in Essex county alone) still exist today.
The most aggressive and arrogant deforestation of Southern Ontario (peaking in a clearcutting frenzy about 120 years ago) was in large part instigated and encouraged by the “Dominion of Canada” government putting out advertisements offering “free land” to anyone that would clear the forest, sell the old growth trees to the military for their ship masts and grow a monoculture annual crop on the land. The government propaganda conditioned settlers to view the forest as an “obstacle” and something that needed to be cleared to bring “order” to the land. One of the main motivations behind that push was to get people to do the dirty work of chopping down the 250-400 year old white pine to supply British with masts for the Navy to be able to perpetuate it’s war racketeering operations.
Now you understand what can happen when ancient forest is clearcut in the name of “progress”.
So, now we had to save up and pay for expensive plane tickets to fly across the continent to find some of the last pockets of primary forest that retain their full biodiversity and ecological integrity. The journey required to reach such a place, on a continent where ancient forest watersheds were once common place speaks to the grave situation we face now as governments and corporations target the last remaining ancient forests for extermination in the name of profit.
I will warn you that taking this journey with me will not be easy for those with an open heart and those that recognize our tall rooted elders as kin, for in order to reach the soul nourishing and spectacularly beautiful place called Fairy Creek we had to venture through the wastelands of industrial civilization and witness a land that was once ancient forest as far as the eye can see less than 200 years ago.
I feel that inviting you to embark on this journey with me fully (not just for the pretty parts) is important as many do not realize how far we have progressed down the path towards a concrete world.
Thus, in August my beloved and I set out on a trip westward determined to find a way to enter into one of the last ancient forest valleys on the planet that retains her pre-colonial biodiversity on the scale of a watershed. The valley we chose was Fairy Creek, a garden of Eden that only exists as it does today because thousands of forest defenders laid their lives on the line in defense of the sacred and put themselves in between the killing machines and mercenaries of the monster of modernity and statism that sought to lay waste to that rare ancient forest habitat in the name of greed in 2021.
We landed in Victoria and witnessed a world of concrete where ancient biodiverse forest had existed 200 years prior.
Take a look at this archive for an idea of the progression from there to here.
Only 2% of the highest productivity ancient forests of Vancouver Island remain (they are 98% clearcut).
Same story happened all up the coast to the south in the last 200 years. San Francisco is a city that stands where amazingly beautiful and majestic Redwoods once did.
So we drove away from the scene of ecological devastation and multigenerational amnesia where humans are raised to covet glass, concrete, money, gadgets and steel and headed for what is left of the ancient forests on the Island.
We drove along the coast through Sooke towards Port Renfrew through some winding roads surrounded in mostly second growth forest with large trees of a very uniform spacing (close together) with lower branches all dead and covered with moss.
Those corporation oppressed and “managed” forests were very pretty to look at with all their moss and lichen covered lower branches, and to the untrained eye, one might think that is old growth rainforest, but to the keen observer, the lack of habitat for other beings than the closely planted trees tells a different story.
For more info on the differences between primary biodiverse forests and biodiversity stripped logging plantations read this, and this.
We approached the small fishing/logging town of Port Renfrew and went to meet my parents and brother that joined us for this adventure and enhanced our ability to get where others cannot with their 4x4 vehicle.
That evening I was gifted with views of the heavens I have not seen as vividly since I trekked into the high alpine wilderness in Cathedral Lakes Park. The pics below are not great but give you some idea of the amazing beauty I and my beloved beheld on the edge of the world, where thousand year old Red Cedars and Douglas Fir hug the coast and drink in the ocean mist.
The next morning we awoke to this spectacular view of the ocean mist and fog with the fishing boats heading out and we set out to do reconnaissance to find a way to get near the head waters of Fairy Creek via logging roads.
Above shows how Ocean mist + learned rooted temperate rainforest beings+Bears+Salmon= exponential reciprocity and a recipe for perpetually increasing biodiversity and beauty (assuming we do not remove one of those from the equation and cripple the balance)
The fog rolls in and the sea gifts her to the tall rooted guardians in the mountain (which is sequestered from the atmosphere, condensed and channeled into the rhizosphere by a spectrum of lichen and moss that covers every inch of the trees.
