Holiday Hampers

January 2, 2025

The heart of Denman was evident in this year’s Holiday Hampers program. Facilitated by DICES, the community of Denman comes together each year to share resources in the spirit of giving. The generous financial support of locals in our community combined with a sizable donation from the 2024 Victoria Times Colonist Christmas Fund, we are able to purchase food for a special holiday meal, a few staples, some sweet treats and gifts for 88 people in 42 households.

The process of packing the hampers, wrapping the gifts and delivering the hampers requires a team of dedicated volunteers. This year 43 volunteers came out to share their energy and enthusiasm for this community to create each hamper. Special thank you to Roxanna Mandryk, Nandy Anderson, JoAnne Shepherd and Debbie Frketich for heading up the wrapping and packing teams. Your energy and attention to detail created an efficient environment of collective enthusiasm. Another big thank you to Bee Balm and team for creating homemade pies for each hamper. To everyone who showed up to get the food, do the recycling, set up the tables, pack the hampers and wrap the presents – thanks for showing up for your community.

The Holiday Hampers could not happen without the help of our local businesses. We would especially like to thank the Denman Island General Store (Jennifer!) for ordering and refrigerating food; Two Roads Farms (Emily!) for growing and selling high quality vegetables at reasonable prices; the Denman Island Hardware Store (Graham and Verna!) for hosting the gift donation box; and Home Town Shredders (Evan!) who provided all the boxes for the hampers. Much gratitude to Saputo (Dairyland) as an important donor of food this year.

To everyone who donated gifts and those who donated funds to purchase gifts – your thoughtful generosity was evident this year in the quality and quantity of gifts we received for children, youth and adults.

Thanks for your amazing generosity in the form of time, energy, funds, food and gifts, Denman. Happy New Year!

Green Wizardries, Spring is Coming!

January 2, 2025

As this is my first article of 2025, I thought I might do a prediction for the year ahead but then I decided that would be a real downer. I expect 2025 to be an exciting year, but not in a good way. So, I decided to get to the heart of the matter which is what can we do to make ourselves comfortable and happy in 2025?

Gardening is the key to getting through 2025 in good order and with good morale. I expect many of us would be happier if we spent more time outside and less time looking at the gladiatorial combat that has become the norm for Provincial, Federal and international politics. I know the spectacle of the various wars and slaughters of civilian populations has a sickening fascination but watching it does no good and robs us of valuable life energy.

So, the first thing you will need to garden successfully in 2025 is good potting soil. Having an ample and free source of potting soil allows the gardener to inexpensively start tender seedlings inside, long before we could plant outside. Planting inside allows us to steal a march on the cold, blustery springs we normally get. I also like to start seedlings inside so I can plant them out when they are big enough to resist the attentions of any stray slugs.

There is still time to start the potting soil which needs to be equal parts of finished compost, leaf mould and a bit of sand. There are still leaves to rake up. I favour the broad-leaf maple leaves. I usually have my hens shred them up and then poop on the leaves which starts them composting and by spring, I have heaps of lovely fine leaf mould.

If you do not have hens, you can pile the leaves up in compost boxes. Pour human urine over the leaves. This will help them to compost and break down. The nitrogen in the urine attaches to the carbon in the leaves. Plants know how to extract the nitrogen.

At this point, I usually get a confused question about how one acquires human urine. Pee in a bucket! If you would like more comfort, it is easy to make a nice Jenkins commode which is a wooden box with a bucket inside and a seat and a lid. If you would like instructions on how to make such an article, the, “Humanure Handbook,” by Joseph Jenkins has instructions on how to build one. They are super convenient for power outages and save a great deal of water!

If you do not have access to leaves, the same effect can be had by fluffing a couple of bales of hay into a compost box and pouring urine over it. In either case, turning the compost weekly will get you some nice stuff to use in your potting soil.

The finished compost should consist of food scraps, dry matter such as leaves, straw or hay and animal manure. If you have two compost boxes side by side, it is easy to flip the compost from the full to the empty box.

