Northword 2014 - 04

free

April / May 2014

bc’s top read

Air

quality

Blue birds

Cheese culture

Energy

alternatives

discover what’s new at www.northword.ca

Food

security

PROUDLY LOCAL. JUST LIKE YOU. 20 Years & Counting

2 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

1.800.487.1216

hawkair.ca

Volunteer • BénéVole sign up between now and October 2014 to volunteer for the 2015 Canada Winter Games. inscrivez vous aujourd`hui à octobre 2014 pour être bénévole durant les jeux d`hiver du Canada 2015.

4,500

Help us Host tHe

Largest

MULtisport

volunteer Hosts are needed

and cultural event in prince george’s History

nous avons besoin de

4 500 bénévoles

aidez-nous à présenter le plus grand événement multisports et culturel Jamais tenu à prince george

18 days

oF sports, arts, culture & entertainment

From across canada Jusqu’à 15 000 visiteurs de partout au pays

across canada

including sidney crosBy, steve nasH and catriona le may doan

100 000 anciens de partout au canada, dont sidney crosby, steve nash et catriona le may doan

share

Up to

15,000 Visitors

100,000 alumni

Build your resume at tHis once in a liFetime opportunity

your experience & entHusiasm witH us

aJoutez cette expérience unique à votre cv

partagez votre expérience et votre enthousiasme avec nous

18 Jours de sports, arts, culture et divertissement 19 sports officiels

@2015CanadaWintergames

4 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

story page 37

story page 32

story page 20

s t o r y p a g e 14

story page 12

‘14

Co ver Photo

issue no. 52

Spring is bustin’ out all over! Finally. Photo by Dan Moore. To see more of Dan’s work, go to www.mortusee.jalbum.net

Fea tures 8 10 12 14 16

By John Franken

29 34

20

Food Secure

Maintaining access to secure nutrition

By Norma Kerby

Holding Our Breath

30

Energy Alternatives

32

Airshed Management Society works on particulate problem

By Morgan Hite

How three innovative communities are rethinking energy

By Greg Horne

Rounding Up Northern Recycling

37

Untangling the Pipeline Debate What does LNG mean for BC

By Amanda Follett

Watching for Wildlife

Animal encounters in northern BC

By Matt J Simmons

Summit Lake Sojourners Stories of early settlement

By Hillary Crowley

The Search for Local Cheese Culture

By Emily Bulmer

Seymour Ridge Trail Map and trail guide

By Morgan Hite

How new programs are levelling the field

By Amanda Follett

Depa rtm en ts 7

18

Building a Home for Bluebirds to Roam

In Other Words

Editorial and cartoon from the seasoned and the silly

On the Fly

Fishing in northern BC

By Brian Smith

36 38

Top Culture

Explore the rural route to northern culture with UNBC’s Rob Budde

The Barometer

A seasonal reading of the Northwest

by Char Toews

Resource Directory

Services and products listed by category

Story Comm en ts?

Tell us what you’re thinkin’. Comment on any story at www.northword.ca

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 5

contents

story page 8

April / Ma y

Joanne Campbell

PUBLISHER/ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER

contributors

joanne@northword.ca t: 250.847.4600 f: 847.4668 toll free: 1.866.632.7688

Amanda Follett Hosgood EDITOR

amanda@northword.ca

Shannon Antoniak

ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE

shannon@northword.ca

Sandra Smith

LAYOUT, AD DESIGNER, NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE

sandra@northword.ca

Emily Bulmer is a longtime Smithereen who enjoys subjecting herself to unscientific experiments in living. She occasionally records her findings and reports positive results most of the time.

in daily and weekly newspapers, national magazines, and loves a good regional. She writes a regular column for Northword from her home in Terrace.

Hans Saefkow is an awardwinning editorial cartoonist, illustrator and set designer. If you see this man, do not approach him, feed him, or listen to his idle chatter. It is simply best not to encourage him.

Morgan Hite is a map-maker and writer who lives —and breathes—in Smithers with his wife and two sons, a cat, and a dog.

Rob Budde teaches creative writing and critical theory at the University of Northern British Columbia. He has published seven books (poetry, novels, interviews, and prose poems). His most recent book is Finding Ft. George from Caitlin Press.

Amanda Follett is a freelance

Norma Kerby is a Terrace-based writer and environmental consultant.

She is fascinated by adaptations of plants, people and other animals to northern living. Her favourite reading materials are tracks in the forest after a fresh snowfall.

NORTHWORD MAGAZINE Northword Magazine the only independent, regional magazine that covers northern BC from border to sea. Our goal is to connect northern communities and promote northern culture; we put a vibrant, human face on northern life with great articles and stunning images. Northword Magazine—BC’s top read, for a reason.

DISTRIBUTION | 10,000 copies are distributed four times a year for FREE, to over 300 locations in 33 communities across northern BC, reaching close to 40,000 readers.

For a complete list of distribution locations, log on to www.northword.ca, and click on “subscribe/find a copy.”

SUBSCRIPTIONS

$30 per year within Canada, $40 in the U.S., and $50 everywhere else.

Go to www.northword.ca and click on “subscribe.”

Ad deadline for June/July 2014 issue: May 9, 2014.

DISTRIBUTION: Bell II • Burns Lake • Chetwynd Dawson Creek • Fort St. John • Dease Lake • Dunster Ft. St. James • Fraser Lake • Granisle • Hazelton (Old Town) • Houston • Jasper • Kispiox • Kitimat • Masset McBride • Mackenzie • Moricetown • New Hazelton Old Massett • Port Clements • Prince George Prince Rupert • Queen Charlotte City • Quesnel Sandspit • Skidegate • Smithers • South Hazelton Stewart • Telegraph Creek • Telkwa • Terrace • Tlell Topley • Valemount • Vanderhoof • Wells

6 | APR/MAY 14 |

Charlynn Toews has published

www.n o rthword.ca

writer who wishes she owned real estate in Kitimat, but contents herself with putting the final touches on her straw bale house just outside Smithers.

Hilary Crowley is a freelance writer living at Summit Lake. Her nature and outdoor adventure columns have appeared in the Prince George Citizen. She also writes about her experiences in India, Bhutan and Tibet.

Facundo Gastiazoro is a freelance designer who focuses on logos, posters, layout and illustrations. Originally from Buenos Aires, Facundo is currently living in Smithers. His illustrations appear in every issue of Northword Magazine.

Greg Horne revels in climbing over mountains and under good ideas. Based in Hazelton with his partner and rescued mutt, Greg is currently charged up on local energy solutions that make sense for the North.

Brian Smith is a writer and photographer who has fly-fished BC’s waters for over 45 years. He recently published his second book, Seasons of a Fly Fisher, and lives with his wife Lois in Prince George.

John Franken is a retired teacher

operating Chickadee Acres B&B in Smithers. John and Sandi enjoy discussing Bulkley Valley sights, wildlife (especially birds) and environmental concerns with guests over a glass of wine.

BC’s Top Read MAIN OFFICE | Smithers

Box 817, 3864 2nd Ave, Smithers, BC, V0J 2N0 tel: 250.847.4600 fax: 250.847.4668 | toll free: 1.866.632.7688 | www.northword.ca

www.northword.ca CURRENT ARTICLES • PAST ISSUES READERS’ CONTRIBUTIONS CBC NEWS – BC, CANADA, WORLD

Legalities and limitations Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. No part of Northword Magazine, in print or electronic form, may be reproduced or incorporated into any information retrieval systems without written permission of the publisher.

Information about events, products or services provided is not necessarily complete. The publisher is not responsible in whole or in part for any errors or omissions.

The views expressed herein are those of the writers and advertisers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, staff or management.

Northword assumes no liability for improper or negligent business practices by advertisers, nor for any claims or representations contained anywhere in this magazine. Northword reserves the right to cancel or refuse advertising at the publisher’s discretion.

In no event shall unsolicited material subject this publication to any claim or fees. Northword welcomes submissions but accepts no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Copyright in letter and other materials sent to the publisher and accepted for publication remains with the author, but the publisher and its licensees may freely reproduce them in print, electronic and other forms. Please refer to www.northword.ca for contribution guidelines.

editorial

In Other Words

What colour is happiness?

by Joa n n e C a mpb el l ed i tor ial@no rt hwo rd. c a

Blue is the colour of happiness.

In 1908, Maurice Maeterlinck of Belgium wrote L’Oiseau Bleu (The Bluebird of Happiness). In this Nobel Prize-winning play, the son and daughter of a poor woodcutter are sent out by a fairy to search the world for the Bluebird of Happiness. On their quest, they learn to respect their environment and cherish their elders, and discover that life’s greatest joy is found in the journey, not the destination, the search, not the reward. Ultimately, material happiness can’t compare to the warmth and happiness to be found in one’s own home.

Of course, I only learned of Maeterlinck’s play when I started to research bluebirds for this piece.

My pleasure in seeing bluebirds is pure and simple, but I must say that reading the moral of this story adds to my happiness—as any ideology that conforms to my own beliefs is wont to do.