In return, the ancient trees gift fulvic and humid acid into the soil, which binds to iron and carries it into the streams, creeks and rivers. The iron rich living waters fertilize the iron starved ocean and seed the great kelp forests and phytoplankton becoming the foundation for the biodiversity that expresses itself in beings such as whales and salmon. The salmon carry the ocean minerals up the rivers, creeks and streams in their bones and then the bears pick up the salmon out of the river carry their bones back up to the ancient trees that made their life possible and complete the regenerative cycle that enables the existence of some of the most strikingly beautiful, biodiverse and spiritually enriching forest on earth.
The ancient trees (recognizing the bears gift of salmon bones makes them so much more capable of achieving magnificence, restructure their rhizosphere and teach their young through the mycorrhiza network so that there will be a perfect space under their roots for a bear den so the four legged forest protectors and raise their young. This is one of many symbiotic connections and stories taking place in these rare forest habitats.
For more information on the connection between ancient forests and ocean ecology read this.
Now we embarked to do recon and find a way to the head waters of Fairy Creek.
Our first attempt to reach the head waters of Fairy Creek via logging roads took us along the west side of the valley on the map shown below.
On our way up to the bridge they had dismantled shown in the map above we passed some signs of resistance to ancient forest exploitation (left by the Fairy Creek Forest Defenders from their unprecedented movement of courage in 2021-2022).
We also had to traverse some pretty gnarly roads that would not be good for non-4x4 vehicles with less than 8 inches clearance.
We made it within 3 km of the headwaters and came across the bridge that had been sabotaged by logging corporation (Teal Jones) staff. When they are done pillaging the area of ancient trees for profit, they remove the steel and concrete panels from the bridge with an excavator so that no one that wants to go up and appreciate what is left of the old growth is able to (until they want to go up there and chop more of the ancient trees down again that is, at which point they re-assemble the bridge). This is a very effective (and obviously nefarious) strategy on the part of those that see the last few pockets of ancient forest as nothing more than “natural resources” waiting to be extracted (and they do not want people going up there to take pictures of the ancient trees to raise awareness about how endangered these habitats are and how beautiful these communities of life are which they are destroying for profit.
So we turned around and headed all the way around the Fairy Creek Valley to attempt entering from the East Side.
This is what that journey looks like on a satellite map .
Along that journey we had to cross paths with Fairy Creek as she exits her mother watershed and so we naturally stopped near the bridge where the road crosses the creek, went down to the waters to pay our respect, jump in to be baptized in ancient forest born waters and gather some drinking water for our journey to the top of the watershed.
We offered gifts to the water in thanks and asked for the blessing to travel up to the source of the water so that we might inform the rest of our human family why this place should be protected against industrial extraction.
After that ceremonial swim and gathering of the sacred waters we headed up a road called “Granite Main”. We entered into industrial logging corporation roads from there on.
Pictures below show the valley east of Fairy Creek, which have been clearcut multiple times over the last century and the tiny fragments of primary forest remaining are no longer able to serve the functions they were designed to, landslides are becoming the norm, forest fires spreading through the closely planted corporate tree farms into the next valley east and the salmon habitat is decimated. Fairy Creek however, remains intact, unfazed by the fires sent her way and full of the most beautiful and diverse life I have ever seen in on valley.
“The drying up of mountain springs, the change in the whole pattern of motion of the groundwater, and the disturbance in the blood circulation of the organism – Earth – is the direct result of modern forestry practices.”
- Viktor Schauberger
The forestry regime in the statist racketeering territory of “Canada” follows a fundamentally colonial (exploitative and anthropocentric) model, in which present day profiteers (and those brainwashed by the corporate propaganda) bank on the suffering of their great grandchildren and forest lands are treated as terra nullius. The assumption is that nature is capital, a resource to be managed and extracted for modern industrial interests’ perpetual economic benefit. Well that profiteering model will soon hit a wall as there is less than 2% of the primary old growth left.
