Januray - February 2004

(or download pdf of this issue)

Diversity or Division

The Great Boreal Debate

With the largest intact forest ecosystem left on Earth, Canada's boreal region contains one-quarter of the world's remaining original forests. In December a coalition of four environmental organizations, three pulp companies, three First Nations, and one oil and gas company announced their shared goal for a Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI).

The goal is a network of protected areas encompassing 50% of the 530 million hectares of "boreal region," which includes the Boreal Forest, the Aspen Parkland and the Taiga. The other main goal is "support of sustainable communities, world-leading ecosystem-based resource management practices and state-of-the-art stewardship practices in the remaining landscape."

Cathy Wilkinson, Director of the CBI, said the Initiative was an unique opportunity, "There is an urgent need for a holistic approach towards boreal conservation because land use and resource-management decisions in every province and territory will determine the fate of much of the region within the next three to five years." The CBI hopes to "create opportunities for governments to become engaged and active participants."

For the first time, this kind of extra-governmental deal between large environmental organizations and industry was questioned by some prominent voices. David Suzuki was quoted in the Whitehorse Star (Dec. 12, 2003) as saying that the Suzuki Foundation had distanced itself from the proposal, due to concerns about lack of definition: "Where is the 50% going to be? What is going to be done with the other 50%? What kind of logging practices are you going to have? Are you just going to cream it, which is what I think will happen?" 

Respected Liberal MP Charles Caccia, head of the Commons Environment Committee, questioned the legitimacy "of a framework produced by people who have no public mandate nor public accountability." He also denounced the accord as inappropriate in light of Canada's Kyoto commitments and inadequate in its conservation goals: "...The main actors behind this framework are Alberta Pacific with a majority ownership by Mitsubichi Paper, Domtar, Tembec and Suncor and these are all forest multinationals and accountable to their shareholders."

The forest companies involved hold current tenure to about 31 million hectares of boreal forest. About half of the boreal region of the CBI is forested, and half of that (approximately 125 million h.) already in tenures.

Lawrence Solomon of Energy Probe, writing in the National Post, charged, "Four environmental groups and four resource companies yesterday endorsed the giveaway of half of Canada's great boreal forests to industrial interests." Solomon said the initiative guaranteed that boreal lands, unprofitable to access under market conditions, would now be opened to industrial development with government subsidies.

Tim Gray of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, among other conservationists, responded that the time to act was while there were intact ecosystems to save: "Canada's boreal forest has high commercial value and that is why rates of exploitation for logging, mining, hydro, and oil and gas continue to accelerate."

"ForestEthics" Berman says the CBI is a "vision piece" to stimulate dialogue and allow access to the mapping information only the companies have.

The Canadian Boreal Initiative was initiated by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2003 with a grant of $4.5 million.

What Was Said

Tzeborah Berman: Embedded Ecological Values

A demand set or negotiating envelope is always a delicate balancing act. My goals in doing this work are to protect as much forest as possible, to support First Nations and other forest dependent communities, and to redirect forest product consumption in the United States to ecologically responsible alternatives to endangered forests. 

There are no areas associated yet with the percentages, so it is a gamble. What I hope is that our markets campaign will create enough financial leverage to ensure that the majority of the key ecological areas will be in the 50% protected. This could mean 80% of the so-called 'operable forest.' As we know all too well in BC, it could also mean a lot of rock and ice. 

We hope that we have embedded the right ecological values in the agreement so that it will support the emerging maps and conservation area assessments to ensure large scale protection of the boreal.

Finally, I think it is unfair to call this the "Boreal Liquidation Initiative" when we are calling for more protection (over 250 million hectares) than has ever been called for in Canada. The other 50% as I have mentioned is not to be 'liquidated' but to be open to ecologically responsible activity.

ForestEthics does not accept corporate or government funding.

* Tzeporah Berman is a Program Director with ForestEthics, and was an organizer at Clayoquot Sound in the 1990s.

Michael M'Gonigle: Change the Structure

What is going to happen after the 50% is used up? Is the global growth economy going to stop? Are multinational companies going to say "a deal's a deal"? Ask the folks in Sarawak and Amazonia and Siberia.

What might happen if we say that we need to change directions altogether? Why not have a campaign opposing all corporate industrial development in these lands? Only small-scale, ecosystem-based, community controlled industry. There would then be at least some intellectual coherence (and analytical rigor) in this position, some attempt to deal with the root of the problems.

