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British Columbia’s pristine Wilderness Provincial Park is the size of Switzerland, but its safeguarding is in the hands of a small First Nations group, hunters, fishermen, local environmental groups and Wade Davis, ’s modern-day Indiana Jones. As big industry threatens to enter the , how will this small band of sentries protect Canada’s Serengeti? By Anthony Bonello Photos by Jordan Manley

ray collingwood, co-owner of Collingwood Bros. Guides & Outfitters, based in Smithers, , cooks a freshly caught two-pound arctic grayling on the fire, while Canada’s celebrated anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, clad in a 10-gallon hat and faded blue MEC Gore-Tex, talks. He explains how 20 kilometres upstream, the first drops of the mighty begin their descent, first into Tuaton Lake, then Laslui Lake and past Ray’s smouldering fire before continuing to snake a further 600 kilometres to the Pacific Ocean. A solid day-long hike to the west and you’ll reach the Sacred Headwaters, the name given to the high mesa where the Nass, Skeena and Stikine Rivers are born; together they are three of the most important salmon-bearing waterways in North America. Each of them is currently threatened by development proposals that Wade Davis on the Upper Stikine River. would see a complete industrialization of the landscape. The tradi- tional peoples of the region know the simple act of communing with and eating from the land is a subtle demonstration of loyalty and resistance, and Collingwood, Davis and a host of others are trying to impart the importance of leaving this untouched wilderness alone. Rob Lesser, a nomadic whitewater kayaker in the 1970s and 80s, passed through the Sacred Headwaters and became the first person protectors to paddle the Class V to VI rapids of the Stikine River’s Grand Canyon in 1981. Regarded as the K2 of rivers, the Stikine has seen fewer than 50 people successfully paddle the canyon, an 80-kilome- tre, and at points 300-metre-deep, cobalt gouge in the earth’s sur- face. Two metres at its narrowest point and fed by significant rivers in their own right, the , Klappan, and Spatsizi, the canyon’s of the Sacred summer 2012 CMC 57 The notion of taking from a place while simultaneously protecting it may seem contradictory from the outside looking in, but for those who use the land, it is how one comes to understand it. And it’s what keeps them there.

Ray Collingwood is co-owner of Collingwood Bros. Guides & Outfitters and a staunch advocate for the preservation of the remote Spatsizi Wilderness Park he calls home.

water heaves through in a deafening roar. “All the hydraulic pres- mented and understaffed provincial parks. The Spatsizi Plateau we encountered in two long seasons perhaps a dozen visitors.” Back predator-prey system of the sort that once dominated the North sure of that river is pounding through there. It’s a terrifying place,” Wilderness Provincial Park, 1.6-million acres at the heart of the then, it was for Davis an opportunity to experience the wild as John American continent. recalls Lesser from his home in Boise, Idaho. “When you go through Sacred Headwaters, has only ever had one ranger team since its cre- Muir had in all of his travels. Following his post, Davis spent time with the Collingwoods it, you come away changed. The place impresses itself upon the ation in 1975. Back then, half of that team was Wade Davis, famed In 1879, when naturalist and author Muir took a paddlewheeler while researching for a book. During this period, he deepened activity. It imprints on you. It’s a lifetime experience.” for his research in the traditional use of psychotropic drugs and the up the lower third of the Stikine, he described it as “a Yosemite a his connection to the land and its people, particularly a charis- What is the pinnacle of whitewater kayaking for Lesser, the Haitian Vodoun tradition, among other things. hundred miles long.” Muir never made it past the Grand Canyon matic Gitxsan elder named Alex Jack. Jack was unwilling to share Stikine’s Grand Canyon is also a length of plumbing integral to the “Our job description was deliciously vague: wilderness assess- to the Spatsizi, a plateau that supports spectacular populations of his stories initially, and Davis relates his experience earning Jack’s drainage of the Sacred Headwaters. One might expect that a place ment and public relations,” recounts Davis of his 1978 posting to Osborne caribou, , bears, wolves and the largest lambing confidence. The story follows that a hunter had shot a moose of such relative splendour would be a crown jewel on Canada’s Spatsizi. “Aside from the guide outfitters, Reg and Ray Collingwood, herd of Stone sheep in the world. Often referred to as the “Serengeti above Tuaton Lake, but it was too late to butcher it, so the hunter national parks map, but in reality the area consists of six frag- and their small crew of wranglers, cooks, bush pilots, and hunters, of Canada,” the Spatsizi is a place that exemplifies a healthy, intact took only the head as a trophy and left the meat. Ray Collingwood