The forest fire resistant, landslide preventing, soil protecting, air cleaning, water cleaning, salmon habitat supporting and water creating old growth is decimated, and so are the hopes for a future worth living in for ten or more generations of humans going forward that will have to pay the karmic consequences for the greed and ignorance of those acting in the present (they will pay the price in having their homes destroyed by landslides, floods, their regular water access and quality diminished, their salmon access diminished or totally destroyed, their air sickened and thinned and their ability to perceive the original architecture and art of the Creator that was intended for the forests of this land stolen from them in the name of instant gratification and profits for those alive today).
This idea is implicit in Canada’s forestry policy and history, most notably in the policy of “sustained yield”. Sustained yield is based on the concept that old-growth forests are an asset to be converted into tree farm plantations, managed by ‘science’, to yield timber resources in perpetuity.
It leads to forest management regimes that involve stripping forests bare, killing their many inhabitants (Ecocide), then replacing them with monocrop tree farms devoid of “competing” vegetation and unable to support the wildlife populations that once called those diverse habitats home. This intensive tree farming system, designed to maximize timber yield, removes the very biodiversity that makes the forests so fire resistant, life nourishing, water cleaning, beautiful, soil stabilizing and salmon run enhancing in the first place.
The image below shows something unusual we witnessed while driving up the logging roads through freshly clearcut blocks of ancient forest in the valley to the east of Fairy Creek (travelling up Granite Main) and we saw this red dress (totally pristine and carefully hung up) presented on the side of the road.
I got the feeling this is a message from the local indigenous people that fight to protect the forest but I am not 100% sure so I would be curious what you all think of this.
Next we came across this scene where Granite Main turns over Renfrew creek and begins winding through pockets of old growth and clearcut blocks towards the east ridge about Fairy Creek.
“..the trail of suffering does not stop with the disappearance of springs. Brooks flowing through clear-felled wasteland lose their temperature balance, and become raging torrents. Natural brooks do not destroy their bed nor do they flood, even after heavy downpours, but by removing the forest, brooks can no longer keep their beds clean. The water’s current, weakened by over-heating, increasingly fails to transport sediments from the bottom of the riverbed, and it fills up with stones and mud.
The flow forces, which naturally concentrate the movement of the water towards the centre of the stream, are diverted to the outside and undermine and destroy the riverbanks. Artificial measures, embankments and straight linear channels only worsen the situation. Forcing water to flow in an unnatural, straight line only accelerates its degeneration. The vegetation-less river- banks and the surrounding, eroding wastelands add even more water to the damaged riverbed. Man therefore broadens the channel, thereby exposing even more water to the Sun’s heat. The vicious circle goes on..
According to Viktor Schauberger, water subjected to these conditions loses its character, its soul. Like humans of low character, it becomes increasingly violent and aggressive as it casts about seeking to vent its anger and restore to itself its former health and stability (Coats 1998, 7). The chaos widens and natural disasters like catastrophic floods haunt the valleys and the deltas, while deforested mountains become uninhabitable because of avalanches and landslides.”
- Fred Hageneder (from The Spirit of Trees: Science, Symbiosis, and Inspiration)
Next we continued up the valley towards the final ascent into gnarly cut blocks approaching the east ridge of the Fairy Creek watershed.
“Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its ancient forests.” - Viktor Schauberger
I can tell you that it was not easy for me to traverse these massacre fields where thousand year old elders and orchestrators of the symphony of life once stood less than a year ago and now only devastation exists. Knowing these once magnificent expressions of the genius of Creator will not be what they were less than a year ago for millennia at the very least made me feel sick.
Looking down the logging roads and freshly clearcut primary old growth towards the valley bottom where the last pic was taken.
The killing fields in the first pic were filled with stumps that were recently 800-1100 year old rooted beings (hemlock, fir and cedar). Most of those giants ended up in Chinese pulp mills and ground up into pellets for burning in European “bio-mass” “sustainable” electric generation furnaces.
