The federal government has killed a plan for an open-pit mine in Fish Lake, B.C. “The project as it was proposed would result in the destruction of
Fish Lake and the destruction as well of a complex and highly productive
ecosystem that included … dozens of connecting streams, wetlands and
aquatic life,” Environment Minister Jim Prentice said Tuesday. Read Toronto Sun article
A team of internationally renowned photographers has released a series of stunning images captured during its Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition (RAVE) to British Colombia’s Great Bear rainforest over the summer.Check out some of these stunning pictures here
Article by Mark Hume in the Globe and Mail. “A look at the small print in Mr. Junger’s recommendations makes it clear
B.C. raced to its conclusion that the mine would have ‘no significant
adverse effects’ and that it placed little weight on the concerns of
first nations.” Read article
Article by Andrew MacLeod at The Tyee. “While communities editor Jennifer MacMillan stops short of saying the ‘yes’ side may have cheated in the poll, she acknowledges in a blog post that the Globe and Mail’s online voting system can be easily manipulated.” Read article
Article by Neil Reynolds in the Globe and Mail. “Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. ‘Let’s get real,’ Prof. Kotlikoff says. ‘The U.S. is bankrupt.'” Read article
Article by D.C. Reid in the Victoria Times Colonist. “The people of B.C. have done it again. They canoed down the Fraser River from our city of Hope for sockeye salmon. And in a torrential monsoon, hundreds more stood out in Vancouver and shivered on the on-foot migration to the Cohen Commission that is looking into the disaster of last year’s Fraser sockeye run.”
Read article
Article by Stefania Seccia in Westerly News. “[Alexandra] Morton’s Salmon Are Sacred advocacy group organized the paddle and she said members are demanding B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen investigate whether diseases from Norwegian salmon feedlots are affecting the Fraser sockeye.” Read article
There is evidence that disease from the 70+ salmon farms on the
migration route of Fraser sockeye represents the perhaps the biggest
threat to our wild fish.This film illustrates the basic dynamics of
salmon migration routes, diseases in farms and our governments role in
the depletion of our most precious resource. produced by volunteer
efforts. For more films visit CallingfromtheCoast.com. For Information
on how to participate visit : SalmonAreSacred.org
It’s with great sadness I learned of the death of Bill Otway, the sports fisherman’s constant warrior – taken from us on October 17, 2010, after a battle with cancer. Bill was a mainstay of the BC Wildlife Association and its executive director for many years.
I got to know Bill when I was a BC cabinet minister and I was one of three to hold a hearing on the Revelstoke Dam, even though it was irreversible. The BC Hydro lawyer was giving evidence and was consistently asked by Bill what would happen to a certain strain of Rainbow trout. He so exasperated the lawyer with this question he finally spluttered out “For God’s sake Mr. Otway, we already destroyed that species with the Mica Dam!”
Here’s a “now it can be told” story. The government I was in, with one exception (me), couldn’t care less about fish and the problems associated with them. I got a call from Bill one day in the Spring of 1979 when I was Environment Minister. He told me that the BC Wildlife Association was going under. As I remember it was $75,000 in the hole. I told Bill that I would do what I could but that I wasn’t hopeful.
Serendipitously, at the next Cabinet meeting we learned that because we had joined the national lottery (649), all of a sudden we had a bunch of cash outside the budget. What to do?
In the nothing ventured, nothing gained mode I put the case for the BCWF to my colleagues. I told my colleagues that these folks didn’t support the Socreds because we wouldn’t listen to them. To my enormous surprise the Premier asked “what was the amount again, Rafe?”
I told him it was $75,000 and Bennett said, I think we should do it and even though the rest of the room though he and I had lost our minds it was agreed. We were 18 in number but we knew that if the guy at the end of the table wanted something, the vote was suddenly 19-18!
I must here digress for a moment.
The City of Seattle had the right under an old deal with BC to raise the Ross Dam on their part of the Skagit River near Hope which would have flooded the river on our side, built a sizeable lake, and destroyed a beautiful, drifting, canoeing, and fishing river. This came to a head at the same time and I told Bennett that this simply couldn’t happen on my watch. He directed me to go to Seattle, and buy them off, which I did.
With the saving of the Skagit and the BCWF we gained a lot of Brownie points. This was all in April of 1979 and an election was far from my mind as we’d been less than 3 ½ years in power. When, right after these two events, Bennett called an election, I was as surprised as the rest of my colleagues and the media.
I don’t say and will not believe that Bill Bennett called an election because he had catered so grandly to the outdoors voters. He knew I was an environmentalist when he appointed me and while he certainly couldn’t have forecast the BCWF and Skagit issues, he knew that industry was not going to like having me in this position.
At any rate, at the same time as the election, BCWF, in its news letter, praised Bill and me to the skies and that sure as hell didn’t hurt! I can tell you that after touring much of the province helping out colleagues, I have no doubt that if we hadn’t done what we did, that very close election would have gone the other way!
Bill Otway, then, quite without intending it, may well have kept us in power.
I saw a lot of Bill during the 80’s when he took the boys from the hugely popular TV show “Dallas” hunting and fishing. In fact, I chaired at least one fundraiser for the BCWF when Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Steve Kanaly, and Howard Keel were on hand. I did some radio interviews with them, I think all of them.
Bill and I went to Sweden to look at animal issues and how they handled them. We flew to London First Class (those days have gone!). Bill was a rough diamond and as we sat down I kidded Bill saying that if he behaved himself I promised not to tell anyone he’d flown in the front cabin. I was joking, of course, and his rejoinder was that, worse than this, he didn’t want anyone to know he’d flown with a god damned Socred cabinet minister!
As we were landing, Bill did something that we kidded about almost every time we met, in private and in public – he barfed his dinner and teeth into the barf bag! My reply to this interesting development was ” and you were doing so well, Bill!”
Bill loved the story.
Maybe you had to be there!
Bill always knew his brief and took care to be fully informed. That’s how he was able to speak for outdoors issues so well and was such a formidable debater. He was a consistent battler against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and one need only talk to former senior scientists from that department to know how much they respected Bill and how much they wished the politicians would listen.
Bill had all the ingredients to carry the burdens he did – a smart, stubborn, fearless, and thoroughly decent man.
In Bill’s passing, British Columbia lost something it can ill afford to lose: a wise man who said what he thought, when he thought it, and without concern for whom he might offend.
Bill Otway is owed a huge debt of gratitude by us all. Our hearts go out to Carol and the rest of his family.
Rest in peace, friend.
Article in the Calgary Herald. “Growing up, [Alexandra] Morton was fascinated by animal communication. But the only woman scientist role model she knew of was Madame Curie. And the stark photos of Curie surrounded by test tubes in an early 20th century laboratory petrified the young Morton, who dreamed of working in the wild.” Read article