* Michael M'Gonigle is Eco-Research Chair at the University of Victoria.

Paul Senez: No Change in Industrial Extraction

Those who do not learn from their mistakes are destined to repeat them: Whether it was BC's Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) or Ontario's Lands for Life process, have we not learned from our participation in these and other land-use planning processes?

In BC, in the early 1990s we negotiated 13% of the land base into protected area designation, and we secured (or so we thought) "Special Management Zones" --extracting promises from both government and industry for improved stewardship on the remaining 87%. But the promised change in practices has never really been delivered and today we have looming on the horizon the "Working Forest." In Ontario they have "rotating parks" and all that that entails.

In what is arguably the book on BC forest policy, Talk and Log: Wilderness Politics in BC(1998), Jeremy Wilson reminds us that, no matter how we want to stack up the protected area achievements, we must compare those ". . . gains against a list of significant disappointments . . . the industry [is] still clearcutting more than 150,000 hectares of timber per year . . . with its core prerogatives intact, it continues its unrelenting advance on the remaining expanses of low-lying old-growth forest."

Replace "low-lying old-growth" with "boreal" forest and the message remains as salient today as when it was written. 

* Paul Senez wrote for the Watershed Sentinel on the Vancouver Island process of CORE in the early 1990s as Chair of the Conservation sector.

Michael Major: Greenwashing Boreal Liquidation

The environmental positives in the framework are only particularly positive within a contextual regime of vastly increased boreal forest liquidation and conversion. 

The industrial interests are having difficulty getting the Canadian government or society to support an expanded Alpac like approach to boreal forest liquidation and replacement (as is done in northern Alberta). An Alpac approach would permanently transform boreal forest ecology and society and it will create a road-builder/trucker/timber harvester longitudinal highway haven contractor camp and roadside boneyard that will eventually become a continent wide linear ghost town.

An Alpac approach will create a mile of permanent subsidized all weather mainline road for every 20,000 cubic metres of boreal timber that is accessed in the first pass. These roads will eventually become the main reason that the protected areas will need to be protected.

The industrial interests want access to boreal timber at a scale and intensity that has not been seen before outside of northern Alberta. They cannot operate profitably at a smaller scale. Without this scale and intensity, it just won't go ahead.

It does not seem likely that this rate and scale of development will take place without the marketing assistance and conveyance of apparent legitimacy from international level environmental organizations. If environmental organizations help industrial interests to sell this to the Canadian and international public, then there is no number of protected areas that will forestall the loss of boreal environmental integrity.

* Michael Major is a Victoria based forest policy analyst and environmentalist.

Great Bear: Consensus at Table

In December, the BC government announced via press release that a consensus agreement had been reached at the land use planning table for the Central coast, the area renamed the Great Bear Rainforest by environmental organizations. Resources Minister Stan Hagen said, "Government-to-government discussions with First Nations will take place in the new year and will help lead to decisions on the legal designation of the lands and finalization and implementation of the land use plan by June 30, 2004."

The recommendations were not made public in BC, but Jon O'Riorden from the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management announced via teleconference to German pulp and paper distributors that "The consensus between environmental organizations and government includes the enlargement of protected areas from 21 to 33% of the forested area in the North and Central Coast. Additionally, an advisory team will oversee compliance to standards for ecologically-based management in the next five-to-ten years."

Usually reliable sources say the deal hammered out between the forest industry and Greenpeace, the Sierra Club of BC and ForestEthics is outstanding, both in its protected area of close to 1.2 million hectares and in its provisions for serious ecologging. The deal did not consider marine areas, or the impact of offshore oil and gas development. It is dependent on the agreement of many First Nations.

* Interviews, Press Release Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management, December 2003

They Recycle Tires, Don't They?

Did you know that your $3 eco-tax for tires sometimes pays for burning those tires? Did you think BC was taking a lead in Product Stewardship and Recycling? Wasn't the whole idea of the 1991 tire fee to prevent tire fires? Confused? Welcome to environmental policy making in the New Era. It's pretty much like environmental policy making in every other era.