We’re all about respecting our environment and cherishing our elders. As our readers know, travelling is fun, interesting, mind-expanding, but even though the journey is the most interesting part of the trip, the best place to unpack is home, making it the exception to the rule about journeys and destinations.

The colour of unhappiness? I don’t know; does news have a colour?

The news is usually on in my car or on the TV, online forums, Facebook feeds and e-newsletters.

It constantly alerts me to potential threats to our environment, that access to healthcare is under attack, jobs are either scarce or of the wrong kind, quality education is either too hard to find or too expensive to afford. Marinating my poor adrenal glands in a media-fed stew of global climate change, arctic vortexes and 100-year droughts, mysterious oil leaks and fracking earthquakes, exploding oil cars, genetically modified whoknows-what’s-next, and close encounters with rogue asteroids—well, it can take a toll on one’s sense of humour.

And then, a bluebird. A bluebird is just the ticket to get me off the depression train and onto a flight

hans saef kow

Driving home from work I travel the back road; it’s long and straight with fallow fields fringed with forest on either side. The way rises ahead of me, disappearing in the distance as it turns a corner at the top of the far-off hill. Today, the sun is warm, the sky is wide open, the radio—and the news—is off.

Suddenly, I glimpse a flash on the upside of the wide ditch: a brilliant swatch of blue sky skips and swoops in the air along the fence line. Then another! And another! Either the sky is falling… or the bluebirds are back.

to hope.

This issue of Northword is positively full of positivity. Oh sure, you’ll read about some of the issues we have in the North surrounding airshed quality, recycling and food security, but in those stories you’ll also see how those issues are being addressed. Plus, you can learn where the wild things are (bear-watching, anyone?), how to make your own cheese (confess, you’ve always wanted to), and—in Brian Smith’s column, On the Fly, our newest addition to Northword—get tips on flyfishing our northern rivers.

And if you want to go straight to hope, go to

Greg Horne’s article on energy alternatives: How three innovative communities are re-thinking energy. You’ll learn about northern communities that are heating with biomass or bacteria, and converting trashed plastic to oil. It’s amazing, heartening stuff: almost as good as the first bluebird of spring.

To learn more about the lovely mountain bluebird, check out the article by John Franken.

And turn the news off, for a little while.

N

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 7

bluebirds

Placing nest boxes along fence posts or in t re e s i n v i t e s b l u e b i rd s t o m a k e a h o m e i n yo u r ya rd o r n e i g h b o u r h o o d .

Building a home for bluebirds to roam

nken jo h n fr a

O n ce bl u ebi rds h av e ch os en th ei r s i te, th e fem al e b e g i n s bu i l di n g a n es t from l ocal g r a s s e s .

by Joh n Fr a nke n

john franken

j fr anken@bulkley.n e t

My fascination with bluebirds began in spring 1977. Building our first home, a log house, on a small acreage just west of Houston, BC had been a dream. We had just finished the final round of logs when, much to my dismay, I discovered that our round of logs were not level: one end was 12 inches lower than the other.

It was at that moment that a flock of bright blue migrating mountain bluebirds landed on the logs.

This became a spiritual experience, soothing my frustration and sparking my passion for bluebirds.

I started researching and discovered that, across North America, people and groups were making places for these birds to build their nests. Traditionally, bluebirds nested in tree cavities chiselled out by woodpeckers. However, continued landclearing and the use of treated fenceposts had reduced the number of nesting sites, affecting the population of bluebirds across the continent.

Mountain bluebirds (Sialia currucoides) are one of three species found in North America: the two others are the western bluebird (Sialia Mexicana) and eastern bluebird (Sialia sialis). Only mountain and western bluebirds are found in BC, although the western is not found in north-central BC. The mountain bluebird is an annual migrant, returning to the North as early as the beginning of March, when snow still covers the ground, and leaving again as late as September. It has been recorded to breed from Hazelton east to the Alberta border.

8 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

Bluebirds in the Bulkley Valley The next spring, I built four nest boxes according to specifications and placed them on the aspen trees around our house and on trees overlooking the open field below.

The tree swallows liked them and built nests, but no bluebirds. In 1979, we moved to Winfield and the following spring we heard from the new owners of our log house that bluebirds had nested in one of the boxes. That was exciting news—to know that we had provided a home for a pair of mountain bluebirds.

Through talking to locals and taking a trip to the Royal Museum in Victoria, I found out that bluebirds seemed to have been previously more common in the Bulkley Valley and that the closest bluebird trail—nest boxes spread along a road or pathway—was near Williams Lake on Beecher’s Prairie. The purpose of that trail was to use natural means to control grasshopper populations on open rangeland.

Even though the Bulkley Valley was far north of Williams Lake, I thought that there was potential to encourage more bluebirds to nest in the valley by providing artificial nest sites, with lots of open fields and some dry ridges along Telkwa High Road and Snake Road. In 1988, after moving back to the area, we started getting landowner permis-

sion to mount bluebird boxes on the rural roads around Smithers.

Local businesses donated materials and supplies to get the project off the ground.

Today, we are monitoring roughly 100 boxes each year on rural roads that are mostly northeast of Smithers. The project has proved to be successful; though the results vary from year to year, 2013 showed a slight increase in the number of fledged mountain bluebirds. Out of 125 eggs that were laid, 99 young fledged, resulting in a 79 percent success rate. This bluebird trail is the most northerly nest-box project being reported to the Southern Interior Bluebird Trail Society.

Bluebirds can provide residents many years of natural insect control and visual pleasure.

Build it and they will nest To have the pleasure of mountain bluebirds in your yard, the correct habitat must be available.

Bluebirds prefer areas with open fields and some isolated trees and shrubs. Their preferred method of getting food is to spot insects in the short grass or on a gravel road. They can often be observed hovering in an open field.

Nest boxes can be placed on fenceposts or isolated aspen trees in mid-March, when we can expect to see the first bluebirds returning. Avoid choosing groups of trees with spruce and aspen for a

Come see what

A b l ue bi rd trai l — n est boxe s pla c e d a long a ro a d o r path w ay— prov ide s na t ura l c ont rol of p e st s a n d i n s ects , as we ll a s t he e xc it e me nt o f se e i ng th e bi rds re t ur n e a c h spring.

nest-box site, as this can attract squirrels. Research has shown that bluebirds have a preference for roomy nest boxes with good air circulation.

The size of the nest box entrance is also important. Both round holes and rectangular slats can be used. Round 1 9/16-inch holes have worked well in the Bulkley Valley and are specific to the mountain bluebirds. This size prevents the entrance of starlings and allows the 18-day-old plump fledglings to leave the nest.

In the Bulkley Valley, we have tried putting boxes in pairs four to five metres apart. This usually prevents undue competition between tree swallows and bluebirds. Bluebirds can also be very creative in choosing nest sites: old cars and even rolled-up carpets in carports. Bluebirds, like all small birds, are very susceptible to cat predation. This needs to be taken into consideration if you want bluebirds in your yard.

Mountain bluebirds in your yard By mid-May, bluebirds start becoming serious about choosing their new home. Once they have decided, the female will begin building a beautiful, round nest from fine grasses. Egg laying will begin soon after the nest is complete. Most nests have an average of four to six light-blue eggs.

The duller-coloured female incubates the eggs for 13 to 15 days before the featherless young hatch late May or early June. After the eggs hatch, both parents are busy going in and out of the hole carrying insects like beetles and grasshoppers in their beaks.

If the weather is favourable, and enough insects are available, the young will begin to leave the nest 18 days later. Bluebirds that have nested early will sometimes build a second nest and their young will leave around the middle of July. Older siblings may help the parents feed the younger, second-nesting chicks. A bluebird will often return to the same site for four or five years, or the span of their lifetime.

These jewels of spring are a great living legacy in the North. Bluebirds can provide residents many

jo hn fra nke n

Mo untain bluebirds are enjo yabl e to watch and also pro vide pes t co ntro l. T hey can be attracted t hro ug h nest bo xes, which can be mo unted o n trees o r f ence pos ts .

years of natural insect control and visual pleasure.

Nest boxes are a positive way to practise ecological responsibility, to enhance the biome and ensure our living legacy continues to prosper.

Thirty-seven years after building our first home and our first nest boxes, the thrill of the returning bluebirds adds to the excitement each spring as new life returns with its full splendour to the Bulkley Valley.

N

Bulkley Valley mountain bluebird nest competitors Tree swallow: A major population decline has made tree swallows less likely to compete with bluebirds.

House sparrows: Nest boxes near farms with lots of spilled grain for food will encourage these nest destroyers and competitors.

Chickadees: Chickadees will occasionally build their finely woven nest in a nest box.

Wasps: Wasps will sometimes build nests and even fill the entire nest box cavity.

Squirrels: Squirrels like to use boxes for storage and raising their young, and they prey on bluebirds’ eggs and their young.

Mice: Mice will raise their young in nest boxes.

Bears: Bears will tear boxes off trees and fence post to feed on the young birds.

Weather: Cold, wet weather in May and June will cause adult birds to abandon eggs and young.

N

Expand Your Horizons

UNBC Northwest has to offer!

