BC Update

[ToddG]

Yeah, I know everything's starting to run in CO right now & most of you guys have tunnel vision .. but for anyone who has any interest in non-CO issues, this is a huge fukkin deal:

As anticipated, Canada's Bill 30 has been passed into legislation, clearing the way for development & exploitation of some of the highest quality, most beautiful, & most amazing stretches of whitewater on the planet. Ledcor & Kewitt have been anticipating this day for years, so with the coming of spring to coastal BC, we can expect "progress" on the Ashlu & Callaghan to begin this summer. (As a point of reference, take the Animas & combine it with the Poudre in terms of runnable whitewater, throw in gorges like Rockwood but one after another, miles of slimey granite bedrock, and a bunch of waterfalls, throw in play runs & numerous class V runs on the main stem, & then some of the best creeks anywhere, throw in tatlow creek .. now throw in a glacial icecap, some old growth cedar & doug fir & a bunch of grizzly bears & make it easily accessible to a major metropolitan area within a 2-hr drive .. that's the Ashlu.)

Additionally, there are IPP applications on just about every sizeable stream in the province, including Vancouver Island. This is not an exaggeration. The gov't has made it VERY cheap & very lucrative for energy developers to exploit in BC. And now that Bill 30 -- which was written to make it super easy for American multinationals to invest in Canada -- has passed, local govt's, communities, & activists are totally shut out of the policymaking process. Yay Canada.

i'm fukkin sick to my stomach over this .. sorry, back to your regularly scheduled programming ...

[Caspian]

Careful Todd, you're shaking the "Canada is perfect" paradigm.

[lagoonia]

Who do you write and what can we do to help stop this from happening?

[ToddG]

Oops, too late.

I've been posting periodic updates on Mtbuzz, & more recently on BT, for almost 2 yrs now .. & one of our main missions with The Range Life was to raise awareness & get people involved in the dialog. One of our first videos (Tatlow) ends with Jonaven saying "Ledcor, those bastards, they want to destroy our beautiful swimming hole(on the Tatlow). That's why we have to keep them out of the (Ashlu) valley to begin with!" You can find it in the sidebar of the TRL page. We always included language about the threats to the Ashlu & other drainages whenever we wrote about them.

Shane, Bryan, Jonaven, myself & many others up here sent out numerous emails urging friends to take a stand, even though we are just stupid Americans with excess cash to play in another country.

To some degree it worked. In the early fight, we flooded the Squamish-Lillooett Regional District with letters opposing development. The locals, not just kayakers, got involved. Unlike in the US, the Canucks tend to be pretty involved in their local policymaking process. We won. Then the province, under acute pressure from the Admin, & tribal & corpo groups, brought it to vote a second time. We won again. The voice of the people effectively said, "we support appropriate power developments, but not in the Ashlu." But in this case, the fed introduced policy (Bill 30) that makes it easy to bypass local government with regard to any kind of power development. I posted this link awhile back to an editorial that explains the whole issue in great detail: http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=16584 .. it got damn few view hits on mtbuzz.

The Ashlu is the most egregious issue at the moment .. The Callaghan, a world-class nearly roadside run right out of Whistler, much like the Rutherford (RIP), is next .. Homathko .. any stretch ingrained in BC lore is a wide open door to IPP development now.

[offline]

So, is it a done deal or what?

Should everyone in CO just start taking boating Vacations to show that there is a viable adventure sports tourist industry in this area or what?

Might be a good idea anyway if they start these projects soon.

[Leland]

if you haven't been to the Ashlu or Callaghan, you should go this summer. The Ashlu area is absolutely incredible - big water creeking galore.

The Callaghan is just about the best class V- run anywhere. There is a clean 15 footer and a clean 23 footer within 150 yards of creek, and too many other good fun rapids to count. You can lap it over and over in a day.

See everyone up there this August.

Leland

[ToddG]

Should everyone in CO just start taking boating Vacations to show that there is a viable adventure sports tourist industry in this area or what?

CO is bone dry for 9 months of the year while BC is raging, so if you like to kayak, BC is a pretty neat option regardless.

but seriously, the province is well aware of it's potential in tourism & in traditional growth opportunities. i mean the olympics are coming to vancouver & BC is experiencing explosive growth. squamish calls itself the outdoor rec capital of canada, & with the world class climbing (see yosemite), wind/kite surfing/boarding/whatever, whistler just up the road, ridiculous fishing/hunting, etc., it's not untrue. the problem here is not that BC residents are slacking, it's that the campbell admin (FED govt) wrote legislation that overrides provincial & local govt's voice in determining their own resource policy. it would be like the u.s. department of the interior & agriculture getting together & writing policy saying that public/county/local input would not be taken into consideration in management of boulder creek.