I buy sand from Dave Lang who has very good prices and is reliable and pleasant to do business with. Every few years, I get a truckload of sand from Dave and use it to lighten the heavy clay soil in my garden. I also use a few shovels’ full of screened sand for every wheelbarrow of potting soil we make.

We measure half leaf mould and half finished compost into a wheelbarrow and add a bit of sand. I had a recipe but years ago, we just started mixing the potting soil by eye and it works fine. If you add too much sand, you will know. Just add a few more shovels of compost and mix it in. We keep the potting soil in a covered garbage can in the greenhouse by the potting table.

It has been such a very warm winter that I was able to prune my Marion berries very late. This is a fiddly job and a stout pair of dry leather gloves makes it much easier. Thorns do not pass though the dry leather.

I found many baby Marion berry plants as the vines start new plants when they are long enough to touch the ground. I have clipped the starts off and am keeping them in a pot of soil in the greenhouse. If anyone would like some Marion starts, please call me at 335-1088 and I will set some out for you.

If you plant them this year, you will not get much fruit but next year, those vines will be established and give a good harvest. The berries are similar to a blackberry but appear several weeks earlier, are much larger and taste excellent. The deer are not interested in them nor are the birds.

The Choice is Ours to Make

January 2, 2025

Reflecting on this last year, I was hoping to do a somewhat philosophical piece, offering perspective for those grappling with maintaining well-being in a world fraught with climate crisis, violence and suffering.

It is impossible for me, however, to focus on the well-being of the privileged, without needing to suppress awareness of the ongoing agony of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel may have distracted attention from them, by its pager attacks on Lebanese civilians, its daily bombing raids on Syria’s infrastructure, its ongoing provocations of Iran, its devastating assaults on the West Bank, its targeting of Yemen, not to mention the internal chaos and societal disintegration that is occurring inside its own “borders”, but Gazans suffer on. Their suffering has not stopped for one day since the week-long truce a year ago.

Gazan’s broken Ministry of Health can no longer track numbers of dead and missing. The UN’s civil defense teams, first responders and groups like Medecins sans Frontieres have repeatedly had to withdraw personnel from attempted aid deliveries because too many have been killed by targeted Israeli fire.

Gaza now has the largest number of child amputees in the world. Doctors in locations throughout Gaza report gunshot wounds to children directly in the head. Over 70% of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once. The most recent report of Human Rights Watch details Israel’s deprivation of clean water to Gazans as a genocidal tool. Amnesty International’s latest report is on Israel’s horrifying practice of starvation as a means of genocide.

Kamal Adwan Hospital was one of the last semi-functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, an area which was formerly home to close to one million people.

This same hospital was invaded by the Israeli army a year ago and soldiers found no evidence of Hamas presence. I remember an October, 2023, conversation with a Zionist friend who was extremely concerned that Israel had bombed another hospital, Al Shifa, and felt huge relief that the bombing may have been caused by Gazans. Israel had posted fake audio tapes of Gazans supposedly planning to attack the hospital, which were soon discredited. (The strong Israeli accents were a clear giveaway.) The “most moral army in the world” surely would not bomb a hospital, according to my friend’s Zionist perspective. I sometimes wonder how this person now manages to justify the Israeli military’s relentless, intentional pattern of targeting not only hospitals and medical care facilities throughout Gaza, but also killing those attempting to bring aid – food, water & medical supplies – to these facilities.

The cruelty of Israeli execution of this particular target – hospitals – is hard to fathom. Reports by Palestinian journalist Tareq Hajjaj from inside Gaza describe robots dropping boxes of explosives outside Kamal Adwan hospital for remote detonation; medics returning to their homes for rest only to have their home blown up upon their arrival; soldiers forcing women

evacuees to remove all their clothing; denial of delivery of food, water and medicines, and soldiers’ videos celebrating the humiliation and suffering of their Palestinian victims.

