Friends of Strathcona Park

This is the third in a series of articles on the history of Strathcona Park.

No one who took part in the 1988 Strathcona Blockade expected it to be fun, and it wasn’t.  It was exhausting, draining, and terrifying.  We hadn’t wanted to do it in the first place, and, when it was done, we certainly had no wish to do it again.   Against all predictions, we had “won” our battle with the government, (we had stopped the drilling in the park) but we all knew it wasn’t enough.    If we didn’t want to stage a blockade whenever the government “forgot”, once again, that it was supposed to be looking after our park, we had to do more.  We needed to introduce safeguards which would hopefully make it harder for government and commercial interests to continue destroying what so many of us had worked so very hard to protect. Read More…

This is the second in a series of articles on Strathcona Park. The first article talked about some of the history of Strathcona, which includes mining, damming, logging and various other abuses which were inflicted upon the park by commercial interests over the years. Although the park boundaries looked great on maps, they provided little protection, and inside these meaningless boundaries the park was being reduced to an empty shell. What’s more, it eventually became evident that the government, which was supposedly protecting the park, was actually quietly allowing commercial and industrial concerns to destroy large areas of the park for profit. Finally, in 1987, a group of dedicated people became angry enough to see if they could somehow bring this damaging process to a halt. In essence, they decided to try to force the government to start protecting the park, instead of assisting in its destruction. Read More…

The following is the reply to our request for a meeting with Minister Penner regarding recent changes to the Strathcona Park Master Plan:

Hello Mr. Milne,

On behalf of the Honourable Barry Penner, Minister of Environment for British Columbia I would like to thank you for your offer of a meeting. I apologize, Minister Penner is not available.  Please accept our regrets and thank you for the kind offer.

Sincerely,

Katrina Lewis

Administrative Coordinator

to the Honourable Barry Penner

Minister of Environment

Telephone:  (250) 387-1187

Fax:  (250) 387-1356

This is the first in a series of articles dealing with Strathcona Park. Although I write specifically about Strathcona, it should be obvious that changes to one provincial park are very likely to affect other parks in the system. In these articles I will try to show, using Strathcona Park as an example, that wilderness parks have always been on precarious footing in BC, and that things are no different in the present day.

Strathcona Park was created in 1911, and was the first provincial park in BC. In 1918, it was opened to prospecting and mining. What followed was a roller coaster ride of various levels of “protection”, and classification and re-classification, until, as the “flagship of the BC parks system”, it has been logged, mined, polluted and dammed to an almost unbelievable degree. In 1987, the government of the day carved an industrial corridor right through the centre of the park, opening it up to virtually any industrial or commercial activity, and dumped several areas, including the Bedwell valley, from the park entirely. Read More…