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ordered Davis to go retrieve the meat. “I had never butchered “Our job description was deliciously vague: wilderness assess- a moose in my life. I had probably never actually seen a dead moose,” explains Davis. “Then Ray forgot to give me a knife, and ment and public relations. Aside from the guide outfitters, we all I had was this pen knife. He didn’t say how much to bring encountered in two long seasons perhaps a dozen visitors.” back, therefore, I assumed he wanted all of it, so I just started — Wade davis, referring to his 1978 posting in the spatzizi chopping it up. I carried the whole 2,000 pounds to the canoe, and the next day paddled it down to the camp.” “Gee, I don’t know how you do it,” commented Alex Jack at the dock. “You got a lot of respect.” As they dragged the meat to the smokehouse, Jack began to open up. “It’s funny. I kinda remember now; I got this story,” he said. “Come by my place tonight.” That night Jack began to tell Davis about mythology that he would impart to Davis over 35 years. “They were all stories of We-Gyet, the trickster transformer of Gitxsan law, says Davis. “They are all stories of human folly against the landscape.” Davis went on to become a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, working to preserve the wisdom of ancient cultures and how they might be applied to a Western world- view. Despite focusing his attention on the distant corners of the globe, Davis remains a staunch advocate for the protection of the Sacred Headwaters and its cultural treasures. In 2003, he penned a National Geographic article on the myth and history of the Stikine, and he recently published the book, The Sacred Headwaters: A Fight to Save the Stikine, Skeena and Nass. While Davis kept moving — returning occasionally to his home at Ealue Lake on the Stikine when not in Washington, DC, or in the field — the

C Collingwoods stayed put.

M though in his late sixties, with a substan- Y tial, graying beard and creases around his eyes that subtly and per-

CM petually smile, Ray Collingwood is still agile as he hikes up Terraze Mountain. In a high, raspy voice, he points out compressed grass MY where moose had lain down the previous evening. Five minutes CY further along the trail, he explains the thicket of forest to the