Dr. Hassam Abu Safiya, the steadfast and courageous Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, says they have pleaded for help from the world for months now; he details the military’s land and air siege of over 75 days on the hospital and makes clear his intention: “We will leave when the last Palestinian leaves”. (Tareq Hajjaj, Mondoweiss, 27 December, 2024.) As of December 27, 2024, the hospital, which held 350 patients and staff, has been rendered inoperable, has been mostly destroyed by fire, and is cut off from communication with the outside world. Dr. Abu Safiya along with numerous others, has been taken by the army, his whereabouts unknown.

So now another of the few hospitals still semi-functioning in northern Gaza has been destroyed, with doctors, patients and hospital staff forced at gunpoint to leave and walk south. Israel now has built a 2.5km. wide “corridor” separating northern Gaza from southern Gaza, so it is able to delineate the area it plans to steal, and according to the Israeli “General’s Plan”, rebuild and populate with settlers.

Further to that end, Israel has established a “resort” (Jonathan Ofir, Mondoweiss, 27 December,2024) in a desalination plant in northern Gaza, near the now-decimated, heavily populated Jabalia refugee Camp. There its soldiers can enjoy their r & r, replete with popcorn, cotton candy & espresso machines, massages & games rooms. Yoav Zeitoun, an embedded journalist writing about the resort for Israeli paper Ynet (in Hebrew) considers it to be a permanent establishment. “We make dreams come true for the soldiers”, he quotes the military as saying. Jonathan Ofir compares it to the chilling movie about the family living next door to Auschwitz, Zone of Interest, but says it’s different because this “resort” is not at the edge of a concentration camp, it is inside one.

This is a time for us to stand up for what Helena Cobban calls “the rules-based international order” (italics mine). As she puts it, “during 2024 Israel and its close collaborator, the Biden administration … punched ever more forcefully and more destructively through all the norms and structures that have constituted that order since 1945”. One of the key components of international law was the protection of hospitals and medics during warfare. “Hospitals…are afforded special protections in times of conflict under the Geneva Conventions and all other instruments of international humanitarian law. (Globalities, Just World Education, 28 December, 2024.) We in the West, who, it might be pointed out, created that body of international law, are fully complicit. Can we stand with the majority of humankind in upholding these institutions, systems and carefully crafted laws designed to protect civilians and wounded soldiers alike in times of violent conflict? Or will we allow that moral vision, supposedly intended for all humanity, to collapse under the weight of Western hegemony? If not, our blatant hypocrisy will be our legacy. The choice is ours to make.

Humanity Must Awaken From The Dream Of Separation

January 2, 2025

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

DEC 27, 2024

We suffer because we erroneously believe we are separate. It’s why humans suffer as individuals, and it’s why humanity creates so much suffering as a collective.

As individuals we suffer because we create a psychological self-construct at a young age comprised of memories and mental stories, and we imbue that psychological self with the power of belief by identifying with it. There is nothing in the raw data of our immediate sensory experience which tells us that we’re a separate “me” character standing apart from the rest of the world who must secure its own interests against those of others, but because we identify with the psychological self-construct, we believe its stories telling us that this is the case.

The believed experience of being a tiny “me” character moving through linear time in an ever-changing world is one of constant fear, insecurity, lack, deficiency, and discontentment. It’s a completely false dilemma because we’ve never actually experienced separateness except in our own imaginations, but it feels real because we believe our mental stories about it.

We generate suffering in much the same way as a collective. We imagine ourselves to be separate from other humans, so we compete against them, and can even be convinced to fight wars against other groups of them. We imagine ourselves to be separate from nature, so we work to dominate and enslave it even when doing so destroys the biosphere we ourselves depend on for survival.

All our systems for driving human behavior at mass scale are built around the premise of competition. Competing against each other for jobs and wealth. Competing against rival businesses and corporations for money. Competing against other nations for planetary dominance. Competing against the non-human organisms of this planet for profit and security.

These systems of competition give rise to inequality, exploitation, poverty, injustice, oligarchy, violence, war, tyranny, and ecocide. And it’s all based on fictional stories with no real existence outside our own skulls.

Humanity has the ability to awaken from the dream of separation. Humans have been writing about this for thousands of years — that’s all Buddha was ever talking about. This potential has been sleeping within us this entire time, just waiting for the right moment to become activated.