It will take a few thousand more years until people see that forest as it was as recently as last year again.
Looking down the valley from the point where we reached the ends of the wastelands of civilization and the beginning of the forest as the Creator intended it to be.
The image above shows where the logging road ended and we left the jagged, scarred biodiversity stripped landscape to enter into a landscape that is soft, ancient, biologically abundant, alive and very much aware of our presence.
We were greeted by beings covered in lichen symbiotes that have witnessed more seasons than we have as humans and I sensed the tall rooted beings looking upon us with discerning curiosity, immense love, piercing intuition and they were able to read our hearts accurately.
We were entering their domain, the domain of the Fae, the Grizzly, the Wolverine, the Mountain Lion, the Black Bear, the Wolf, the granite stone beings that speak in hieroglyphics of quarts crystal and the flowing water beings that can gently flow, bubble, swirl or crash and drown. These beings have agency as sentient beings, they looked upon us and into us with vivid awareness.
Below shows the final ascent to the ridge above Fairy Creek through the steep dense blueberry bushes.
Given the fact that we hiked through a steep ridgeline of massive trees to find ourselves on a gentle ridge line filled with amazingly juicy and flavorful blueberries, despite the fact that we were there on a mission to do reconnaissance for the next day’s hike, we, of course, based on survival (and flavor explosion based) instincts began foraging for blueberries on the mountain top.
Below we witnessed the first glimpse of what the terrain looked like heading down into the heartwaters of Fairy Creek after passing over the east ridge.
Below video shows what the ancient blueberry forest on the ridge line above Fairy Creek.
By the time we got to this point shown in the video above (marked on map below) is was 3 pm so getting into the heart of the valley on that day was not viable.
Video below shows how the steep descent from the east ridge of the headwaters of Fairy Creek looks if you are hiking in.
Below shows the symbiotic association we witnessed between Ancient Western Cedar and Hemlock which was a prevalent connection between the dominant rooted beings in that forest region.
For more information on the ecological functions and wisdom offered to us by Mosses and Lichens, read this post linked below:
Above three pics shows how the forest floor looks within the ancient forest ridgeline above Fairy Creek, below shows what was once an ancient forest floor looks like after clearcut pillaging in the valley we had to head down to the east.
I counted rings on the bigger stumps for a while then I started getting really depressed and stopped. There were hundreds of thousand year old beings slaughtered for profit in that valley beside Fairy Creek. The image above and below shows a random cross section of a smaller tree cross section that was discarded on the logging road (shaped like a heart to my eyes) but I could not bring myself to take pics of the many elder stumps nearby.
After I scouted the descent down the mountainside for a good route to attempt entering we foraged for blueberries on the ancient forest ridgeline for an hour or so and then headed back to base camp in Port Renfrew to feast on next level cloud forest blueberries we had gathered, plan for our hike the next day and get our equipment ready for ancient rainforest forest mountain climbing.
Berries shown in the pic above were harvested from up on the ridgeline of the ancient forest where I am pointing in the picture below.
These berries were the most flavorful berries I`ve ever tasted, you felt super energized after eating a handful.
The video clip below offers some of my own reflections on the situation in Fairy Creek and the surrounding area as I look out from our basecamp location in Port Renfrew at 5AM looking towards the rising sun over Fairy Creek.
Right now, as we speak, corporate profiteers are attempting to clear cut 8 blocks of primary forest the head waters of the Upper Walbran Valley (right above the last provincial park on the island to house intact primary temperate rainforest watershed).
There are people that actually believe we can make old growth primary clearcutting “sustainable” by replanting, it boggles the mind they would even say these hypocritical words, unless they are talking about waiting a few thousand years until those forest regrow to what they once were, and then saying “see I told you so! It was sustainable!”.
Our government in Canada is always saying how “green” and “sustainable” they are, meanwhile, that same government simultaneously supports, subsidizes and profits from clearcut logging of primary forests and endangered old growth stands in Canada.