REGISTER NOW for Spring & Summer 2014 courses BIOL 318-3 Fungi & Lichens

ENGL 271-3

Introduction to Creative Writing (in Skidegate)

ENGL 309-3

The Documentary: Toward a Construction of Social Reality

ENVS 414-3

Environmental and Professional Ethics

FNST 306-3

Indigenous Women: Perspectives

GEOG 301-3 Cultural Geography

HIST 309-3 Women in Canada

SOCW 439-3

Social Work/Law and the Justice System And more....

BSc. (Integrated) • Environmental & Earth Sciences • Biology COMING FALL 2014 Bachelor of Social Work Two-year Program NEW INTAKE in Terrace Sept. 2014 Ask about the BA, BScN, BEd, BComm, MBA, MEd & MSW programs *Course delivery and availability is subject to sufficient enrollment and instructor availability.

Courses available by audio / video in most communities. Check our World Wide Web course offerings ...and more.

A

ly pp

Now!

Terrace Campus

4837 Keith Avenue, Terrace, BC V8G 1K7 1-800-697-7388

Prince Rupert Campus

353 5th Street, Prince Rupert, BC V8J 3L6 1-888-554-6554

nw-info@unbc.ca www.unbc.ca/northwest

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 9

Food secure ha ns sa e f ko w

Maintaining access to sustainable nutrition

by Nor ma Kerby n ker by@t elus.net

“So what exactly is food security?” I ask Tara Irwin, sustainability coordinator for the City of Terrace.

The city and Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine are in the process of completing an Agricultural Area Plan and food security is a topic that has arisen during the public meetings.

Irwin, whose function is to assist the community of Terrace in planning and implementing sustainability practices, looks thoughtful and begins to describe how local government views the availability of food for its residents.

“At a municipal level,” she explains, “food security is typically defined as every person having access to safe and healthy food. Good food security means that everyone is eating well. Food insecurity, on the other hand, can result from high food costs, lower incomes, unemployment, poor food choices or poor availability of good food.

With all the problems resulting from imported food, people are aware of how vulnerable our food supply is and want to become involved in growing or buying locally produced food.”

A decade ago, no one in local government in northern BC would have given much time to discussing whether people had access to good food. That was a topic left to health authorities and nutritionists. With the interest in climate change, the energy costs and greenhouse gas 10 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

emissions that result from transporting food into Canada have become major considerations when it comes to food choices. Buy local and the 100 Mile Diet result from concerns about the ecological costs of importing food from around of the globe. Food security has become an issue closely linked to growing local, healthy food.

transportation disruptions. As more food is grown, processed and sold locally, the higher the security level for safe and healthy food in each community.

Northern BC does not have the mild climatic conditions of the Fraser Valley, and the range of crops that can be grown successfully in the North is considerably less than the Okanagan. I asked Growing our safety net both Pellegrino and Irwin which Ted Pellegrino, According to Ted Pellegrino, initiatives or factors they consider planner with the Regional District important in moving toward Regional District of of Kitimat-Stikine, food security higher levels of food security in is closely tied to support of the northern communities. northern agriculture community.

According to Irwin, an important Kitimat-Stikine “Farming plays a multifunctional example of increasing food securole in our region,” he says. “Not rity is the City of Terrace’s encouronly does farmland grow food, agement of backyard food producthe agricultural land base in the North is importion. Our country has a long history of productant as wildlife habitat, green space and a buffer tive gardeners. During World War II, citizens preserving water quality. Support of local small grew significant amounts of food by converting farms is an important issue for regional sustainlawns and yard space into vegetable gardens and ability.” chicken pens. Terrace’s backyard chicken bylaw From Pellegrino’s perspective, growing food allows residents to raise four laying hens on their locally makes northern communities more resilcity lots. ient to the pressures of economic downturns and

Support of local small farms is an important issue for regional sustainability.

The city has also supported information and skill development workshops that helped drive an increase in backyard food production. Using public spaces, such as community and school gardens, and creating edible landscaping in parks, increases the amount of food being produced locally. The city’s goal is that at least 10 percent of food consumed in Terrace be produced within the area.

Pellegrino’s emphasis is ensuring food production opportunities and farmland are preserved in the face of development. Many areas in northern BC have a long history of agriculture. He sees the passing on of knowledge and skills between farming generations as being critical to maintaining and enlarging northern food production.

Locally grown: key to food security?

In many senses, the more food we grow within our region, the less vulnerable we are to external food sources that may not be secure. A quick scan of the supermarket shows that our canned peaches come from South Africa, bananas from Ecuador, canned mushrooms from China and tomatoes from Mexico. Even rice and grapefruits from the US are not guaranteed to be available for Canadians if there is an economic crisis.

But is locally or provincially grown food providing food security for all residents? According to Pellegrino, in order to support an agricultural community, farmers need to be paid enough for their products to make a living. Farmers pay the same high prices for hydro, car insurance, winter tires, telephone and Internet and need to receive fair compensation for their work.

This is a dilemma in terms of food security for lower income people. In the farmers’ market last summer, small bundles of carrots were selling for six dollars and honey cost well above what one would pay at a supermarket. Sustainable local food for lower income families is often out of reach in terms of costs and accessibility.

Community and school gardens have filled some gaps in growing cost-effective food locally, but a family needs to have transportation to a community garden and time to spend on the garden. By far one of the most difficult problems for users of cooperative gardens, according to Terrace agricultural volunteer Barbara Tetz, is how to store surplus summer produce for winter consumption. Canning may be an option, but jars

and lids can be expensive. Dehydration requires specialized equipment and electricity. The bounty of the summer is often fleeting and short-lived.

During the Greater Terrace Agricultural Area planning process, the concept of community storage facilities was raised. These cooperative facilities would allow families to store vegetables and fruits over the winter. To date, local food groups have not been able to find funding to construct and operate a community storage building.

Just the other day, I drove past the line-up at the Salvation Army food bank. Even during an industrial development boom, basic food needs remain pressing problems for many in the North. To them, the goals and concepts of food security must seem like some distant ideal to which they do not have access. Their food security is the next meal in the struggle.

N

Catastrophe

How prepared are you?

by No r ma Ke rby n k e r b y @ t e lu s . n e t

The Oct. 27, 2012 Haida Gwaii earthquake, magnitude 7.7, was the second largest in Canadian history. No deaths occurred, but what would have happened if that same earthquake had been two orders of magnitude larger and similar in destruction to the 9.2-magnitude 1964 Alaskan earthquake? With small populations, long distances between communities and crippling weather, how long could northerners survive without food, heat or shelter?

Northern BC’s rural residents consider themselves well prepared to be cut off from the electrical grid and supermarket shelves. They would add more firewood to the woodstove, find the lanterns and live from the pantry for the next month or two. In -40 C, with stacks of dried firewood already stored for the winter and lots of freshwater nearby, lives would be little different from those of homesteaders 100 years ago.

Most urban apartment and house dwellers do not have food or water available to last more than a few days. Many are dependent upon electricity for heat or to run furnaces. They would, though, have the advantage of faster government emergency assistance than those located in rural and remote areas. Some urban dwellers have installed backup heating systems, bought generators and stockpiled food and water.

And then there are those northerners who take survival very seriously. There have always been quiet discussions in someone’s kitchen regarding survival caches in secret caves and hidden cabins in the mountains of northern BC. For most of us, every time a power outage occurs or floods take out some portion of our roads, we hope modern technology will rescue us quickly and efficiently. Few of us like to think about dealing with a disaster of major consequences. We live in a part of the world in which survival would be very challenging.

N

Need help finding exactly what you want?

Ruth Murdoch MC, CCC, RCAT

certified counsellor registered art therapist

Residential • Recreational • Commercial • Land

Niomi Mio

Realtor

Calderwood Realty 1175 Main Street. Smithers, BC t/f 1.800.360.3268 cell (250) 877.9040 nmio@telus.net

1012 Columbia St Smithers ph. 847-4989 www.ruthmurdochcounselling.com

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 11

AIRSHED MANAGEMENT SOCIETY WORKS ON THE PARTICULATE PROBLEM AB OV E : I n d u s t r i a l s i t e s i n H o u s t o n a re a s o u rc e o f particulate, although most of what you see in these plumes is steam.

b c m inis try of environm e nt

s ue bro o ke s

Holding our breath Holding our breath Holding our breath

L E F T: On a s t i l l w i n t e r ’s d a y, Sm i t h e r s ’ p a r t i c u l a t e e m i s s i o n s a re t r a p p e d i n lower air at the foot of Hudson Bay Mountain.

by Morga n H it e morganjh@bulkley. n e t

Feb. 6, 4 p.m. Smithers: -16 C, clear, with the slightest breath of wind at 0.5 metre/second from the northwest.

PM2.5 is 34 micrograms per cubic metre.

After a week of cold, clear air sitting over the Bulkley Valley, I go into the Ministry of Environment offices in Smithers to talk to meteorologist Barry Watson.

I want to ask him about air quality and how local weather can cause it to deteriorate.