CMY south is where they stand during the day to avoid the bugs. They are minimally discernible features of the landscape, but he reads K them constantly and makes sense of them, a skill he learned from Tahltan hunters. Since 1969, he and his brother Reg have occupied the Spatsizi, accruing 12,000 hours in his Piper PA-12 bush plane, hiking the ridges, fishing the streams and hunting the valleys. For 42 years, Ray Collingwood has been constantly observing the landscape and making a home for his family in Spatsizi Lodge, a rustic cluster of cabins that sit corralled by the surrounding vast- ness on the edge of Laslui Lake. A float plane, the only means of reaching the outside world, sits tied to the dock. World-class trout fly-fishing and hunting for animals, such as moose, caribou, mountain goats, grizzlies and wolverines, has attracted guests to the lodge in the summer, affording the Collingwoods their livelihood; however, it also garnered the attention of Greenpeace in 1981. “Greenpeace flew into Spatsizi, Top: Pilot Billy Labonte soars above the Sacred Headwaters. Bottom: Ray Collingwood fishing the Stikine River. set up camp and physically harassed and followed our fishing and hunting clients in the field,” recounts Ray’s daughter, Carrie Collingwood. “This led to altercations and confrontations that Davis emphasizes the Collingwoods commitment to the land. height of land, indicating a much different landscape millions of eventually went to a court case.” “Ray knows more about the wildlife populations than anybody in years ago. Amongst the scree there are fossils and what seems to be Greenpeace lost the case and had to pay a financial settlement, government,” states Davis. “In a thousand quiet ways, he has stood traces of coal. and it highlighted that conservation is a deservedly fluid concept. up for the land at every opportunity, often at his own expense. That While the general population has yet to discover the abundance By noting its ebbs and flows, the Collingwoods and the people land has cost him a lot.” of natural wealth in this far corner of British Columbia, industry who hunt and fish in the Spatsizi are, by default, the people cata- has been aware of the cornucopia of resources here for over half loguing it. The notion of taking from a place while simultaneously atop the windy ridgeline, Ray wanders to a a century. Historically, the people of the Sacred Headwaters have protecting it may seem contradictory from the outside looking in, craggy edge and visits a monument to his son who died in a plane been open to the development of these reserves on the proviso but for those who use the land, it is how one comes to understand crash 20 years ago. On the other side, a small herd of mountain there is genuine, long-term economic benefit to the communities it it. And it’s what keeps them there. goats graze the slope below. Petrified trees straddle either side of the encroaches upon and that it doesn’t deface the places held dearest to

summer 2012 CMC 61 tofino ad cmc.pdf 1 09.04.12 1.41 PM

Zombies, Psychotropic Drugs and the Ghosts of Everest The brilliant and wildly exploratory life of Wade Davis Wade Davis is a 58-year-old ethnographer, anthropologist, ethnobotanist, writer, photographer, filmmaker and an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society. He divides his time between Washington, DC, and northern British Columbia. Born in Vancouver, Davis spent his early career working as a logger on Haida Gwaii, located in BC’s Queen Charlotte Islands, and also as a park ranger, river guide and hunting guide in the Spatsizi Plateau wilderness area. Then it got weird.

Davis Schultes

The book was better than the movie. Wade Davis claims The Serpent and the Rainbow was “one of the worst Hollywood movies in history.”

1974 is derived from. He spends over three bestselling book later adapted to morning glory seeds, LSD and aya- Davis begins an academic journey years in the Amazon and Andes, living motion picture. Davis receives approxi- huasca. The resulting two-hour film, at Harvard University, where he among 15 tribal groups in eight Latin mately $250,000 for the rights, which Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey, admits he “spent most of my first American nations. It is here he will try he puts towards his research for his explores the cultural significance year writing pamphlets and smashing the powerful hallucinogen ayahuasca Ph.D. Amidst controversy, he receives of psychedelic substances over the windows . . . demonstrating [against for the first of many times. his doctorate from Harvard. course of mankind’s existence. the Vietnam War].” His education at Harvard spans decades and nets him 1982 – 1985 1992 – present 2009 degrees in anthropology and biology, Davis travels to Haiti to study real-life As a documentary filmmaker who Davis delivers the CBC Massey and a Ph.D. in ethnobotany. zombies, humans previously thought has made over 20 films, Davis’s work Lectures on his book The Wayfinders: to have been brought back from death has appeared in 165 countries on the Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the 1974 by Voodoo ritual. He hypothesizes National Geographic channel. Most Modern World. Previous lecturers have At the age of 20, Davis accompanies zombies could be created through the recently, he is the principal charac- included Noam Chomsky, Margaret celebrated English author and explorer administration of two powders into ter in Grand Canyon Adventure, an Atwood and Martin Luther King Jr. Sebastian Snow as he crosses the the bloodstream: the first containing IMAX film currently screening in 55 Darién Gap on foot, an infamously tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and countries. For the pop culture connois- 2011 hostile, 160-kilometre-long tract of frequently fatal neurotoxin found in seurs, Davis’s work also inspired three Davis simultaneously releases two WHEAT VARIET Y PACK land between Panama and Colombia. the flesh of the pufferfish, and the episodes of The X-Files. books: The Sacred Headwaters, Snow documents the journey in his second a paste made from datura and Into the Silence: The Great War, 1976 book Rucksack Man. stramonium, that place the individual 2008 Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, WHEAT BEER 12 & 24 PACKS in a psychosis, as well as by the social From Canada to the Amazon, Davis an exploration into Everest and a 1974 and cultural beliefs of the Voodoo. travels exhaustively in the footsteps of “timeless portrait of an extraordinary Davis travels to the Andes for the first He writes two books on the subject, his mentor Richard Evans Schultes and generation of adventurers, soldiers, of many times to unravel the mysteries Passage of Darkness (1988) and The experiments with different substances and mountaineers.” The latter involves of the coca plant, from which cocaine Serpent and the Rainbow (1985), a including peyote, magic mushrooms, a decade of research.