History has taught us that the racketeering operation that is Statism farms humans just as Teal-Jones and Western Forest Products Ltd. farms forests. They both decimate the natural beauty, diversity, uniqueness and God given gifts of that place/being and replace them with implanted monocultures of trees/thinking intended to perpetuate exploitation and extraction in the name of greed, domination, human exceptionalism and the myth of “progress”.
Every single government in Canadian history has profited from clearcutting ancient forests without exception. Why do people still think that we can “vote” our way out this pattern? There is strong multi-generational brainwashing at work here.
Just as the farmed trees grow in ways that make them weak and susceptible to disease, the statist factory farmed humans in the farms for humans called nation states can also be crippled from achieving their true potential, their minds are weak and imaginations stunted (when they prioritize their allegiance to a flag over their allegiance to the Earth). Their priorities distorted by the inherently immoral institutions that they have been indoctrinated to worship and (like the farmed trees) this prevents them from connecting with and contributing to the larger community of life they are a part of fully, making them susceptible to being exploited and more of a liability than a contributing symbiotically connected member of a community.
Thus, it is not just corporate capture of academic institutions we must address, but also the intrinsically ecologically degenerate nature of the statist regimes we were born into and taught to put on a pedestal.
Below is an image that depicts both the perception of early Canadian statists of the indigenous population and what they intended to do to “civilize” them and the present day result (dare I describe it as “success” according to their stated goals?).
Ironically, to me (unlike ancient place based animist cultures) modern “civilization” is something that would be accurately described as “Savage”. Thus, in the successful forced indoctrination, inculcation and assimilation of people that have bloodlines indigenous to Turtle Island into becoming “Civilized” I would contend that what has actually occurred is that people that were not “savage” have now had some of their population converted into the Savage ways of modern industrial civilization. The note below elaborates on what I mean by that.
As long as we are swearing allegiance to flags and statist regimes that thrive on exploitation of rare ecosystems in the name of greed first (and thinking of the watersheds and bioregions that support our lives second) we are committing treason against the Earth and sacrificing the health, joy, potential to perceive beauty and livelihoods of our great grandchildren on the alter of “progress”, “civilization” and instant gratification.
These ancient forests are not only decimated with machines now a days (typically replaced with monocultures of one species of all the same age posing an extreme forest fire risk) no they are also often sprayed with systemic biocides such as Glyphosate creating a situation that is both ripe for catastrophic forest fires, landslides and preventing the now devastated biodiversity from replenishing over centuries into the future.
For more info on glyphosate and where it is being sprayed by logging corporations check out:
https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-glyphosate-forestry-map/ (thanks for this Cheerio )
Now, this feels like an appropriate time to share with you a glimpse of brief encounter I had when I crossed paths with someone choosing to embody modern western civilization’s wendigo mentality.
In order to explain what I mean by a modern day “wendigo” and/or the “wendigo mentality” I present the following excerpt from a book that is very close to my heart called Braiding Sweetgrass (by Robin Wall Kimmerer).
I crossed paths with this person (shown below) who was embodying Wendigo thinking when I came across her post that involved several weak, irrational and greed driven justifications for ancient forest Clear-cut logging operations in BC, Canada that target the last remaining primary forest there (where she lives, and where I grew up).
The person who wrote that post is Elizabeth Nickson (former mainstream “journalist” who used to write for TIME, was the European Bureau Chief of LIFE and has written for Harper’s the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, the Sunday Times, the Globe and Mail etc)
Her post titled “The Epic Bullshit of Catastrophic Climate Change” made some relevant points regarding how at Dubai’s Cop 28, various plutocrats devised a slave system for the world and it rightly pointed out how silly and way off base the “global warming alarmism” has been over the years, however where I took exception was where it also suggested reasons why she believes it is a good idea (economically speaking) to continue to clear cut the last remaining primary (ancient) old growth forests in BC.
After reading the following parts of her post:
“Over time, the unmanaged forests became clogged with overgrowth, little trees like carrots pulled all the water from the forest floor, desiccated the soil and then pulled water from aquifers. The forests became tinder. And increasingly every summer, they explode in fire.”
