The Written Word
for December 1, 1999

One of the pleasures I get from doing the Written Word when I’m away is that it gives me a chance to let you get to know me a bit better. When I’m at home and in the thick of things – and in British Columbia that’s always pretty thick! – whatever I write or broadcast is dictated by what is happening. When I sit here in my hotel room after a day in London, I can sort of relax and let some thoughts flow.

One of the most satisfying moments of my broadcasting career came when the government of British Columbia announced that it was tubing the Kemano Completion Program (KCP). This was a sweet victory for which there was a very high price. It was very hard on me both physically and mentally because it became both very stressful mentally and tiring physically as there was so much research to do and so much contact to be maintained with others. It had stresses afterwards to as former Mulroney minister Tom Siddon sued me meaning hours in examinations for discovery. I was disappointed that the matter was settled, as was my lead counsel Wally Lightbody, but the insurance company called the shots and when they learned that it was going to cost more to win the lawsuit than it was to settle, the choice was obvious. I did have the pleasure of going on air the next day and saying that I unsaid not a word which almost provoked a second lawsuit!

It had compensations in our program winning the prestigious Michener Award.

The real satisfaction did not come from beating Alcan, though I would be lying to you if I said that there wasn’t some pleasure in that. No the real pleasure was two fold.

First, I had been involved in and perhaps in a sense led a fantastic though utterly disorganized group of protesters. These allies ranged from native bands to trade unions to mayors and councils. The courageous Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists who were known as the "dissident scientists by Alcan and their pals – a designation they rightly took great pride in – were a tremendous group to work with. There was the courageous Ben Meisner, a businessman/broadcaster from Prince George who got me involved in the first place; the indomitable Mae Burrows of the UFAWU; the list goes on.

Secondly, it was a terrific victory for the salmon, even though their victory is not complete as the dangerous situation on the Nechako River continues. It was a victory because the argument against KCP could not possibly be won on fiscal grounds. No matter how many sockeye pass through the Nechako up to the Stuart River system, their value will never match that of the electricity KCP could have generated.

And this is a point I think we all have to stress until it’s ingrained in our souls. We cannot win environmental arguments on fiscal grounds. No matter what we are trying to save and no matter how much money comes from leaving things alone, the desecrator will always win the monetary argument.

I despair when I hear those who want to save our salmon talk about how much money the salmon bring in to commercial interests and to commercial sports interests and to tourism and so on … this is an unwinnable argument and we only encourage it by laying out these points. The best commercial use of any river is a hydroelectric dam. The Fraser could easily accommodate several. The destruction of the fishery would simply be an item on the debit side of a very rosy balance sheet.

No the argument has to be a spiritual one. Of course it is a cultural one too for all those communities in British Columbia that have subsisted on salmon but the main point is that it is plainly and simply wrong to destroy God’s creatures. If we persist in trying to match the corporations dollar for dollar we get knocked out in the first round. We must, instead, elect governments that maintain that while a resource can be used and recycled, it must be maintained. We can only do that it is ingrained, in the pit of our collective tummies, that the bottom line is that it is plain and simply wrong to destroy any part of our environment.