Every time you buy a new tire in British Columbia, you pay a $3 "eco-fee" to help deal with those tires when they get old. In the bad old days before the first of BC's product stewardship experiments, the Financial Incentives for Recycling Scrap Tires (FIRST) program, piles of tires were accumulating everywhere, in and out of landfills. When those tires caught fire, the fires were almost impossible to put out, smouldering for months, layering black smoke and invisible toxics over neighbourhoods. The other main use for old tires was to toss them into logging slash piles or garbage dump burns to sustain the fire. Intentional open air burning was the fate of three-quarters of old tires even for a few years after the FIRST program was introduced.

But open burning of tires releases a wide range of unhealthy air pollutants, from dioxins, benzene and Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) to metals like chromium, mercury and cadmium. By some lucky stroke, these contaminants apparently disappear when the tires are burned more efficiently in cement kilns or pulp mills, with a permit from the Pollution Prevention branch of the Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection (MWLAP).

Does this mean the permit makes a difference? Or maybe the testing isn't very thorough, maybe the mills' air pollution control equipment actually works, or maybe there is just too much money at stake.

But this story is supposed to be about recycling. In BC, the massively successful FIRST program now diverts about 90% of scrap tires into recycling. It uses the $3 eco-fee to subsidize the transportation of old tires to recycling plants. FIRST also pays a bonus to recycling companies for the creation of Tire Derived Products (TDP) -- blasting mats, boot trays, roofing shingles, composters -- and a smaller bonus for tires which are processed for burning as Tire Derived Fuel (TDF). That includes 70 cents each for the whole tires stripped of some metal and tossed into the kiln at Tilbury Cement (now Lehigh Northwest).

FIRST costs less to run than it brings in, and the balance goes into general revenue. On its website MWLAP says the money is used to fund its programs, but provides no dollar figure for income. Since the tire fee is simply returned by retailers with the sales tax, Rosemary Sutton, administrator of the program at IBM Business Consulting, says no one really knows the income total, except by estimates based on returned tires. One thing, though, is troubling. The more tires are burnt and the less recycled, the more money for general revenue.

There's a serious side to this story about tires and levies and MWLAP. As natural gas prices rise, BC's pulp mills are aggressively pursuing alternative fuels which will cut their costs. It's an environmental bonus for the mills that the addition of coal or tires or railway ties with or without pentachlorophenol, to the mix of wet sludge and wood waste in their boilers creates more stable, and hotter fires, with potentially lower dioxin emissions.

BC pulp mills need a huge amount of energy, some of which they generate by burning wood waste. The mills' appetite for rubber to burn could pose a serious threat to BC's tire recycling companies, which convert about 85% of scrap tires to other products under the shelter of the FIRST program. If the pulp mills get their way, British Columbia will either have to import tires to burn, and/or Western Rubber and other smaller companies will be deprived of their stock, which is already in short supply compared to the companies markets.

In a small scale and very limited three month trial last year, the Powell River mill burned 1490 tonnes of tire chips. In full time full scale burning, one mill alone could consume the TDF from close to a million tires a year. The BC "harvest" of recycled tires in 2002 was 3.5 million tires or about 28,700 tonnes. If BC pulp mills are going to burn tires, they will need to import millions of tires, which are guaranteed Free Trade under NAFTA as a fuel.

According to Helen Spiegelman, who sat on the Advisory Committee for the FIRST program, the picture is further complicated because Californian companies complain that Western Rubber puts up unfair, subsidized competition. They cannot supply rubber from recycled tires for rubberized asphalt highway material as cheaply. FIRST subsidies from the tire levy are provided for transportation and also for rendering of the tires into cheap fuel.

For years BC has boasted of its progressive pollution prevention hierarchy policy -- the Five Rs:

1. Reduce at source
2. Reuse
3. Recycle
4. Recover materials and/or energy
5. Manage residuals in an environmentally responsible manner.

However, when activists challenged the Powell River mill's permit for tire trials, citing that hierarchy, the official in charge of the program, Duncan Ferguson, told the Environmental Appeal Board that TDP, rubber recovered from tires for products, paid a higher credit to processors than TDF, rubber for fuel, because it cost more to make.

He added that TDP might be considered material recovery, equal to TDF. This opens the door to demotion of tire recycling in the Five R hierarchy.

To add to the confusion, the Ministry has no policy that requires the regional officers writing the pollution permits to consider the Five R recycling hierarchy. Policy from one department of MWLAP does not necessarily have any impact on the actions of another. As Spiegelman puts it, without some policy consistency, we could easily wind up "burning the furniture to heat the house," and paying for the privilege too.