“Clear cuts are ugly. (but they are fire breaks)“
I commented, saying:
There are many fallacious, hubristic and anthropocentric assumptions built into the perspectives you described above.
Old growth biodiverse forests are forest fire resistant, logging industry planted monoculture “forests” are a tinder box of kindling.
Old growth forests retain water in the soil and propagate natural precipitation patterns (through evapotranspiration and rain drop nucleation via releasing pollen).
Logging primary forests does not help prevent forest fires, it increases the risk of severe forest fires exponentially.
https://www.esa.org/blog/2021/08/logging-increases-risk-of-severe-fire/
Humans tend to arrogantly assume that because we possess the ability to displace large amounts of matter using our messy machines that we possess the level of intelligence required to be able to micro-manage ecosystems in a beneficial way. At best, we can serve as part time co-creative allies in an ecosystem. Our attempts to control said community of life (and engage in an adversarial/commodification relationship with facets of life within said communities) overtly is not only detrimental and an exercise in futility, it is also in essence waging a war on ourselves.
Above you said “In British Columbia, we had the largest industrial forest in the world, It paid for education and universal ‘free’ health care”
That is not something to brag about. Living in a place where we allow that which is biodiverse, rain pattern stabilizing, oxygen producing, beautiful and sacred to be commodified, pillaged and transformed into dead products (in the interest of propping up our corrupt economy and the technology addicted lives we have adopted) is something to feel disgrace and shame about, not pride.
Education you say, but what kind of education system?
One that suffocates our children with medical looking facemasks, conditions them to be afraid, offers them gender reassignment and coerces them to receive experimental mRNA injections so that pfizer can profit?
That “education system”?
You can keep it, thank you very much.
And do not even get me started on the “health” care system. (for more info on the wonders of our modern allopathic medical system: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/exploring-the-true-nature-of-big )
You speak of “forest communities” as though the only type of community that can survive and thrive in the forest is comprised of people logging for profit. What about the indigenous peoples that lived in those forests for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived?
Is their lifestyle not exciting and comfortable enough for you?
Too much having to learn to feed yourself using your own two hands and not enough twitter and ipads?
Those “industrial forests” you mentioned were (and are) being managed by greed driven corporations and complicit corrupt government entities. (see: “The C-IRG: the resource extraction industry’s best ally” : https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/the-c-irg-the-resource-extraction-industrys-best-ally for more info ) These are the same types of thugs that were sent in to crush the peaceful protestors in Ottawa.
Are these the types of uses of your tax money that you support Elizabeth?
Speaking of Asian Cartels, you may want to take an honest look at where much of the pulp we harvest from those old growth forests is going.
Since 2000, Canada has lost more than 19.6 million hectares of primary forest, the third highest rate of intact forest loss in the world after Brazil and Russia. B.C. saw by far the biggest decline in tree cover of any province, losing more than 8.5 million hectares.
Much of that loss has been due to the pulp and paper industry. Roughly 40 per cent of the trees cut in the province every year end up in a pulp mill, according to data collected by Canopy, a Vancouver-based organization that works with over 900 major brands to create so called “sustainable” forestry supply chains.
The pace of loss comes as decisions over Canada’s forests are increasingly being concentrated into the hands of one private company — Paper Excellence. Recently, the company acquired Resolute Forest Products, making it the largest forestry company in North America. Paper Excellence now controls 22 million hectares of Canadian forests and has ownership over 37 pulp and paper mills across Canada, the U.S., France and Brazil.
Paper Excellence has said between 10 and 14 per cent of the wood feeding its mills comes from old-growth trees.
The people behind and/or associated with Paper Excellence have a pattern of using thickets of corporations, including tax havens, effectively shielding transactions and assets from public and government scrutiny.
Freedom of information requests revealed the origins of some of the company’s past financing, some of which was facilitated by the China Development Bank, which is owned by the Chinese government.