He explains that this week is a classic example of weather and emissions combining to create bad air quality. We’re in a stable, high-pressure system, with very little wind. Everything being

Edziza Trails Backpacking tour packages are in Tahltan territory and are designed specifically to meet the clients’ interests, outdoor experience and ‘FairPrice’ values.

Contact CurTis raTTray: 250-771-4277 or edziza.trails@gmail.com www.facebook.com/EdzizaTrails and Linkedin 12 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

AboriginAl Adventure guided tours

An aboriginal adventure experience on the land that provides opportunities for: • Wildlife and landscape viewing • Backpacking • Rustic campsites and trails • Personal growth • Indigenous story telling • First Nations/Tahltan history • Explore Tahltan territory

put out by wood stoves and industrial facilities is just hanging around.

“There are two things that you have to think of when it comes to air quality,” he says. “On the one hand, there are emissions into the atmosphere of a substance, such as particulate matter.

On the other, there’s the ability of the atmosphere to disperse it.”

I’ve noticed that the air is having trouble

bc minis try o f e nviro nme nt

dispersing particulate matter “Inflammation in the body because I’ve been visiting has been linked with any kind bcairquality.ca to check the of chronic disease developreadings. PM2.5 is the measurement, particularly cancers and ment of particles in the air immune system problems,” she smaller than 2.5 microns and says. is the biggest health concern In a study done at Smithers’ in our area. Hourly averages of Bulkley Valley District Hospital PM2.5 concentration are autoduring periods of high PM2.5, matically reported by monitoring Bastian tells me, they expected equipment in Smithers, Telkwa, to see more bronchitis, asthma Houston and Burns Lake. On and pneumonia. “But what average, over a year, the numbers came up as our number one are below 8, but this hour in admission during that time was Smithers it’s 34. In Telkwa it’s men under the age of 30 with only 3. In Houston and Burns irregular heartbeats.”

Lake it’s 0 and 2.

As you might expect with While PM2.5 dispersion a hazardous substance, the Greg Tamblyn depends on the weather, sources Ministry of Environment has a depend on the season. Today limit (called an air quality objecit’s residential woodstoves, the tive) for PM2.5. The number is forest product mills in Houston 25, and PM2.5 has to remain and Smithers, and the pellet there on average for 24 hours plants in Houston and east of Burns Lake. In the to trigger an air quality advisory. The 34 that spring it will include road dust. In the fall we’ll be I was breathing in Smithers did not trigger an contending with the smoke from burning forestry advisory—it was just a spike on a day when the slash piles. average reading was closer to 18.

Since we can’t control the weather, it seems Sarah Henderson, a UBC researcher who has evident we have to control the sources of pollution. been studying the health effects of woodstove But, a little bit of particulate in the air—what’s the particulate, says that, on the whole, research big deal? supports 25 as a good, protective limit. But she cautions that we have to distinguish sudden expoFeb. 7, 8 p.m. Houston: -19 C, clear, wind one metre sure to high levels of particulate—a scenario in per second from the southeast. PM2.5 has been around which otherwise healthy people are pretty resil5 most of the day, but now it has risen to 36. ient—from long-term exposure to low levels—a PM2.5 is not the smoke particles you can see scenario that seems to lead to more and more and smell. PM2.5 particles, explains Smithers health problems, specifically coronary disease. doctor Biz Bastian, are small enough to get As well, she argues that while air quality in BC may deep into the lungs and possibly into the bloodbe better on average than it is in Ontario or China, stream. They damage blood vessel walls and can we still need to advocate for constant improvement. lead to clotting. In addition, they create an inflam... continued on Page 35 matory response.

A p l u m e f ro m a w o o d s t o v e chimney indicates combustion t e m p e r a t u re s a re n o t h o t e n o u g h .

There are people who have left the community due to air quality and there are people thinking of leaving. So it’s also a community development issue.

w

ww

.c hi

c k e n cr e ek c o ff e e

.c o

m

Freshen up with your favourite cup of coffee. Makes a great gift, too!

Now offering DaVinci flavoured syrups (at Lund Rd. location only)

available here:

SmitheRS

teLKWA mASSett tLeLL teRRAce

BV Wholesale, natures Pantry, schimmels Fine Pastries, at our artisan roasting studio @3885 Lund rd. rudolph’s Pure sausage green gaia sitka studio save-on-Foods

Mail Orders Welcome. 250-877-7790

Organic and Fair Trade cOFFees

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 13

greg h or n e greg h or n e

S m i t h e r s Se c on d a ry S c ho o l teacher R ick Hubert m an ages th e s ch ool ’s n ew com po s t - he a t e d gre e n ho use and is able to m o nito r tem per atu res on l i n e from his home.

Th e com bu s ti on ch am be r o n t h e Te l kw a b i o m a s s b o i l e r s e e s a b o u t 2 0 0 ton n es of w ood ch i ps pe r y e a r — e n o u g h t o f i l l f i v e s e m i t r u c ks .

Energy alternatives

How three innovative communities are re-thinking energy

by Gr eg Hor ne gre go hor ne@g mai l . c om

With much recent talk about oil, gas, pipelines and dams in northern BC, it’s possible to completely miss the North’s unique energy potentials. Here are just three energy projects currently underway that are perfectly suited to their northern context and are already turning heads.

“Waste” wood heating If you knew what the furnace under the Telkwa village office’s new smokestack was heating—a school, five houses, a pub and the village office— you might think it’s not working. There simply isn’t much smoke coming out.

But it’s working just fine. Bioenergy Solutions’ Thomas Wunderlin designed the biomass heating system that burns wood chips from a local sawmill to heat water that is pumped through shallow underground pipes, heating the eight buildings.

Due to its computer-controlled combustion, the high-efficiency boiler burns incredibly clean.

According to Wunderlin, “This boiler is equivalent in power to 30 to 50 conventional wood stoves and has about the same emissions as a single one.”

Biomass heating systems are popping up all over the province for many reasons. First, they improve local air quality by reducing waste wood burning in open piles. The Telkwa sawmill was doing this before the bioenergy system powered up in November.

Second, money paid for biomass fuel stays in the community. The mill now gets revenue for what was previously considered waste.

Third, since the boiler is replacing natural gas, the system directly reduces fossil fuel use. Telkwa will save an estimated 130 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Fourth, biomass heating costs less than half of

your logo here

promote your team & here

check out our products online!

logo

your logo here

www.smokescreengraphics.com • www.facebook.com/smokescreengraphics Unit 9- 3167 Tatlow Rd, Smithers • 250-847-3799 14 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

the cost for electricity, propane or even natural gas—it typically pays for itself in less than 10 years and in as few as two.

The fully automated boiler is a little bigger than an Austin Mini and will burn about 200 tonnes of wood chips per year—enough to fill five semi trucks.

The largest challenge to biomass heating is ensuring a long-term, quality fuel supply. Chips have to be uniform in size, relatively dry and free of rocks and other debris. The Telkwa system is working out some teething problems based on these factors.

Wunderlin comes from central Europe, the bioenergy epicenter of the world, where a bustling industry ensures chip quality standards: “In Austria, there are hardly any new systems going in because everything that can be heated with biomass is being heated with biomass.”

Things are different here. To clear the way for BC Hydro’s Northwest Transmission Line, the equivalent of 14,000 logging trucks were simply burned.

Chipped and shipped, it could have fuelled 100 systems like Telkwa’s (enough for nearly all the public schools in northwest BC) for over five years.

“It takes a critical mass of operating systems before people say, yes, this is really possible,” Wunderlin says. “Here, there is so much waste wood around that you could easily heat the valley between Vanderhoof and Prince Rupert.”

Heating with bacteria The geodesic greenhouse beside Smithers Secondary School looks almost extraterrestrial.

What’s equally startling is that billions of microorganisms in a nearby compost heap are keeping it warm.

For about $2,000 worth of black plastic pipe, a water pump and a few recycled heat registers, the

greg h or n e

Rick Hubert examines the eightby-15-foot compost heap that heats the g re e n h o u s e , b e h i n d .

There is so much waste wood around that you could easily heat the valley between Vanderhoof and Prince Rupert.

Biomeiler compost heating system was built last summer during a community workshop organized by Smithers renewable energy guru John Egenolf and led by German expert Heiner Cuhls.

Participants built a large compost pile—about eight feet high and 15 feet across—from roadside brush and manure. They buried a 1,200foot coiled black pipe, which circulates water that collects heat from the compost’s microorganisms as they break down the organic matter.

The pipes travel underground to the greenhouse, where they release heat and then return to the heap.

Thomas After a year and a half, the pile will be rendered grade-A compost and the system rebuilt.

The water is kept between 30 and 50 C year round by the decomposition process.

In our northern location, it’s equal to 350 solar panels—which would cover a soccer field—or enough to heat six Canadian houses.

Smithers Secondary teacher Rick Hubert, along with the student-led Green Team, manages the system, monitoring temperatures online from home. The group plans to grow food year round in the greenhouse.