On top of all that, the future of FIRST itself is in upheaval. The Ministry has introduced the BC Industry Product Stewardship Business Plan for 2002-2005 with the goal that producers and users should finance waste management, rather than the general taxpayer. The Plan enunciates four Key Principles, although with few specifics on implementation, auditing or enforcement:

• Producer/user responsibility
• Level playing field -- for all brand owners, and access to collection facilities for all consumers
• Results-based -- cost effective, measurable and innovative toward pollution prevention with the onus on the producer
• Transparency and accountability -- "Industry is accountable to both government and consumers for environmental outcomes and allocation of revenue from fees/levies."

The plan notes that the FIRST program fails on all four counts, despite its $3 user-fee and its enormous success in keeping tires out of the landfill. Perhaps it is that success which has led to the Ministry's failure to "replace the FIRST program with an industry product stewardship program . . .; by March 31, 2003."

Duncan Ferguson says that the reorganization is the subject of "on-going discussion with government at high levels," as well as consultation with the Retail Council of BC and the Rubber Associationof Canada. However no conclusion about a new model has been reached, although government is determined "to devolve" the FIRST program.

In the meantime, Minister Joyce Murray has announced the addition of electronic waste to the Product Stewardship targets.

A BC Activist

Last fall, forest activist Ingmar Lee toured Europe talking about British Columbia forest problems. Here is a report from Germany of his tour, called WaldAktion British Columbia, or Forest Action British Columbia.
by Karen Wonders

Privatization's Water Wars

In South Africa, only the poor have pre-paid water meters
-- and the poor are fighting back
by Dawn Paley, Johannesburg

* Delores Broten

2003 Climate Bill at $60 Billion

Natural disasters caused by climate change have cost the world more than $60 billion this year, up from $55 billion last year, says a report from the UN Environment Program.

According to the report, compiled by insurance firm Munich Re, Europe's extreme summer heat wave was the biggest climate event of the year, costing more than $10 billion in agricultural losses and killing around 20,000 people.

The floods in the Huai and Yangtze Rivers in China between July and September were the second most costly events, with losses estimated at around $8 billion. Tornados in the United States in April and May accounted for the biggest insured losses - over $3 billion.

The Inuit people of Canada and Alaska announced in Milan in December that they are launching a human rights case against the administration of US President George W. Bush, saying that the country is violating the people's human rights by not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and refusing to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

* UN Newswire, December 2003

Pesticide Safety Claims Net Penalty

A subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company, Dow AgroSciences, will pay a $2 million penalty for illegally advertising safety claims about its pesticide products in New York between 1995 and 2003. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued Dow for repeatedly violating a 1994 agreement with the State which prohibited advertising touting the safety of its pesticide products. As part of the 1994 agreement, the company agreed to stop making claims that its products were "safe." However, an investigation by Spitzer's office found that almost immediately after the company entered into the agreement it once again began to make misleading safety claims in its print, video and internet advertising.

* New York State, December 2003

Single Hull Tankers Banned Soon

Single hull oil tankers will be phased out worldwide by 2010, five years earlier than planned, the International Maritime Organization decided in December. The deadline was advanced after the European Union banned single hull tankers effective April 2005. Single hull tankers, most of which are aging, are more likely than double hull vessels to break and spill oil.

* ENS, December 2003.

BC's Offshore Oil and Gas

The stakes are high. Citizens should be prepared to ask tough questions.

by Oonagh O'Connor

After two years of pressure from the provincial government, the federal government has agreed to consider lifting its moratorium on offshore oil and gas in British Columbia. The federal moratorium has been in place since 1972. It prohibited tanker traffic from traveling on the inside waters as well as offshore exploration and development activities.

The federal government has planned a 3-stage review which would identify science gaps related to the impacts of offshore oil and gas in BC, listen to the views of the public regarding the moratorium, and consult with First Nations.

The Process

The first stage of this review occurred in October of 2003, with a Royal Society Expert Panel examining the science gaps in knowledge of the Queen Charlotte Basin and the impacts of offshore oil and gas. This stage consisted of 6 days of workshops in Vancouver with industry and selected scientists and a one-day workshop in Prince Rupert to hear from local people and to gather traditional knowledge. The panel's report is due by the end of January.