The fact that enlightenment is a real thing that humans are very capable of attaining has massive implications for our species and the existential hurdles it faces at this point in history. It’s like a Chekhov’s gun that’s been sitting there since the opening scene of this play we’ve been acting out for millennia, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that the mounting pressures of our time may cause it to go off before the final curtain.

If humanity can unlock this latent potential, every single one of the problems we now face can be very easily resolved. As soon as we are no longer transfixed by hallucinations of separation, we’ll have the ability to move from a competition-driven species to a collaboration-driven one, because we’ll no longer be ruled by fear and insecurity. The propaganda which tells us to compete and hate and toil and hoard will no longer find any egoic purchase within us, and we can shrug off the old systems of control like a heavy coat on a warm day.

I see a great many reasons to have hope for the future, but one of the biggest is the fact that there’s this potential sitting right there within each of us just waiting to be unlocked. As our very survival on this planet is becoming increasingly threatened by the illusion of separation, we may find ourselves at the point where, to quote Anais Nin, “the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

________________

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FERAL AND FREE

January 2, 2025

FERAL AND FREE

Last night

an apparition

of fascism

appeared

in my bedroom window

uninvited.

A cavernous

floating mouth

hovering in the sky

spewing forth

fire and brimstone.

A bilious barrage

of bitter words,

pernicious proclamations,

and seductive lies

flying out

in all directions

from the gaping

skull cavity on high,

borne on the wings

of metallic

birds of prey,

robotic drones

dropping

toxic word bombs,

broadcasting

insidious invective,

arsenic-coated seedlings

helicoptering down,

taking root

in the sad soil

of despair,

a billowing breeze

lifting

the fig-leaf

of democracy

to reveal

a grinning corpse.

An airborne

propaganda exercise

complete with

weapons of mass distraction,

bellicose braggadocio,

scented with

the musky lure

of million-dollar checks,

a litany

of manipulative phrases

designed for

pulling the wool

over your own eyes.

Screaming, Yes!

Shouting, No!

Bellowing,

I am

the Waking Dream!

I am

the Apocalyptic Nightmare!

I am

the Devil Incarnate!

I am

The Chosen One!

I am

the Great Redeemer!

Attention Fellow Patriots:

Your settled world

has exploded.

Stand by

locked and loaded.

Daddy’s home

to abort

bodily autonomy

to thwart

what’s queer.

Never fear,

I will protect you

from harm’s way.

I can fix it

today,

if you only

will obey!

Listen up!

51 America First songs

flag-waving singalongs

from annexation ballads

to deportation blues

clothing

their taunting lyrics

in anthemic nostalgia

for an America

that never was.

Something is rotten

in the hamlets

of the great

State of Hallmark

and the stench

is palpable

throughout the world.

Political talking heads

trumpeting

recycled

Orwellian refrains,

Freedom is Slavery!

War is Peace!

Ignorance is Strength!

A word salad

of plausible denial

raining down

on farm

field

and town,

exposing

invisible wounds,

invoking suppressed

feelings of anger

deeply embedded

in the manufactured delusions

of American exceptionalism,

revealing

the smug pretense

of liberal bromides,

the crash and burn logistics

of colonial genocides.

Spare us all

another airbrushed erasure,

another pastoral scene,

placid cattle

lazily grazing

in the meadow

slowly sauntering

back to the barn

at days end,

the gentle

sound of bells

tenderly tinkling

in the bucolic

glow of sunset.

Iconic

contented cows

passively

locked up

upon arrival

for milking

or slaughter

the following day.

Flipping the script

on such sentimentalized

scenes of subservience,

I imagine

a viral outbreak

of mad cow dis-ease,

a contagion of rebellion,

dis-contented cattle

waking

In the morning

to the rancid smell

of sour milk,

to the fear

of sudden death,

mistreated malcontents

mooing madly,

refusing

to be cowed

by electricity

or stalled

by domesticity,

ripping out

industrial milking machines,

tearing down the barn,

trampling the fence,

running amok,

stampeding droves

without drovers

hoofing it

to the periphery,

foraging together,

beyond tether,

rewilding

on the margins.