their spirituality and heritage. The recently approved Galore Creek 4,000 kilometres of roads, several thousand wells, the excavation of gold and copper mine is one such development. So is the Kitimat entire mountains and the potential risk of acid drainage into the From the early days of Wheaten Ale to our flagship, award-winning LNG pipeline and port facility. In fact, there is no shortage of watersheds of the Nass, Skeena and Stikine Rivers. American Hefeweizen, Pyramid Breweries is passionate about approved proposals. But there are three distinct ones that will not Wade Davis imparts the magnitude of these developments. brewing great wheat beers. To celebrate this passion, Pyramid get the green light. “There are over 4,000 copper mines in the world,” notes Davis. proudly introduces a limited edition Wheat Variety Pack, which The most controversial proposals in Sacred Headwaters’ history “There are some places to put them and there are some places not includes four unique wheat beers, perfect for sharing with friends. are Imperial Metals’ proposed Red Chris open pit copper mine on to put them. To place one on Todagin is like drilling for oil in the the flank of Todagin Mountain, and Fortune Minerals’ anthracite Sistine Chapel.” Such developmental risks threaten a salmon fish- Quality Beers Worth Sharing. coal mine. The third and largest is a proposal by Shell Canada to ing industry worth $110 million on the Skeena alone, while also Since 1984. extract methane from shallow coal deposits in the Mount Klappan compromising a $116-million guide-outfitting industry of which

FACEBOOK.COM/PYRAMIDBREW @PYRAMIDBREW area via a process known as “fracking,” a relatively untested technol- the Collingwoods are a part of. Despite operating a business that ogy that has never been imposed in a landscape of salmon-bearing his daughter, Carrie, her husband, Billy, and their two kids are now rivers. First Nations and non-native peoples of the Coast Ranges are reliant on, Ray admits he would be willing to forego hunting and vehemently against these developments. In 2005, the Tahltan called fishing if the place were to be protected. for a moratorium on resource development and formed a blockade The one metric not represented by economics is the incalculable on the one road that allows heavy vehicle access to the proposed cost of losing cultures woven into being through stories and ancient PYRAMID BREWING CO.: SEATTLE, WA • BERKELEY, CA • PORTLAND, OR WWW.PYRAMIDBREW.COM development sites. Collectively, the above projects would entail over wisdom passed down over thousands of years. These stories come

summer 2012 CMC 63 stikine river WATER & WEALTH North imperial metals Jobs, development and the fine line of saying “yes” or “no” the collingwood’s spatsizi wilderness lodge