The next phase in the federal review is a series of public hearings to be conducted this March by a panel chaired by Roland Priddle, member of the Petroleum Hall of Fame and board member of Talisman Energy. The terms of reference can be found on Natural Resources Canada website: http://www2.nrcan.gc.ca/es/erb/prb/english/view.asp?x=611

The Governments' Approach

The province has already declared that they want to lift the moratorium and develop an offshore industry. They have a strategic plan in place, (http://www.offshoreoilandgas.gov.bc.ca/whats-new/May03ProjectPlan.pdf), with a budget of over $8 million. The provincial Minister of Energy and Mines has publicly declared interest in allowing offshore oil and gas exploitation throughout provincial coastal waters, including Georgia Strait.

The federal government states it wants to hear the views of British Columbians on the issue. At this point their review is limited to the Queen Charlotte Basin. However, the makeup of the Public Review Panel, based on oil industry interests, has cast a shadow of distrust over the federal process.

The Area

In the 1960s, the federal government gave out leases to almost 9 million hectares of BC's coast to oil companies. These leases were given out prior to an environmental review, prior to consultation with First Nations and prior to any consideration of what such an industry would mean to fisheries, birds, whales and to coastal ecology. The federal government has decided to consider lifting the moratorium in the area of the coast described as the "Queen Charlotte Basin," based on a geological formation, which is thought to contain oil and gas. This area of the coast includes the leases that extend from the north end of Vancouver Island, including Queen Charlotte Sound, Queen Charlotte Strait, Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance.

The Concerns

Offshore versus Inshore?

The promoters of coastal oil and gas often point to the east coast as an example of what we can expect here in BC, but on the east coast the industry is 200 miles offshore. On the BC coast, the proposed area of development would be more accurately called an inshore industry, with some areas as close as 12 miles from land.

The Fish

The Queen Charlotte Basin is rich in ecological abundance that has fed and sustained people on the coast for at least 10,000 years. Ninety percent of coastal peoples' diets came from the sea.

This area is especially abundant in marine life, with over 55 commercial species and 238 known noncommercial species. Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance are a migration corridor for hundreds of millions of Canadian juvenile and adult salmon. This area accounts for over 50% of the landed value of all commercial fishery products in BC.

A Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) report that examined the potential impacts of a blowout or spill on marine resources found that "spills are not improbable, that concentrations of spilled oil can be high, that even small oiled areas could contaminate large numbers of resource species such as young salmon thereby causing major losses, and that oil in water can kill or harm important species." This report concludes that "there are grounds for serious concern over the risk to fish and fish habitat from the spillage of oil along the coast of British Columbia."

New research has found that the long term damage from oil spills is much more severe and long lasting than originally thought. As a result of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, scientists now have a better understanding of the persistent toxic effect of oil, even at sublethal levels. Ten years after the Exxon Valdez, some of the beaches remain oiled and some species such as pink salmon and harlequin ducks have not recovered.

While the commercial fishery is working hard to become a sustainable, thriving industry, the establishment of an offshore oil and gas industry would compound the stress on an already stressed ecosystem.

But before a single drop of oil leaves the ground, impacts from an offshore oil and gas industry would occur to the fish and marine mammals. Seismic testing, the first stage of searching for oil and gas, blasts high powered air at the sea bottom to determine the most likely location of oil or gas. The sound emitted from these blasts is of great concern to fisheries and marine mammals.

Other Impacts to Fish

Besides the impacts of seismic testing and oil spills, fish would be threatened by the daily pollution caused by this industry. Drilling muds and produced waters are of major concern in the North Sea where the industry has been operating for decades. There is evidence that toxins found in produced waters are altering the reproductive success of some species of cod. There is also concern over the release of drilling muds into the marine environment. Studies out of Norway found the impacts of drilling muds to be much larger than predicted by industry, and resulted in the Norwegian government forcing industry to change to Synthetic Based Drilling Muds, which are thought to be less toxic. On the east coast of Canada, where the use of Synthetic Based and Water Based Drilling Muds are the common practice, scientists have found that even the less toxic muds are known to alter the reproductive success and growth rate of scallops on the east coast of Canada.

