An aerial view of Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound. Photo: TJ Watt
With increasingly privatized forests and a dangerous reliance on industry paid professionals, B.C. is facing a crash in harvest volumes, the closure of mills and the loss of old-growth forests
Written by Daniel Pierce, published by the Narwhal
When 12,000 people showed up on the remote coast of Vancouver Island in the summer of 1993 for the Clayoquot Sound blockades, history was in the making.
It was one of the largest acts of mass civil disobedience in Canadian history, with almost 1,000 people arrested in what would become known as the War in the Woods. The arrests of youth and elders were seen on television screens and in newspapers around the world.
“We needed to put Clayoquot Sound on the map,” recalls Valerie Langer, who was a young literacy teacher at the time. Langer, who had travelled to Vancouver Island on a tree-planting contract, would become one of the core organizers of the Clayoquot Sound blockades and helped found the group that later became ForestEthics, now Stand.earth…