“I’ve looked into a lot of alternative energy ideas and this is one of the few things I’ve seen for the North that is feasible. We have lots of farms, lots of free wood chips, and not only does it produce heat in 30 below, but you get rich humus soil out of it. It’s one of the better solutions for up north,” he says Plastic-to-oil Do you remember the last time you filled your tank for 50 cents per litre? A recycling facility in Whitehorse is getting heating oil at that bargain price, all the while reducing carbon emissions and cleaning up landfills.

A plastic-to-oil machine was installed at the facility in fall 2012. By heating bits of shredded plastic inside pipes and vessels, the Blest machine

Wunderlin

produces one litre of fuel for every kilogram of plastic, with nearly zero emissions.

The team behind the project, P & M Recycling, Cold Climate Innovation and the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, has just finished the first year of testing. The system exceeded expectations.

Total cost of the fuel, including all operation costs: 50 cents per litre. The team is confident this can be lowered.

From Whitehorse, all plastics intended for recycling are trucked 2,400 km to Vancouver at great expense. While certain plastics like pop bottles are then shipped to China and readily recycled, many of the lower-grade plastics end up

in the landfill.

Local inventor Andy Lera was the seed behind the project. Lera built a working prototype in his backyard using a paint can and a barbecue after watching a YouTube video. Thanks to the success of that first flame up, and to convincing local authorities, Whitehorse now has the first municipal-sized unit in North America.

Emissions from the machine are incredibly low: almost entirely C02 and steam. Lera says it emits “about the same C02 as four humans breathing normally and the same amount of methane from four humans as well.” It’s so clean that it exhausts indoors.

Lera calculates that burning oil created from plastic saves 82 percent on CO2 emissions when compared to shipping waste plastic south, recycling it and shipping the new plastic, plus fuel, north.

The machine is about the size of a pool table and costs about $200,000. It can produce 220 litres a day, enough to heat about 70 northern homes.

Market price for the oil is at least $100,000 annually.

He’s even tested it on salt-soaked ocean plastic and it worked wonderfully. This is good news, for

Lera and other entrepreneurs, and also for the oceans with their giant gyres of floating plastic garbage. Through the Blest lens, these plastic islands start to look like oilsands.

Since the plant started production, Lera has had phone calls from people all over the continent with piles of plastic and rising fuel costs. Conversations are underway to bring a plastic-to-oil machine to northern BC. N

May 2, 3 & 4, 2014

For Pete’s Sake

a weekend workshop for learning songs of heart, might, and the fight for human rights!

Get inspired! Spend a weekend at Camp Caledonia on Tyhee Lake near Smithers learning and singing songs that give voice to our struggle for a healthy world.

3 Fantastic Facilitators:

AKU SIFUBA • KArlA MUndy • Jenny leSter $129 youth, $179 adult » includes meals (& accommodations if needed) » Maximum: 60 participants » Registration Deadline: April 15, 2014 (don’t wait – we expect to max out quickly)

www.singsmithers.com • 250.847-9728 • rfjenne@gmail.com

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 15

Ro u n d i n g u p

r e n c r y e c h l t i n r o g n HOW NEW PROGRAMS ARE LEVELING THE FIELD

by A ma n da Fol let t afollet t @bulkley.ne t

Like many who move to the North, I wanted to live closer to the land. I wanted to compost, eat locally and do all those things that feel like living gentler. And, like others, I was surprised to learn how limited recycling was in my community.

For the first couple years, I stockpiled my plastics and took them on trips back to my previous home in Alberta. As those visits tapered off, I began buying less, avoiding clamshell packaging and checking plastics for the #2 that indicated they could be recycled.

But I confess—more than a few clamshells have made it into my trash bag. Those grape tomatoes are just too darn tempting.

A little investigation into northern recycling doesn’t shed a lot of light: Communities like Smithers and Prince George collect only #2 plasYour summer mountain adventure awaits.

stunning

location

Spectacular summer hiking, rock climbing, mountaineering, wilderness retreats & getaways. invigorating

sauna

gourmet

meals

Smithers • 250-847-3351 www.BearMountaineering.ca 16 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

tics while Vanderhoof, Quesnel and the Peace collect the whole gamut. Some offer curbside pick, but many don’t. And where does that tin and glass taken to the dump end up?

As it turns out, I’m not the only one questioning our northern recycling facilities. Telkwa recently implemented a curbside recycling program, and Smithers and Terrace are preparing to do the same through the Multi-Materials BC (MMBC) program. A new approach to recycling is making it more accessible and more uniform.

Traditionally, governments were responsible for recycling. Recent legislation shifted that responsibility to producers: the companies that create the waste now have to pay for its recycling. This shift is creating changes for the North.

The downside to distance According to Craig Wisehart with Electronic Products Recycling Association (EPRA), an agency with Stewardship Agencies of British Columbia, this new approach to recycling transferred the cost onto the consumer, with visible environmental handling fees (EHF) and, occasionally, hidden costs. (For example, on top of the deposit you paid on that drink container, there is a built-in cost for recycling.)

“Panasonic couldn’t practically go out into the market and collect all those materials,” he says about large corporations whose products often end up in the landfill. What they can do is fund recycling programs.

Producers then pass the recycling legwork onto stewardship agencies, such as the 16 listed under Stewardship Agencies of BC that cover appliances, lighting, batteries, paints and more. Here’s where things can get confusing: not all those materials are deposited at the same depot. So your defunct light bulbs will likely require a different destination than your cardboard.

EPRA has 166 depots for electronics recycling across BC, including several in the North. Once collected, they are consolidated in six centres, the only northern one being in Prince George. Last year, the agency collected 23,000 metric tons of materials total, with 886,000 kg—roughly three percent—coming from the North.

“For us, when you get into very remote locations where there’s five people and 12 caribou, it isn’t possible for us to have a depot,” Wisehart says.

And therein lies the problem: It’s not that northerners don’t want to recycle, it’s that the costs for transportation are often prohibitive. When you

require businesses to clean up after themselves, the cost is built into the product.

For EPRA, the fee charged to consumers to recycle the product is equal to what it costs to recycle all the products across BC, regardless of distance. To some extent, those in more populated areas subsidize recycling in remote areas, like the North.

“The fees we charge within BC are fees to recycle across BC,” Wisehart says. “In our ideal world we are charging exactly what it costs us to recycle.”

Curbing our waste The current changes in BC are to packaging and printed paper (PPP). In 2011, an amendment to the province’s 2004 Recycling Regulation, which moved responsibility for end-of-life products from government to industry, required PPP stewards to submit a program plan to government.

The result was Multi-Materials BC, a program that’s hit some road bumps in its implementation, but appears ready to change the face of recycling in some northern communities.

With MMBC, a non-profit society, companies are charged according to how much packaging they put into the market. Those fees are then used as incentives to set up local recycling programs.

The program, which is only for residential paper and plastic, uses existing infrastructure—such as curbside garbage pickup—but offsets the costs for communities.

“In some areas, particularly in the North, we’ll see new services started,” says MMBC managing director Allen Langdon. Communities signed up for MMBC include Smithers, Terrace and Telkwa.

“For Smithers, we’re finally getting curbside recycling, which is something people have wanted for a long time,” mayor Taylor Bachrach says, adding that the range of materials recycled will increase—particularly when it comes to plastics. “Hopefully this will give northern communities more opportunities when it comes to recycling services.”

Smithers and Terrace are scheduled to start curbside recycling on May 19, with Telkwa’s recently implemented pilot program to shift over to MMBC. But some questions remain: Most importantly, how far will municipalities need to ship materials and at what cost?

Under the contract signed with MMBC, communities get an amount per household and are responsible for passing off the recyclables to a post-collection service, which is within

fa c undo g a s tia zo ro

60 km. MMBC is just beginning to put in place post-collection sites where recyclables go prior to processing.

The farther materials need to be trucked, the less cost effect the system is for communities. In early March, Smithers and Terrace were still waiting to hear where their post-collection sites would be.

Cutting back Prince George is one municipality that opted out of MMBC. Currently, two local businesses provide curbside pickup for about $10 a month per household.

“From my understanding, it just wasn’t cost effective,” Prince George’s Recycling and Environmental Action Planning Society (REAPS) executive director Terri McClymont says about MMBC. “There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done and there’s still a lot of consultation that needs to be done.”

Although collection and consolidation happen in the North, ultimately the materials need to make their way down south for processing. Ideally, the North would have its own facility, but McClymont says that would take a large incentive in the form of capital startup costs.

“A lot of the communities in the North are struggling to find something for their budget,” she says.

“It’s very costly for us to collect and then ship down south.”

On the bright side, maybe as northerners our lack of recycling facilities has built better habits: buying less, reusing more, recycling as little as possible.

Oh, as for the tin and glass those in the Bulkley Valley meticulously take to the waste transfer station: the tin is compacted into old refrigerators and shipped down south for recycling. The glass it processed separately, for safety reasons, but ultimately ends up in the landfill.