Birds

The area of the oil leases passes right through the Pacific Flyway, a migration corridor to millions of birds every spring and summer. The area is also essential habitat to millions of breeding and non-breeding seabirds. Birds are extremely vulnerable to oil spills, even small ones. It only takes an amount of oil the size of a dime on a bird's feathers to result in death from hypothermia. Some preliminary studies by scientist Alan Burger have shown that there is already a problem on BC's coast with oiled birds from a variety of sources, including the cargoes of tankers and barges, bilges and fuel tanks of marine vessels, shore-based fuelling stations and shore-based industries such as pulp mills. Allowing the oil industry to explore and operate in coastal waters will mean an increase in traffic and an increase in chances of spills. This would be fatal to the birds that frequent the coast.

Lack of Knowledge

While we know the coastal waters are rich in marine life and support a variety of fish species, birds and marine mammals, there remain many aspects of the coastal ecosystem that are poorly understood. Some of these gaps in knowledge were identified at the federal Science Hearings.

At the hearings, it became apparent that we don't know enough about the Queen Charlotte Basin to determine the possible impacts of introducing an offshore oil and gas industry.

It is important that people get out to the public hearings and let the government know their concerns regarding an oil and gas industry in BC's coastal waters. Presently the federal government has planned a scoping trip to five coastal communities in January 2004 to be followed by hearings in March 2004.

* If you need more information about how to get involved please contact Oonagh O'Connor at Living Oceans Society. email: oonagh@livingoceans.org; ph: (250) 973-6580

Take Action

• Participate in the Public Review Hearings, either in writing or by a presentation to the panel. Watch www.oilfreecoast.org for notices of the hearings or check the government website http://www2.nrcan.gc.ca/es/erb/prb/english/view.asp?x=611
• Ask Prime Minister Paul Martin to ensure his government maintains the moratorium on BC offshore oil and gas.
  Prime Minister Paul Martin, Office of the Prime Minister; 80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2; Fax: 613-941-6900 Email: pm@pm.gc.ca
• Send a free fax to our new Prime Minister, the Minister of Natural Resources, and the Minister of Environment, asking them to maintain the moratorium www.oilfreecoast.org

The National Gravity Energy Grid

by Don Malcolm

When Harry was a boy he was always on the lookout for trains. Throughout the early years of his childhood he was fascinated by trains. He cut out pictures of trains from magazines and newspapers. He filled scrapbooks with trains. But, except for those pictures, Harry very rarely got to actually see a train.

The valley in eastern Ontario where Harry was born and raised had no trains. It had horses and wagons and sleighs and a few old cars and trucks. There were lakes and streams teeming with bass and northern pike and eastern brook trout to occupy the endeavours of young boys. There were bears and wolves that howled, and whippoorwills to gladden the ear with their evening calls in late spring. Some insisted there were fairies who played tiny harps and guitars and flutes. There were ghost stories that could strike stark fear into the heart of solid rock. Everyone knew there were hoop snakes. But there were no steam whistles sighing and moaning away in the night. There were no trains.

About sixty-five km to the north of Harry's home, and an equal distance to the south, there were seldom used railway lines. Whenever Harry was driven across one of those lines he watched anxiously for a train. He hoped there would be some minor occurrence that would cause the car to stop near the track so he could have a chance to see a train go by. Maybe a tire could go flat or the car could run out of gas, or something. Those things happened often in those long ago days, but for Harry they never happened near a railway track.

Once, while riding with his grandfather near Napanee he saw part of a train. They broke over a hill just in time to see two box-cars and a caboose disappear around a bend. A couple of years after the Napanee train sighting, luck smiled on Harry. He spent a week visiting an aunt on Pinnacle Street in Belleville. In those days a spur that was used for switching cars ran right up that street. Harry spent all of his waking hours on the sidewalk enchanted by the massive steam engine as, with its bell ringing, light flashing, steam gushing and, from time to time a short blast of the whistle, it went about its work. The experience didn't cure Harry's preoccupation with trains.

Just before he turned eighteen, Harry joined the Canadian Navy. In a high state of excitement he climbed aboard a train in Kingston knowing he was about to fulfill two yearnings of his young life. He would ride on a train and he would see the world outside his limited experience up to that time. During his time with the navy he would experience both beyond his wildest dream. The steam train carried him down through Eastern Ontario, through Quebec and New Brunswick where, from St. John, he went by ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, Nova Scotia. From Digby, another train took him the short distance to the new entry training base at Cornwallis. Harry had come a long way from the hills and valleys of his home sod. He was not yet sick of trains.