Vowing

never to be herded,

let us seek

a new emancipatory myth,

not mired

in fascist demagoguery

or party politricks,

not resorting

to the tired theatrics

of choosing

which turd

will lead the herd.

Some turds

might smell worse

than others,

yet we are

unwilling

to hold our noses

and vote,

passionately rejecting

citizenship by rote,

loudly denouncing

the humiliating hypocrisy

of outhouse democracy,

rejecting electoral “realities”,

affirming elective affinities,

heralding

the surreal complicities

of an anarchic life

feral and free.

Letter to the Editor – Hersh Chernovsky

January 2, 2025

BC Ferries Compensation

While compensation is not provided for sailing cancellations that are outside of our control (e.g. weather, medical emergencies, rescue operations, natural disasters, security and law enforcement issues, terrorism/security threats, etc.), if a cancellation within our control occurs (e.g. mechanical issues, crew availability, human error) that prevents you from reaching your final destination on the same day, as planned, you can submit a compensation request with your receipts to our Customer Relations department.

We provide compensation and reimbursement for reasonable gas, meal, accommodation and alternate transportation expenses that you would not have incurred otherwise.

Compensation policies

If you incur out-of-pocket expenses due to a sailing delay or cancellation within our control, on a sailing you booked, that prevented you from reaching your destination on your planned day of travel, you may submit a request for compensation and reimbursement. This also applies for customers who have received a ticket/boarding pass at the terminal to travel on one of our non-bookable routes where alternate travel is not available.

We review requests for reasonable expenses that qualify within our guidelines. Itemized receipts* along with tickets or refund receipts for attempted travel are required. If approved, we will provide reimbursement up to our maximum amounts, posted below, to the booked customer.

Guidelines for reimbursement

Gas

Reimbursement is based on the distance in kilometres between your original departure and arrival terminals via alternate departure and arrival terminals.

See the automobile allowance rates on the Government of Canada website here. We will confirm kilometers submitted using Google Maps.

Meals

In the event of a cancellation within our control where no other sailing options on the same day were provided, we will cover meal expenses as applicable (per person) up to a maximum of:

Breakfast: $20
Lunch: $25
Dinner: $30

Itemized receipts are required*. Alcoholic beverages are not valid for reimbursement.

Accommodation

We will provide reimbursement at the lowest necessary room price proposed by the service provider or to a maximum of $200 CAD per night.

Contact us for information about how to submit your itemized receipts*. You can also mail your receipts to:

BC Ferries Attn:
Customer Relations
Suite 500-1321 Blanshard Street
Victoria, BC V8W 0B7

When the Broken are Allowed to Rule

January 2, 2025

When the Broken are Allowed to Rule

Our country is weak

And our governments are weaker

The end game is visible to all but the sleepers

The best way forward, before it’s too late

Is to drop the charades and ditch all the hate

We thought we were free but we never were

We’ve lived off the backs of the forever poor

Everything’s been handed to the global astute

All we are now is low hanging fruit

Brace yourselves, for what’s to come

The political system is coming undone

There’s a long road ahead as the truth is revealed

If we can’t speak freely, we will never be healed

The genie has been freed

From it’s tight little prison

There’s no end to the potential

Of the newly enlightened risen

Chicken News

January 2, 2025

Islanders Don’t Believe Sacking the Ferry Advisory Committees Will Ensure Better Decisions and Inclusion.

December 19, 2024

Islanders Don’t Believe Sacking the Ferry Advisory Committees Will Ensure Better Decisions and Inclusion.

The following letters to BCF CEO Jimenez and the BCF Commissioner regarding the sacking of the Ferry Advisory Committees concludes my two year campaign for justice. This campaign began when the Friend’s of Denman Forests stood up to BCF to prevent the indiscriminate axing of our trees at the Gravelly Bay terminal and ended with Juan Barker and I appealing to the Office of the Ombudsperson to investigate the BCF Commissioner for breach of her mandate to hold BCF accountable and to balance OUR needs with other stakeholders. We should hear shortly if the Ombudsperson will initiate an investigation.