N

Discover Your Fragrance

New! Perfectly portable roll-on perfumes. Great for on the go. 100% Vegan - Cruelty Free - Made with Love

3761 3rd. Ave Smithers

Online Shopping » www.heartstringsdecor.com

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 17

What does LNG mean for BC?

by A ma n da Fol let t afo llet t @bulkley.ne t

Proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects would run pipelines clear across the North. However, wrapping our minds around the implications of LNG is anything but straightforward.

For starters, “LNG pipeline” is a bit of a misnomer. What would be transported is natural gas in gaseous form; pipelines like this already exist in the North. What’s new to the region, besides the sheer number of pipelines, are the proposed liquefaction facilities, which would freeze the gas to -160 C, reducing it to a liquid 1/600th of its original volume. From there, it would be shipped in tankers to Asia.

Concerns about LNG are complex and farreaching: In northeastern BC, hydraulic fracturing (fracking)—injecting water and other materials into bedrock under pressure to release trapped gas—has been blamed for everything from earthquakes to water contamination.

18 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

Each pipeline would carve its own route between the Northeast and the coast, where multiple liquefaction plants are proposed. The liquefying process is energy-intensive, using either the gas itself (roughly 10 percent of what comes into the plant) or other forms of electricity. According to the Northwest Institute, the power used by one plant would be more than what the proposed Site C dam would produce.

Despite concerns, the provincial government is billing LNG as “BC’s once-in-a-generation opportunity to develop our reserves of natural gas, create thousands of new jobs, and pay off our provincial debt.” In a telephone townhall on Jan. 30, BC deputy premier and minister of natural gas development Rich Coleman said BC has “so much gas that we could supply everybody and still have gas in 150 years, including a substantial amount

This map shows f i v e p ro p o s e d g a s p i p e l i n e s s t re t c h i n g f ro m n o r t h e a s t e r n BC to the coast at K i t i m a t a n d Pr i n c e R u p e r t . H o w e v e r, LNG development is happening so rapidly t h a t s u c h m a p s q u i c kl y become out of date.

s ubmitte d

UNTANGLING THE PIPELINE DEBATE

of supply to Asia.”

He added that five LNG plants would mean a cumulative gross domestic product of $1 trillion and more than 100,000 jobs over 30 years. As of mid-January, a dozen projects were proposed for the province—a number that fluctuates regularly.

But what is being presented as a gold rush for BC could be a double-edged sword for the North.

BC’s got gas: Now what?

Kitimat has seen its fair share of boom-and-bust. In 2010, its unemployment rate was 12 percent and its pulp-and-paper mill was closing, costing 550 jobs.

“It was a pretty gloomy place in 2010. Many people left,” Kitimat economic development officer Rose Klucas remembers.

Since then, Alcan’s Kitimat Modernization Project combined with several proposed LNG

Existing economies In January, energy and mines minister Bill Bennett told CBC the province is already challenged to fill mining positions with skilled workers.

“If we were to train up every single high-school graduate in British Columbia over the next few years, we still wouldn’t have anywhere near enough people,” he said. “There will be a need

Suggesting sober second thought Rather than outright opposing LNG, Smithersbased Northwest Institute is pressing the provincial government for a strategic economic and environmental assessment that would examine proposals comprehensively rather than individually.

In October, the organization received a response from BC environment minister Mary Polak, declining the request and expressing confidence that the existing environmental assessment process “is not only appropriate but highly effective.”

Nadia Nowak, northern LNG facilitator with the Northwest Institute, says they’ll continue to rally support for a strategic assessment.

“What we’re hearing from communities, including First Nations and municipalities, is they’re finding it challenging to not only participate in the separate environmental assessment processes, but also to plan for what this industry means for their communities,” Nowak said.

At a recent townhall in Smithers hosted by MP Nathan Cullen, questions abounded—but answers were few. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers backed out days before and Coleman’s office flat-out declined, Cullen said.

For now, northern communities continue to untangle the LNG process: what it will mean for residents and economies, and whether this promised bonanza represents more prosperity or pitfalls for the North.

s ubmitte d

Ter r a c e - b a s e d h e l i c o p t e r p i l o t C r a i g R o y t r a v e l s for w o r k s e v e n m o n t h s o f t h e y e a r, l e a v i n g h i s fami l y f o r w e e ks a t a t i m e , d e s p i t e t h e L N G b o o m h ap p e n i n g i n h i s b a c ky a rd .

na d i a n o wa k

Meanwhile, just up valley…

If a windfall of jobs is being promised, it’s not clear to whom those jobs will tumble. Helicopter pilot Craig Roy was born and raised in the Northwest and has 15 years’ experience flying in the Terrace area. He’s been turned down for LNG work in his backyard and instead spends seven months of the year—two to six weeks at a stretch—working away from his wife and three children.

“It’s not much of a life. If there’s local work it should go to local people,” he says. “I’ve got 10 times more experience than the guys they’re bringing in.”

Instead, he says, local helicopter jobs are going to pilots from Alberta, Eastern Canada and even the US: “Basically, anywhere but Terrace,” he says, adding that he can list about 20 local pilots who are not working locally. “How’s that creating jobs?”

The 667-km Coastal GasLink Pipeline, proposed

by TransCanada Pipelines, is just one of half-adozen proposed for the Northwest. According to planning and execution director Bruce Wells, “Contractors are encouraged to look locally for workers but will need to broaden this search to accommodate the amount of workers necessary to complete the project on schedule.

“As part of our bidding process, contractors will be asked to provide information on their plans for resourcing qualified local and aboriginal BC residents.”

for immigration and probably temporary foreign workers.”

Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition (SWCC) executive director Shannon McPhail wonders why, with so many non-pipeline-related jobs in the North (Northwest Transmission Line, Forrest Kerr and Kitimat Modernization, to name a few), there’s a push toward LNG: “Why not slow down and have 100-percent employment in BC for 500 years?” she says.

When put to the Ministry of Natural Gas Development, an emailed response cited competitive edge: “A large number of countries are looking to compete for a share of Asia’s LNG market, including Australia, Russia and the United States.

These are the countries BC is competing with for LNG investment and growth, and the reason why the development is being pursued now,” it said.

“Taking action now could result in thousands of long-term jobs for British Columbians.”

But Dana Hibbard, SWCC’s LNG outreach and education coordinator, worries the pace of development could jeopardize existing jobs. She says SWCC has heard complaints from guide outfitters in the Upper Skeena (an industry that contributes $28 million annually to the local economy) that LNG surveyors are given free reign over where they fly, often scaring away goat populations.

“One concern we have is that LNG is really being favoured,” she says.

There’s also concern that two liquefaction facilities proposed for the Skeena estuary could put the watershed’s $110-million salmon industry at risk.

Hibbard points to a 1973 biological assessment by the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans naming Flora Bank and De Horsey Bank near Port Edward as having “habitats of critical importance for the rearing of juvenile salmon.”

A once-considered port was nixed over these concerns, yet two LNG plants have been proposed in its place.

K i ti m a t G e n e r a l H o s p i t a l h a s a d d e d p o r t a b l e s t o h ou s e i t s f a c i l i t i e s . An i n f l u x o f p i p e l i n e w o r ke r s i s al re a d y c re a t i n g h o u s i n g a n d a m e n i t y c r u n c h e s i n comm u n i t i e s l i ke K i t i m a t a n d Te r r a c e .

skeen awild con servat ion t rust

facilities have caused the unemployment rate to drop to about seven percent. The reason for the remaining unemployment, Klucas says, is demand for skilled labour.

As a mother of three teenagers, Klucas celebrates the local opportunities that come with economic development: “For the first time in their lifetime there’s opportunities for them to stay here and work in their chosen profession.” But the same born-and-raised Kitimat residents will need to adjust to the changing face of their community.

In 2007, the town had a 44-percent vacancy rate.

Today, housing is so tight that a cruise ship was brought in from Estonia to house 500 workers for Alcan, which already operates a 1,800-bed camp.

It’s projected that LNG development will create 10,000 construction jobs in Kitimat, more than doubling its currently estimated population of 9,000. In preparation, speculators have been buying apartment buildings and houses, renovating them and increasing rents.

BC Assessment’s 2013 housing assessments, released in January, showed Kitimat leading the province with more than a 26 percent price increase: The average single-family residence had jumped from $180,000 to $228,000.

When asked how the province will help communities adapt to this kind of pressure on services and infrastructure, the Ministry of Natural Gas Development only said, “The Province will ensure communities remain healthy and are equipped to deal with economic growth.”

Th i s m a p f ro m Oc t o b e r 2 0 1 3 s h o w s s i x g a s pi pe l i n e s p ro p o s e d f o r t h e N o r t h w e s t . H o w e v e r, LNG development is happening so rapidly that such m ap s q u i c kl y b e c o m e o u t o f d a t e .

N

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 19

NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

Watching for wildlife

Animal encounters in northern BC

matt j s immons

A l on e car i bou i n s pects a n a l p i n e c a m p i n M o u n t E d zi za Pro v i n c i a l Pa r k.

by Mat t J S i m mo ns th ewrit er@mat t jsim m on s. c om

I remember distinctly the first time I saw a wolf outside a wildlife enclosure. I was trekking in Mount Edziza Provincial Park, about 350 km north of Kitwanga. Osborne caribou moved slowly across the vast alpine plateau, venturing onto scattered snowfields, likely to escape the incessant insects characteristic of lower elevations.