Leaked records and insider accounts also show that Paper Excellence, appears to have been closely — and secretly — co-ordinating business and strategy decisions with Asia Pulp & Paper, one of the world’s biggest pulp-and-paper players, which has a track record of environmental destruction.
Capitalism is an unnatural human concept (that is based on an inaccurate and outdated view of life and evolutionary processes). It is a model based on the inaccurate view that in nature competitiveness, ‘survival of the fittest’ and adversarial relationships are the norm. Modern science and ecological studies have shown us that when we take a closer look symbiosis, interdependence, and cooperation are in fact the norms when it comes to relationships between various organisms in nature. Capitalism (and its ugly offspring “consumerism”) are systems of thought that do not align with natural law. They amount to ways of perceiving and interacting with the world that result in parasitic and not symbiotic relationships with each other (as humans) and with the rest of nature as a whole.
Our economy has become one based in waging a war on nature (pillaging her body to facilitate the ‘perpetual growth’ model that capitalism is based upon). This has led to an exponential loss of habitat available for land mammals, and almost half of these have lost 80% of their range in the last century. The scientists found billions of populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians have been lost all over the planet, leading them to say a sixth mass extinction has already progressed further than was thought. Nearly half of the 177 mammal species surveyed lost more than 80% of their distribution between 1900 and 2015. Data indicates that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization.
Thus, if we wish for our modern civilization to continue (and seek to leave a world worth living in for our children) we must abandon ideologies and belief systems (such as capitalism) that teach people that the acquisition of material wealth, competition rather than cooperation, and the endless commodification of aspects of nature is what we should strive for as individuals, organizations, communities and nation-states. It is impossible to cling to unnatural concepts like capitalism while simultaneously claiming to care about the future of our children, the integrity of the ecosystems and while claiming to want to help create a more sustainable and equitable society in the here and now.
Investing our time and energy in humanocentric systems of thought is a path of stagnation which comforts our ego but does not honor the truth of what we have learned about nature in the past century, nor does it serve to unlock our true potential as human beings. Through embracing humility and reverence, rather than self importance and anthropocentrism we can lend our sentience and free will towards a meaningful path of symbiogenisis between humanity and the many other beings who call this living planet home.
We moved past the point where “sustainability” was a viable and honorable course of action long ago.. what we must strive to put all our energy towards now goes a step beyond just ‘sustaining’ our toxic way of living, what we are called now to do is protect what is left of mature ecosystems and become agents of Regeneration.
When your grandchildren see images of the towering, wise and majestic trees that once were, and ask you what you were doing when they cut down the last old growth trees what will you tell them?
For more information on what logging in BC really looks like for “forest communities” : see https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/death-by-a-thousand-clearcuts
“When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.”
Elizabeth’s response :
“Like thousands in BC, Gavin, I own 20,000 trees, and more than two dozen old growth. B.C. Is 6% developed. And the forest were managed well.”
My response:
“Owning” trees says nothing about whether or not you respect them and are a good steward and co-inhabitant with those beings. There are some on Earth that claim to “own” other human beings, but obviously that claim is not something worthy of admiration nor bragging about.
First of all, I just want to say that I have loggers and foresters in my family. My grandfather was a forester in the Vancouver and Whistler areas (his strategic zoning efforts were instrumental in creating/protecting places like Lost Lake Park in Whistler as well as the Cheakamus Canyon Old Growth Trail, and parks/trails all through RMOW and the Sea to Sky corridor) so I know the difference between logging based on ignorance, greed and shortsightedness, and the type of logging that creates jobs, nurtures human communities, while also protecting biodiversity and ancient forests. I work in landscaping, so sometimes we have to cut down trees as part of our job (as a last resort), I work with arborists regularly (many of which used to be professional loggers) so the act of cutting down a tree and the dynamics involved in the logging industry (and those that choose to work in that industry) are dynamics of which I have intimate knowledge.
My critique of your fallacious statements about clearcutting in your post above were clearly pertaining to old growth (primary, or “ancient”) forests (and not a generalized statement about all forms of logging, which can include logging re-planted monoculture plantation forests, of which there are a great many).