Now that regional newspapers like the Comox Valley Record and the Times Colonist have been bought by Glacier Media, a right-wing multinational conglomerate, I am personally grateful for publications like the Grapevine in which we can still freely express our grievances with governments and the industries they support.

___________________________________________________

Dear CEO Jimenez:

I am sending the pasted appeal to the Commissioner and letter to Vancouver Island editors about your sacking of the Ferry Advisory Committees again just in case my first attempt did not reach your office.

By sacking the FACs, islanders feel that keeping a failed experiment, the Baynes Sound Connector, in service for an entire decade will continue indefinitely now that we do not have a voice in decision-making that the FAC system provided.

Keeping a cabled ferry, which industry experts predicted could not do the job, in service for a decade is causing immense suffering and substantial expenses for islanders and island businesses, some of whom are forced to move off island. The threat of increased fares will have its obvious profound negative effect.

I understand you are investigating the degree of islander’s discontent about being stuck with an unreliable vessel. Take it from me– Islanders are angry and feel hopeless given the persistent claims that the ferry provides a service that the FACTS and our daily experience deny.

Islanders had high hopes that the failures of past leadership would be corrected when you became CEO. Your continued support, however, of ex-CEO Collin’s decisions about the cable ferry and associated pattern of deceptive reporting in annual reports (zero cancellations for Route 21 were recorded in the 203/24 annual report to the Commissioner) has been more than disappointing.

Islanders feel especially vexed that Route 23, which competes with Route 21 as the most profitable for BCF, received two electric ferries while Route 21 remains stuck with a single inadequate dud. Quadra, moreover, has substantially fewer residents.

Islanders feel that we continue to pay the price for former BCF leadership’s mistakes. There is only one solution: provide Route 21 with an island class vessel.

Respectfully,

Sharon Small,

Denman Island Resident and

Retired Business College Professor

________________________________________________________________

Dear Commissioner Hage:

Pasted below is a letter submitted to the editors of various Vancouver Island newspapers about the sudden sacking of the FACs and the Premier’s silence and yours, despite the Conservatives calling for keeping the FACs.

How are shocked ferry-dependent islanders to interpret the ongoing disconnect between what you state the Coastal Ferry Act authorizes the Commissioner to do–directing BCF in your May 2024 letter to improve its engagement efforts with the highly valued FACs– and BCF sacking the FACs?

Many Hornby and Denman islanders, whose ferry insecurity is profound, feel victimized for exposing BC Ferries’ deceit and incompetence with respect to the Baynes Sound Connector. BCF continues to claim service has improved and attempts to prove this fantasy by underreporting cancellations in annual reports (zero for 2023/24) and claiming in the press after lengthy cancellations that service has improved. Recently received FOI information confirms, however, that all claims of saving tax dollars, the environment and providing service on a par with the Quinitsa are false.

Rumour has it that after an FAC meeting in 2015 in which the ex-CEO extolled the virtues of the proposed cable ferry, ferry staff overheard him exclaim that as far as he was concerned, “Denman Island could piss in a pot,” an expression for “keep the people poor”.

Keeping Route 21 service poor, despite competing with Quadra as the most profitable short routes, which received two new ferries apparently, has apparently the blessings of the NDP.

Thus, again, islanders appeal to you and to Premier Eby to hold BCF accountable for ending the hypocrisy and for providing Route 21 with a reliable island class ferry, like the one designed by a retired master skipper who foreshadowed the service unreliability in 2013 because a cable ferry could not do the job.

Respectfully,

Sharon Small,

Denman Island Resident

Shucking Oysters: The Great Waive Offs

December 19, 2024

Last term the BC NDP waived all public consultation for new building developments. The logic: fast-tracking equals less red tape, and more housing will be built faster. And then they put all mining applications in the express lane, allowing big business free rein without restraint. “You’ll see more and more permitting reform,” Premier Eby ominously announced.