Historically, the people of the Sacred galore creek Headwaters have been open to the shell canada development of these reserves on the fortune minerals forrest kerr proviso there is genuine, long-term 37 economic benefit to the communities it encroaches upon and that it doesn’t decommissioned deface the places held dear­est to their wrangell, alaska bc rail grade spirituality and heritage. approved nass river • Forrest Kerr hydro project near Iskut • area Galore Creek gold & copper mine • Kitimat LNG pipeline & port facility enlarged at right

disputed British prince rupert • Fortune Minerals, coal mine at Mount Klappan Columbia 16 • Shell Canada, methane extraction at Mount Klappan terrace • Imperial Metals, Red Chris mine at Todagin Mountain

kitimat lng pipeline

One might expect that a place of such relative splendour would be a crown jewel on Canada’s national parks map, but in reality the area consists of six fragmented and understaffed provincial parks. from the land, enriching the Canadian narrative and informing been a major mercantile avenue of freighters for 400 years. This indigenous identity and spirituality. Currently there are a handful of country is the most pristine and beautiful left in the world. And non-profits working alongside First Nations and the Collingwoods no body knows about it,” comments Wade Davis. “The tourism to inform the public of what these developments entail. The business is a $4.5-trillion business. The total capitalization of every Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition (SWCC) is one of these mining company in the world doesn’t add up to a trillion dollars. The organizations. Shannon McPhail, a Hazelton resident and SWCC international travel business is also a business completely focused staff member, explains during a phone conversation how initially on authenticity and a level playing field because everybody with she was proactive about the proposed developments because it money can travel anywhere they want within 24 hours and they offered her husband — a pipe welder in Northern Alberta — local do. So if you want to compete internationally, you have to offer employment. “I never thought I would be the kind of person that something unique and authentic. And this country has authenticity would fight any kind of development,” admits McPhail. “But the in spades.” more I learned about coalbed methane, the more I realized that In Davis’s new book, The Sacred Headwaters, he quotes Tahltan it wouldn’t create jobs, it would eliminate the very economy we elder Mary Dennis. “The true measure of a Tahltan is not the color depend on up here.” of skin or the makeup of the blood, but the manner in which a Ali Howard, another SWCC member and former water polo person treats the land.” And Davis elaborates on this point. “I think player dove right into the fight to protect the rivers of Northern what Mary meant was that, in a sense, we all have a chance to be British Columbia. In 2009, she decided to swim the Skeena River, Tahltan,” he notes. “Not by ethnicity or by co-opting a heritage that a 600-kilometre expedition that took 26 days. Along the way, she is so powerfully and uniquely theirs but by expressing in spirit and visited with communities that would be affected by the proposed commitment a loyalty to place.” developments. For Howard, proof of just how unspoiled the Skeena In a region yet to capture a place in the collective consciousness largely remains was drinking the water directly from the river. “I in the same way that Yellowstone National Park or the Serengeti didn’t have a water bottle for the first half,” she explains. “I think does, there is a line in the sand. By Mary Dennis’s definition, the that is a pretty incredible thing, that 300 kilometres worth of the Collingwoods are most certainly keepers of the Spatsizi, the place at river is so pristine and unpolluted that the water is fresh enough to the very heart of the Sacred Headwaters. Behind them stand a cadre stick your face in and drink.” of individuals, such as Wade Davis and Ali Howard, who have pitted Another approach to protecting the Sacred Headwaters came in themselves against the region’s aesthetic, cultural, and gravitational 2006 when Iskut elders formally declared the Sacred Headwaters a forces to come away altered and impressed upon. As progress grinds Tribal Heritage Area. It was an area to be protected for traditional forward and humanity is encroaching on the Sacred Headwaters, land use and managed using a template similar to that of Gwaii one of the truly wild places that still exists, the question is: what are Haanas, the national park reserve and heritage site of the Haida we committed to? Nation located in the Queen Charlotte Islands. So far, little has come of it, but it does offer an alternative stimulus. The existing Whistler-based writer and filmmaker Anthony Bonello has been tourism and thriving guide-outfitter industries are testament to the published in NZ Climbing, Powder and The Ski Journal. He is potential for attracting revenue in a far less invasive manner. currently working on a stand up paddleboard film about the Great “People are always talking about the Amazon. The Amazon has Bear Rainforest.

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