Log Booms on the Fraser
Log booms on the Fraser this morning lay close in to the tree-lined shore. The river was blue and utterly calm. The long line of booms along the irregular shape of the sandy river bank formed what looked like a series of ponds, peaceful and untouched.
Log booms. Canada's wealth of wood has been so much a part of our history, used to be so much a part of our economy in BC.
In the fifties and sixties, two or three of the huge logs then being harvested in the Skeena Valley were often enough to fill a logging truck. Through my northern childhood, the busy trucks plied the dusty gravel roads, carrying logs to mills running three shifts a day.
Throughout my childhood, the log booms in Kitimat Bay, in the Skeena, in Prince Rupert seemed so normal. I thought they had always been there, would always be there.
Flying in to the Terrace-Kitimat airport after some years away, I was shocked to see how the mountainsides that ringed the valley had been logged off -- clear as a shaven chin.
In 2007, in the interior of BC, I witnessed what the pine beetle had done. Mile after mile, hill after hill, the raw red and gray scars of disease encroached on every stand of healthy forest.
Today, as I regarded the idyllic-looking log booms from the vantage point of the Sky Train window, they reminded me of BC's forests, the background of my life, once so very much taken for granted.
Log booms. Canada's wealth of wood has been so much a part of our history, used to be so much a part of our economy in BC.
In the fifties and sixties, two or three of the huge logs then being harvested in the Skeena Valley were often enough to fill a logging truck. Through my northern childhood, the busy trucks plied the dusty gravel roads, carrying logs to mills running three shifts a day.
Throughout my childhood, the log booms in Kitimat Bay, in the Skeena, in Prince Rupert seemed so normal. I thought they had always been there, would always be there.
Flying in to the Terrace-Kitimat airport after some years away, I was shocked to see how the mountainsides that ringed the valley had been logged off -- clear as a shaven chin.
In 2007, in the interior of BC, I witnessed what the pine beetle had done. Mile after mile, hill after hill, the raw red and gray scars of disease encroached on every stand of healthy forest.
Today, as I regarded the idyllic-looking log booms from the vantage point of the Sky Train window, they reminded me of BC's forests, the background of my life, once so very much taken for granted.