In your post above you threw out some vague sob stories about how “Forested communities died” and “100,000 families lost their livelihood.”
Thus, we will now deconstruct the myth of the hypothetical ‘poor logger man with 5 kids and a grandma that needs surgery (who feels forced to clear cut 1000 year old trees)’. In order to do this, I will first re-iterate the fact that there are plenty of logging jobs in bc that do not target the last remaining old growth (ancient) temperate rainforest stands IN THE WORLD.
Saying “B.C. Is 6% developed.” is an intentionally vague statement that says nothing about how much of the original intact (unlogged) forest still remains.
Since there is now less than 2% of the original old growth “high productivity” (primary/ancient) temperate rainforest left in BC (which is the only section left in the world that has not been clearcut) you can understand that we have been chopping down very old trees and replanting monocultures of young ones for quite some time now. This means that there are plenty of re-planted timber forests on Vancouver Island to be logged that are not sensitive ancient rare ecosystems with the last original trees living in them.
The difference is that logging corporations and government entities make about 4 times as much money chopping down the ancient trees, as opposed to the replanted ones. When a logger takes a job to cut down primary old growth they often have to be willing to drive past the hundreds of indigenous people and other forest protectors attempting to block the roads and into “the exclusion zone” (which is the area being guarded by militarized RCMP with submachine guns, tasers, mace and zap straps) to chop down the very last thousand year old trees in existence on the Island. They know exactly what they are doing.
Now it is also worth noting that loggers are not inept, helpless, stupid people that are unable to put their significant skills with machines and physical endurance to use in one of many other jobs that are available in that region (that do not involve the destruction of the last old growth trees).
They have a choice. Even if that was the only possible job available to them (which it isn’t) they still have a choice.
Your statement that “the forest were managed well.” is ridiculous.
“Well managed” according to who?
You?
Logging corporation thinktanks or government revolving door regulators and other shills?
“Managed” with what goals in mind? Profiteering with all other considerations as secondary? If so, you may be right.
Chopping down 98% of the ancient forests that will take centuries to millennia to regenerate to their original state, resulting in massive biodiversity loss, landslides, flooding, soil erosion and the decimation of that which is sacred, beautiful, nurturing to the soul and our great grandchildren’s natural heritage is “managed well” to you? If that is how you define “managed well” I suppose you are someone that would be content living in an Ecumenopolis.
In closing I will share the video below which shows the biggest cedars and the biggest Dougals Fir I have ever had the blessing to meet in person. These beings grow near where we were hiking in the images above and beings such as these number in the hundreds within the Fairy Creek ancient forest watershed. They are currently unprotected and the corrupt tribal councils and Canadian government could try to clearcut them soon if we are not vigilant in raising awareness about these rare sacred places and standing up for our elder rooted kin. Please share this post so that those driven by greed cannot operation in the shadows and all will know of their shameless duplicity and cowardice. We must bring light of awareness of the critical importance of protecting these rare places. Thank you for helping with that, in doing so, you do humanity and the living Earth a great service.
“Let me cut no tree without holy need. Let me not tread into a flowering field. Let me always plant trees. The gods look with goodwill upon those who plant trees along roads, at home, holy places, crossroads and houses.
When you marry, plant a wedding tree. When a child is born, plant a tree. When a loved one dies, plant a tree for his or her soul.
At all festivals, for all-important occasions, visit trees. Prayers are hallowed by trees.”
From a Lithuanian prayer
Recommended related reading/viewing:
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Gavin, I made it about 1/3 of the way before my heart started heaving out sobs. Thank you for the fierce love and respect you give to The Standing Ones. They must cheer when you walk into their forests. They know. When you see the maps and statistics, it is beyond mind-blowing how low humanity has fallen.
Your photos are breathtaking (that first one, especially.) I wish I could have been your Mom making that trek. :)
Much Love from your Tree-loving sister to the south. Going for a walk in the woods now to be with my Tree and Rock friends. TY for linking to my post... 💚
Thanks so much!
"The law of life is harmony..." HTL