Before even applying for an environmental permit, proponents would have to navigate extensive Indigenous community consultations, provincial ministries, and federal bureaucracies. No more. In the fall, federal, provincial and territorial governmental ministries and agencies agreed to streamline the approval process of proposed mining projects.

Call me skeptical. To think that big business will behave and not bend the rules is as ignorant as believing that if we use one sheet of toilet paper we will save the world. Governments do not control big business. Governments are beholden to big business who are beholden to shareholders. Industry gets rewarded for polluting and losing money. It doesn’t matter what they do, because the government is always there to clean up the mess.

The latest example of BC’s free-range permitting: waiving Environmental Assessments on all new wind turbine projects. Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix announced the exemption in early December. “We need these new energy generation projects urgently to meet growing demand for power and accelerate our efforts to build a prosperous and inclusive clean economy,” Dix said. “We’re going to work together with BC Hydro, First Nations and proponents to get these projects built quickly, responsibly and efficiently, and get those turbines spinning.”

Those espousing the merits of wind farms (green washing) are avoiding the obvious. Wind turbines are made from steel, cement, and plastics, the embodiment of fossil fuels. Their foundations are reinforced concrete, their towers, motors, and housings are steel (nearly 200 tons for every megawatt generated), and their massive blades made of plastic resins are impossible to recycle (about 15 tons for one mid-sized turbine).

A proposed wind farm in the middle of Strathcona Regional Park is one of nine renewable BC Hydro energy projects that got the go-ahead this month. Called the Brewster Wind Project, partnering with the Wei Wai Kum First Nations, the plan outlines a capacity of up to 200 megawatts with approximately 30 wind turbines. Megan Hunter, with Capstone Infrastructure, the Toronto-based company that pitched the Vancouver Island project, said they were surprised to learn of the Environmental Assessment exemption.

“BC has strong environmental protections, and we plan to complete robust consultation and engagement with Indigenous groups and the local community, as their input will improve the project,” Hunter wrote in an email. “Wildlife, environmental, noise, and cultural impact studies will still be undertaken.”

Wind farms come with certain challenges, says UBC professor emeritus Michael Healey. Some of these include the potential to harm birds, a significant land footprint, and noise concerns. Wind turbines kill millions of birds and insects a year, and hundreds of thousands of bats. Studies have proven that offshore wind turbines harm whales, dolphins, seals and porpoises through the sound waves produced.

“I personally don’t think it is a good idea to begin any large industrial project without a thorough environmental analysis regardless of who is involved,” Healey shared. “Saying that because First Nations are involved means environmental issues will be fully taken into account is bogus. The government typically sweetens the pot for elected Indigenous governments to get them to accept projects they would probably otherwise reject,” he said.

Tahsis Mayor Martin Davis, a regional district director and cave researcher, called the decision to exempt the EAs “surprising.” When the wind project was pitched late in the summer, Davis said it would be important to contact caving and paleontology experts to assess the area. He pointed out some of the ridges have limestone, which would need to be avoided to ensure the turbines remain stable. Davis added that if there are caves in the area, they could easily be critical habitats for bats.

For decades the wind energy industry has put out a steady stream of misleading information about its impact on wildlife. They continue to claim that the impact of wind turbines is relatively low, and compare the bird deaths it causes to no more than those of house cats or buildings. The difference is, most of the birds killed by domestic cats and collisions with buildings are small, like robins and sparrows. With big birds, as in owls and eagles, with lower reproductive rates, their deaths have a far greater impact on the population of their species.

Not surprising, the government of Canada website has no references to impacts on wildlife, just the negative impact on humans from the “whooshing/swishing” noise that wind turbines make. They cryptically warn, “This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of references nor an indication that Health Canada supports any of the conclusions in these publications.” With bald-headed transparency, they admit they will only accept research that strengthens “the evidence base that supports decisions, advice and policies regarding wind turbine development proposals, installations and operations in Canada.” In other words, blowhards and windbags, need only apply.

With files from Black Press Media.