Camped at the base of the mountain, I was sitting watching small groups of these caribou when I suddenly saw a lone wolf trotting across the landscape. It moved quickly, but didn’t seem in a hurry. I watched as it disappeared from view behind small undulations in the terrain and then reappeared again a few minutes later. The wolf seemed to be tracking the caribou but they were unaware they were being watched.

One small group climbed a steep snowfield and continued over the other side of a hill, where I couldnt see them. After about 15 magical minutes of watching the wolf weave its way through gullies and over hills in the direction of the group, I finally lost track of it.

It was an experience that made me realize how lucky we are in northern BC to have so many opportunities to see wild animals in their natural habitat.

One of the highlights of my childhood was visiting my aunt at the BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops, where she worked. There, I saw bears, wolves, birds of prey and, on one memorable occasion, I even got to bottle feed a fawn. I was obsessed with animals and the wilder they were, the better.

Similarly, I loved to visit Sealand in Victoria, where I grew up. I can still feel the spray from the orcas. But as I got older, I started to suspect that zoos and enclosures were not the best place for wild animals. When I got a taste

for seeing animals in their natural habitat, I understood that my wildlife encounters at Sealand and the Wildlife Park were, well, not very wild.

Whether you’re a family looking for a guided tour or a gung-ho backpacker, northern BC has countless opportunities for viewing wildlife in its numerous parks, preserves and sanctuaries. By supporting BC’s eco-tourism sector, you’re not only creating memories, you’re also helping build a balanced and sustainable economy that sees the preservation and conservation of wildlife habitat.

By no means are the areas in this write-up a comprehensive list of wildlife viewing opportunities in northern BC. Just getting out for a walk around some of the region’s towns can give you a rewarding encounter. Heck, even grocery shopping in Smithers can give you a memorable wildlife experience. Last winter, a moose wandered into the Safeway in town. But the best experiences are out in those big landscapes we get to call our backyard. Here, then, are a few wild ideas to get you thinking about your next trip.

Watching auklet antics is a nature experience that’s guaranteed to make you smile.

20 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

On the trail of whales’ tails BC’s north coast is home to an abundant variety of marine wildlife. Seabirds, fish, seals, otters, sea lions, porpoises—the list is long. But tourists come from around the world mainly to catch a sighting of the ocean’s biggest aquatic animals: whales. ... continued on Page 22

Tombstone Park. D. Triebner

Follow your own path…

….to a career and a lifestyle.

Outdoor Recreation and Tourism Management BA in Nature-based Tourism Management

with specializations in marketing and entrepreneurship, outdoor education and leadership, indigenous cultural tourism, environment and society

or

BSc in Natural Resource Management

majoring in Outdoor Recreation and Conservation with specializations in environmental design and planning, conservation education, natural science, and applications of recreation and tourism

47

4th

.66

Best Homemade Pizza Burger Bar & Homemade Fries NEW TakeOut menu!

8 ,3 Smithers

Specializing in Homemade & Local Ingredients

56

3333 University Way, Prince George, BC V2N 4Z9 ortm@unbc.ca • www.unbc.ca/ortm • Ph: (250) 960-5832

4 Ave 250.8

7

Your Ommm away from home.

• Licensed • Cappuccino Bar • Organic Maccha Green Tea

NEW LOCATIONS! SMITHERS in Driftwood Mall, 4th & Main St. • TELKWA 1613 Riverside St.

Join us for Italian Night! every Thursday 4 - 8pm Specialty pastas and Okanagan wines.

Weekly YOGA classes in Smithers and in Telkwa.

www.full-circle-yoga.ca Phillipa Beck, C.Y.I, Y.Ed.• 250-877-3387

For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visit w w w. no rthwo rd .ca northernbctourism.com

| APR/MAY 14 | 21

c ourtesy prin ce r u p er t ad ven tu re t o u rs

... continued from Page 20

In Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii, depending on the time of year, you might see grey whales, orcas or humpbacks. If you’re lucky, you might even see an endangered North Pacific right whale, although that is admittedly unlikely. The first one to be seen in BC waters for over 60 years was sighted last June off the west coast of Haida Gwaii.

There are lots of ways to get out and see whales. Kayaking north from Prince Rupert up to the mouth of Work Channel is a good bet for getting a glimpse of some humpbacks, but if you’re venturing out under paddle power, be safe—northern waters can get pretty choppy.

If a tour in the comfort of a bigger boat is more your style, there are lots of options. In Prince Rupert, check out Adventure Tours (adventuretours.net) or ask at the Tourism Prince Rupert office in the Museum of Northern BC. Over on Haida Gwaii, whale watching can be even easier. In spring, you can sometimes see migrating whales right from Graham Island. Keep your eyes open and ask the locals. There are also plenty of options for charter boats and tour guides to get you on the water. You can find one that fits your needs by checking out gohaidagwaii.ca.

If you’re considering heading down to Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, National Marine Conservation Area Reserve and Haida Heritage Site as part of your trip, you’ll likely get a chance to see some whales (as well as plenty of other marine wildlife). For more info about the park and a list of licensed tour operators, head to Parks Canada’s website at pc.gc.ca.

22 | APR/MAY 14 |

courtes y p rince rupert adventure tours

N o r t h er n B C h as the st ronge st griz z ly popul ati o ns i n N o r t h Am eri ca, but de v e lopme nt ha s t he pot enti al to i m p act th ei r n u mbe rs. Khut z e y ma t e e n Griz z l y B ear S a n ctu ary, n orth of Princ e Rupe rt , prov ide s a noni nva s i ve w ay to vie w griz z lie s.

The bear went over the mountain Ursus arctos horribilis, more commonly known as the grizzly bear, is an iconic animal often associated with wild Canadian landscapes. Grizzlies are formidable creatures, to say the least. But they’re also vulnerable. In southern BC, grizzly habitat has been severely impacted by development. Northern BC has the strongest grizzly populations in North America, but because these solitary animals keep vast territories, any development—forest roads, pipelines, mines, etc.—has the potential to impact numbers.

Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary north of Prince Rupert was created to preserve grizzly habitat. The Khutzeymateen is strictly controlled by BC Parks, but a handful of licensed operators are allowed to give boat tours in the sanctuary. Sedge grass in the estuary entices the bears down from higher ... continued on Page 24

NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

www.n o rthword.ca

The most reliable airport in Northwest BC • Terrace-Kitimat now offering more than 10 convenient flights a day, including direct flights to Vancouver & Calgary • Westjet, Hawkair, CMA & Jazz

Visit

Terrace

2014 Spring / Summer eventS: Pacific Northwest Music festival March 27 to april 12 • www.pnmf.ca

sPriNg studio tour • May 17 to May 19

www.artsterrace.ca

suMMer arts festival • June 27 to July 6 www.artsterrace.ca

riverBoat daYs • fri. aug. 1 to sun. aug. 10 www.riverboatdays.ca

250-635-2659 • www.yxt.ca

farMer’s Market

every saturday morning at george little Park from May-october

Join us for Prince Rupert’s 36th Annual

“Celebrating s y’ North Pacific Cannarery” rs ve 125th Anni

4 1 0 2 5 1 to 3 1 e Jun

foR SuRvivAl, im w S , g n ri a d & k PARAde, Quic t Hockey, e e tr S 4 n o 4 , l l A B t ASke let’s Play!, 3 oN 3 B iSHiNg deRBy and tons more fun.

Ad f CHildReN’S BullHe

www.prspecialevents.com • prspecialevents@citytel.net • 250.624.9118 Organized by the volunteers of the Prince Rupert Special Events Society

festivals • fishing • family camping • fine accommodations • fun events!

www.visitterrace.com

For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visit w w w. no rthwo rd .ca northernbctourism.com

| APR/MAY 14 | 23

A k i l l e r w ha le le a p s o ut o f the water while a bal d e a g l e w a t c he s from a nearby ro ck .

elevations to the water’s edge and it’s a great way to check out these amazing animals—from the safety of a boat, armed with a camera. For details, visit BC Parks’ website at env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks and search Khutzeymateen.

The Khutzeymateen is a special place where you’re almost guaranteed to get a glimpse of a grizzly, but bear encounters throughout northern BC are pretty common. Just going for a hike around towns like Terrace, Stewart, Smithers, Prince George or Fort Nelson gives a good chance for a meeting. Terrace, in particular, is known for a population of elusive Kermode bears.

Of course, meeting up with a bear while hiking isn’t always a good thing. If you are heading out for a ramble and hoping to see some wildlife, be bear aware. Anyone venturing into bear territory—which is pretty much anywhere in northern BC—should be ready for an encounter.

This BC Parks bear awareness fact sheet is a good place to prepare: env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/misc/bears/bearsaf.html Taking flight Years ago, I visited rhinoceros auklets at Lucy Islands Conservancy near Prince Rupert. The funny little birds can fly, but they’re not exactly graceful. Landing isn’t their strong point, so they just hurl themselves at the undergrowth or crash into trees and fall to the ground, where they burrow nests. Watching auklet antics is a nature experience that’s guaranteed to make you smile.