That first train ride would mark the beginning of many thousands of miles Harry would travel in trains pulled, at first, by steam engines and later by diesels. It would also be the beginning of many exciting adventures. Sailing out of Halifax in a frigate in November he learned about fear in a north Atlantic storm, the necessity of chipping ice on superstructure and rigging while suffering from sea sickness, and learning to walk on a heaving deck. But he also learned the thrill of leaving the winter behind and sailing down to the summer-like weather of Bermuda and Havana. On Boxing Day, 1952, having transferred to the navy's west coast division, he boarded a steam train in Halifax bound for Victoria.

To cross Canada from coast to coast by train is to gain an appreciation of the immensity and diversity of the country that can scarcely be imagined by studying a map on a classroom wall. Harry watched in fascination through all the daylight hours as, one after another, vistas of his country filled his window and fell behind. From the rugged coastline of the Atlantic provinces through the hardwood, pine and mixed forests and farms of Quebec and Ontario, the broad open spaces and the big sky of the prairies, the winter landscape unfolded like the turning of pages in a book.

Perhaps no-one, travelling west in Canada for the first time, is quite prepared for the mountains. Unless one gets a chance to look ahead on one of the long sweeping curves of the track, the mountains seem to appear rather unexpectedly, as if a reclusive giant had suddenly thrown down a massive rock barricade to stop all westward progress.

Harry soon noticed a difference in the sound and movement of the train as it laboured up the inclines and braked on the declines of each minor summit while working toward the Continental Divide and the downward run to the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver. He found the trip through the mountains to be an edge of the seat experience that left him wondering at the challenges the builders of the railway must have faced. On all sides the mountains rose up to unbelievable heights. The tracks crossed deep chasms with rivers far below and sometimes ran straight through mountains where labourers had, years before, cut tunnels with drills and dynamite.

At the town of Hope, about a hundred and sixty km east of Vancouver the mountains open out to the lowlands of the broad Fraser Valley. In about two hours the train will arrive in Vancouver. Harry's cross Canada train ride will be completed. From Vancouver he will cross the Strait of Georgia by ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island and the navy base at Esquimalt. Harry is still not sick of trains.

Since that first train-ride, Harry has travelled many times throughout Canada in trains, cars and aircraft. And while passenger aircraft can satisfy the demands of time, flying at thirty thousand feet does not sate the hunger for one's country. For many Canadians, trains are the iconic symbol that bonds the country from ocean to ocean, the hunger and the feast.

As Harry grows older his interest in trains has not diminished. In fact, that interest has progressed to an almost dream-like state.

Skihist Provincial Park is about six km northeast of Lytton BC on the Trans Canada Highway. It occupies a high point overlooking the Thompson River just before it marries the Fraser River and the two, in celebration of their union, plunge ecstatically into Hell's Gate Canyon and race as one to the Pacific Ocean. Harry camps at Skihist at every opportunity. The park is a train-watchers dream. From Kamloops to Vancouver, both the CN and CP main lines use the Thompson and Fraser valleys, crossing and re-crossing the rivers, sometimes one above the other as contours and elevations dictate.

It was at Skihist that Harry began his dream of a national gravity energy grid. While watching and listening to the eastbound trains toiling up the incline toward the Continental Divide, while those westbound fought against gravity with applied brakes to keep the heavily laden cars from over-running the engines, Harry started thinking about harnessing gravity to drive electric trains from coast to coast.

What if every axle on the train was equipped with a generator that automatically engaged only on the down grades, assisting in braking, while producing electricity, having much the same effect on momentum as do engine retarders on heavy diesel trucks? Trains already have axle powered generators producing far more electricity than is required throughout the train.

Harry's dream goes on. What if the trains were pulled with electric engines, with, perhaps, a diesel engine added to assist on long steep inclines, and the railway right of way became a coast to coast energy grid? From the Continental Divide the tracks run downhill both ways to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Could the trains going down hill help to pull those going up?

Throughout the breadth of Canada it would be a rare day if the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow somewhere. Perhaps from coast to coast along the "national gravity energy grid" solar and wind generated electricity, produced by independent operators, could be fed into the grid. Perhaps solar panels could be installed above the grid or even between the rails. Perhaps the railroad could sell electricity to towns along the grid. Do we really need another hydro dam, or electricity produced by burning tires, coal, railway ties or natural gas in the power boilers of polluting pulp mills?

