I’m traveling again and this week I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia. Because Vancouver is so clean, cosmopolitan and politely Canadian, I always get a bit giddy when I visit.
Nineteen ninety-seven may be a watershed year for Vancouver. As the Chinese government prepares to take possession of Hong Kong in July, many Hong Kong citizens and businesses have established second homes in Vancouver. Steep hillsides running down to the ocean lend Vancouver a geography reminiscent of Hong Kong and the condominium towers rising everywhere remind me of Hong Kong, too.
In the streets of Vancouver, government signage carries Canada’s official English and French. The commercial signage is bilingual in English and Chinese, reflecting the city’s changing character.
While events in Hong Kong are discouraging, it’s heartening to see British Columbia open a haven. Such virtue is not without rewards. In a year’s time, Vancouver may see an exponential increase in its already-bustling commerce.
Earlier today, I was standing on a corner in this chaotic urban carnival, looking east at the mountains, their peaks lost in a low bank of clouds. I was confused. How can a province busy polishing such a bright future pull itself down by indulging in the worst excesses of the past?
British Columbia owns a wonderful old-growth temperate rainforest, which it continues to clear-cut at an enormous rate. We’re still learning about the British Columbian rainforest. We’ve long known that temperate rainforests rival tropical rainforests in biological quantity – whether the soft rain is warm or cold, the trees grow to prodigious size. Scientists are only now beginning to suspect that temperate rainforests are home to as much biological diversity as in the tropics. British Columbia is a taxonomist’s paradise, but they’ll have to hurry to beat the chainsaws.
The provincial government has underwritten a public relations campaign, praising BC forestry as the most progressive in the world. At the same time, the province has stepped up the pace in the building of logging roads. Why? Once a logging road has entered a valley, it is no longer “pristine.” Once the scar of the logging road has been cut, the tree-felling becomes inevitable. If the current pace continues, roads will be cut throughout all of British Columbia within a decade.
Once cut, the majority of British Columbia’s trees are exported as raw logs. The timber industry argues that logging provides jobs, but for every job in the woods, three value-added processing jobs are never realized, because the logs leave on ships. The salmon, bears, orcas and eagles all fall victim to this short-sightedness. The fishing and tourism jobs that depend on them are victims, too.
As I stood on that street corner, I could not comprehend – and still cannot comprehend – how the British Columbian government can be so open-hearted and shrewd in downtown Vancouver and so crass and ignorant in a coniferous forest 80 kilometers away.
Yes, 1997 will be a watershed year for British Columbia. I hope British Columbia’s watersheds can survive it.
Watershed Events
I’m traveling again and this week I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia. Because Vancouver is so clean, cosmopolitan and politely Canadian, I always get a bit giddy when I visit.
Nineteen ninety-seven may be a watershed year for Vancouver. As the Chinese government prepares to take possession of Hong Kong in July, many Hong Kong citizens and businesses have established second homes in Vancouver. Steep hillsides running down to the ocean lend Vancouver a geography reminiscent of Hong Kong and the condominium towers rising everywhere remind me of Hong Kong, too.
In the streets of Vancouver, government signage carries Canada’s official English and French. The commercial signage is bilingual in English and Chinese, reflecting the city’s changing character.
While events in Hong Kong are discouraging, it’s heartening to see British Columbia open a haven. Such virtue is not without rewards. In a year’s time, Vancouver may see an exponential increase in its already-bustling commerce.
Earlier today, I was standing on a corner in this chaotic urban carnival, looking east at the mountains, their peaks lost in a low bank of clouds. I was confused. How can a province busy polishing such a bright future pull itself down by indulging in the worst excesses of the past?
British Columbia owns a wonderful old-growth temperate rainforest, which it continues to clear-cut at an enormous rate. We’re still learning about the British Columbian rainforest. We’ve long known that temperate rainforests rival tropical rainforests in biological quantity – whether the soft rain is warm or cold, the trees grow to prodigious size. Scientists are only now beginning to suspect that temperate rainforests are home to as much biological diversity as in the tropics. British Columbia is a taxonomist’s paradise, but they’ll have to hurry to beat the chainsaws.
The provincial government has underwritten a public relations campaign, praising BC forestry as the most progressive in the world. At the same time, the province has stepped up the pace in the building of logging roads. Why? Once a logging road has entered a valley, it is no longer “pristine.” Once the scar of the logging road has been cut, the tree-felling becomes inevitable. If the current pace continues, roads will be cut throughout all of British Columbia within a decade.
Once cut, the majority of British Columbia’s trees are exported as raw logs. The timber industry argues that logging provides jobs, but for every job in the woods, three value-added processing jobs are never realized, because the logs leave on ships. The salmon, bears, orcas and eagles all fall victim to this short-sightedness. The fishing and tourism jobs that depend on them are victims, too.
As I stood on that street corner, I could not comprehend – and still cannot comprehend – how the British Columbian government can be so open-hearted and shrewd in downtown Vancouver and so crass and ignorant in a coniferous forest 80 kilometers away.
Yes, 1997 will be a watershed year for British Columbia. I hope British Columbia’s watersheds can survive it.