Harry is neither an engineer nor an electrical technician. He is a dreamer. But in his lifetime he has seen technological advances to stagger the imagination. He has seen citizens of earth journey beyond the pull of earth's gravity, walk on the moon, and come home again. He believes the only limits to what mankind can do are the limits of imagination.

Perhaps there are chapters yet to be added to the national dream.

"Building Community Not Houses"

by Kathy Smail and Norberto Rodriguez dela Vega

FOCI's Annual General Meeting in November was a simple reminder of our steady path toward sustainability. Project reports, the Jo Ann Green Environmental Award, and the evening's video presentation of Australia's Crystal Waters Eco-Village, were inspiring and a great encouragement for our work in 2004.

The centerpiece for this past fall's annual Sustainability Home Show was the inspiring slide show by the folks from O.U.R. Ecovillage, a stepping stone into a series of sustainable growth and development presentations that included a presentation by SmartGrowth BC, and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. Many excellent development principles were covered in this seminar but perhaps the most important messages, significant to our rural environment, were: "protecting our working lands," "keep the town within the town" and, "building community, not houses."

Into the new year we plan on further visioning workshops and conferences on sustainable growth and development that could focus on specific issues such as the Manson's "downtown" area and affordable island housing. A more ambitious idea is to examine the initiative taken by Gibson's Landing on the Sechelt Peninsula and build whole island community sustainability into our Official Community Plan.

Earth Charter Youth Conference

The Eco Youth Scholarship program recently sponsored 2 teenagers, Jesula Rae of Cortes and Rowan Kehn of Quadra, to attend a four day Earth Charter Youth Conference at the Cowichan Lake Education Centre. This conference, led by Dr. Linda Hill, provided an opportunity to explore the Earth Charter and see a world based on respect for people and nature, universal human rights, fairness and peace; to learn skills for breaking down barriers, breaking away from prejudice, exclusion, discrimination and violence and building a sustainable world. These two young women, along with other youth working in Marine Stewardship and Streamkeepers, will present their experiences to the Cortes community in a fund raiser for the Eco Youth Scholarship, around Earth Day in April 2004.

Water Stewardship

Community Consultation on drinking water and sewage disposal is now our focus as we work at wrapping up the Water Stewardship project. We continue to assess fresh and wastewater issues, and research economical and innovative options for local, environmentally sound septic alternatives to meet the needs of individual homeowners and larger developments. Our final Water Stewardship event in January, Poop 301, An Island Perspective, will cover individual and multiple dwelling treatment plants as well as ideas for island-wide waste treatment. Graeme Faris, of the Regional District of Comox-Strathcona will also present results from the past year's water testing of Hague and Gunflint Lake.

2003-2004 FOCI Board

President Hubert Havelaar, Vice President Norberto Rodriguez dela Vega, Treasurer Ted Bannister, Secretary Myann Reid, and Directors Laura Ellingsen, Fran Woodcock, Garvin Morris, Carol Tidler, and Ralph Garrison.

Congratulations to Sedley Sweeny and Dova Wiltshire!

Winners of the 2003 Jo Ann Green Environmental Award!

Sedley's life work has been centred in environmental sustainability and education. From his organic farming in South Wales, and his work in sheltering and training Tibetan refugees, to his international and local promotion of self-sufficiency and ecoforestry, Sedley has always brought a very humanitarian approach to his projects. Sedley founded the Cortes Seamanship School, the Co-operative for Cortes Self-Sufficiency, and the Tibetan Ecoforestry Training Partnership. He has made significant contributions to many of our local societies including the Cortes Volunteer Ambulance Service, FOCI, the Cortes Forestry Committee and Cortes Ecoforestry Society, the Whaletown Community Club, the Advisory Planning Commission of the Regional District and the Cortes Island Local Advisory Committee on First Nations Treaty Negotiations. Sedley's loyal service to Cortes sustainability is an inspiration to us all.

Dova's commitment to island sustainability is made manifest in her work at the Cortes Recycling Centre. She employs our youth, educates our community, promotes volunteerism, and inspires us to reduce, reuse and recycle. Dova has also developed a system of measuring and recording the processing and delivery of waste products; a system now used in several communities. The Free Store, Dova's "baby," is economically important to so many of us, provides a social hub, and manifests Dova's motto: "One person's garbage is another's treasure."

Thank you Sedley and Dova!