Up in northern BC, we’re lucky to have a huge array of birds, including both migrating and indigenous birds, and anyone travelling here should be prepared to see countless species. To give you an idea of the diversity, there are nine different types of owl around Burns Lake alone. Use guidebooks like Field Guide to the Birds of North America or Sibley Guide to Birds (digital versions are available for smartphones) to get an idea what to look for.

Prince George has some great bird-watching opportunities not far from the city. Pine Marsh in Eskers Provincial Park, just 40 km northwest of the ... continued on Page 26

24 | APR/MAY 14 |

H ump b acks g ather to f e e d a t t h e m o u t h o f Wo r k C hannel , no rth o f P ri n c e R u p e r t a n d Me t l a k a t l a .

parks canada

... continued from Page 22

m att j s i mmo ns

par k s can ada

A bull sea lion warns human visitors to keep a safe distance from his harem.

NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

www.n o rthword.ca

me away from Hom e Your Ho

in Cow BaY

Pioneer inn

&Guesthouse

Self-contained 2 bedroom apartment great for long term stays and large families.

Featuring large picture windows with view of gardens, gas fireplace and kitchen facilities.

167 - 3rd Ave East (Cow Bay) Prince Rupert BC

1.888.794.9998 • 250.624.2334 www.pioneerhostel.com • pioneer@citywest.ca

Prince Rupert’s

H O T E L



• Oceanfront Guest Rooms and Suites • Waterfront Dining Room • Charley’s Lounge • Fitness Centre and Outdoor Hot Tub

Outstanding accommodation is only the beginning 222 First Ave. West Prince Rupert BC, Canada V8J 1A8 info@cresthotel.bc.ca

Toll Free 1-800-663-8150 www.cresthotel.bc.ca

For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visit w w w. no rthwo rd .ca northernbctourism.com

| APR/MAY 14 | 25

O ys t er catch ers are just one e xa mple of t he nu m erou s s h orebi rds y ou c a n e xpe c t t o se e w hi l e ro a mi n g th e n orthe r n c oa st line .

Sto ne’s sheep d o n’t shed thei r hor ns annual l y but o ccasi onal l y y ou mi ght stu m b l e across o ne l i ke thi s i n the al pi ne. Yo u can actual l y te l l the age i t d i ed i n the same w a y y our check a tree’s ri ng s f o r i ts ag e.

matt j s immons

d. gardin er, p ar k s can ad a

... continued from Page 24

city, is a great spot to raise a pair of binoculars. (And while you’re there, you might get to see a beaver, too.) Closer still are Cottonwood Island, Wilkins and Forests for the World parks, where you can wander short, easy trails and expect to encounter numerous feathered friends.

Vanderhoof is home to the Nechako Bird Sanctuary, a protected area along the Nechako River. Here, thousands of migrating Canada geese take time to rest on their annual trip to the Arctic. Other birds you might see include great horned owls, eagles, herons, hawks and woodpeckers.

Tyhee Lake Provincial Park in Telkwa is another great spot to check out birds. Trumpeter swans occasionally stop in at this lake, and loons and other waterfowl call it home. Also, keep your ears open for the unmistakable sound of woodpeckers on the hunt for an insect snack.

Out on the coast, ravens and eagles dominate the sky as seabirds fish the ocean. Watch you don’t get whiplash as you crane your neck to watch bird after bird fly past. A small sampling of species commonly seen on the North Coast include cranes, herons, sandhill pipers, oyster catchers, buffleheads, mergansers, marbled murrelets and, of course, lots and lots of gulls. ... continued on Page 28

26 | APR/MAY 14 |

P r i n ce R u per t’s h ar bou r i s f u l l o f t h e s e c u r i o u s m a r i n e m am m al s , h ar bou r s eal s .

NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

www.n o rthword.ca

matt j s immons

June / July is peak bear-viewing season!

Your place for fine vintage & antiques: FuRnituRe • PeRSiAn CARPetS • unique COlleCtAbleS AS Well AS COntemPORARy lOCAl ARt

ar Tours • Whale Watching T e B y l z ours Griz Your Tour Professionals

985 3rd Avenue W, Prince Rupert • www.theargosy.ca Open Wed-Sat 11-6, Sun 12-5 • 250.624.2746

Toll free 1-800-201-8377 • 250 - 627 - 9166 C2 - 215 Cow Bay Road, Prince Rupert, BC V8J 3P6

www.westcoastlaunch.com

For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visit w w w. no rthwo rd .ca northernbctourism.com

| APR/MAY 14 | 27

... continued from Page 26

j. bis s e tt, pa rks c a na da

Go fish!

One of nature’s greatest spectacles is spawning salmon. Flooding the creeks and rivers as they head upstream, these fish travel astonishing distances to breed and die. Generally, the best time to check them out is in the fall between September and November, depending on how far inland you are.

There are numerous salmon enhancement projects throughout the region and a hatchery is often a great place to view spawning salmon and learn more about fish life cycles and the effects on ecosystems that spawning has. A few hatcheries worth mentioning are Oldfield Hatchery in Prince Rupert, Deep Creek Hatchery in Terrace, and Toboggan Creek Hatchery in Smithers.

They’re not quite Sealand—in many ways, they’re better.

ma tt j s immo ns

Watch i n g for w i l dl i fe does n ’t al w ay s m ean l ook i n g for l arge an i m al s .

liNkiNg BC’s Northwest with the YukoN & Al Ask A

hwy 37

Massett, Haida Gwaii

N

& the

Chinook Lodge

Expl or i n g th e i nt e r t i d a l zo n e o n H a i d a Gw ai i i s a great w a y t o g e t a g l i m p s e o f th e n or th coas t’s d i v e r s i t y o f m a r i n e l i f e .

hwy 37

Alpine animals Stone’s sheep are mountain dwellers. So are aptly named mountain goats. To check out these awesome ungulates, you usually need to find a good mountain to climb.

There are few places as suited to viewing Stone’s sheep and mountain goats as the Northern Rocky Mountains. Several parks in the region north of Fort Nelson along the Alaska Highway provide great starting points for hikes into the alpine, where you might get a glimpse of these animals. Stone Mountain, Muncho Lake and Northern Rocky Mountains Provincial Park all have several hikes that are likely to reward you with a look at Stone’s sheep, not to mention amazing vistas. Check out tourismnorthernrockies.ca for more information.

Around Smithers, getting into alpine areas where you’re most likely to see some mountain goats is pretty easy. Babine Mountains Provincial Park is an amazing place to stage an alpine hike. Closer to town is Twin Falls Recreation Site, where, with a pair of binoculars, you can sometimes pick out goats on the cliffs above the waterfalls or get closer on the steep Glacier Gulch Trail.

Finally, on the Kitseguelca Road between Smithers and Hazelton, there is a mountain goat viewing area near the ridge known locally as The Nipples. A great resource for finding your way here and to other areas is the Northern BC Backroad Mapbook, which you can pick up at most bookstores in the region.

rivacy of 5 guest houses!

Enjoy the p each with: • • • •

3 bedrooms fully equipped kitchen washer/dryer • BBQ bicycles • crabbing gear

Pamper yourself after a full day of activities with a bit of luxury and enjoy the best the islands have to offer.

Moorage available for 2 boats in a serene, private marina with daily evening refuelling option.

Toll Free 1-877- Chinook (244-6665)

www.chinooklodge.bc.ca

trAvel the

Great Northern Circle Tour!

FREE “Auto Tour Guides” available in the Visitor Centres of Northwest BC and on our website:

Follow our “Auto Tour Guide” to visit key stopping points along the scenic, quiet, well-paved Stewart Cassiar & Alaska Highways. Enjoy intriguing nature stops, camping & recreation at lakeside parks, & spectacular drives to the historic end-of-the-road communities of StewartHyder & Telegraph Creek.

www.stewartcassiarhighway.com

For information on travel opportunities in Northern British Columbia visit 28 | APR/MAY 14 |

northernbctourism.com

www.n o rthword.ca

g ra ha m s mith

The Stellako River: Short but sweet

column

On the Fly

T h e St e l l a ko R i v e r i s a c c e s s e d f ro m H i g h w a y 1 6 n e a r F r a s e r L a ke .

W h i l e i t ’s o n l y 1 1 km l o n g , a n y o n e navigating the river should be e x p e r i e n c e d a n d t a ke a f r i e n d .

by B r i a n S mith fl yfi shingnut 4 7@gmail . c om

Bridge. The float is 11 km, with take-outs at the The Stellako is not Glenannan Highway 16 bridge and also upriver via an old gravel pit road that is accessed by taking the first right off Francois Lake only a majestic, Road about 500 metres from the highway, entering through an unlocked gate. pristine and If you decide to float the river, you should have experience navigating Class 4 water, go with a buddy, and be prepared magnificent river—it to make a short portage at the take-out on river left above the falls, just past the seven-kilometre marker and hydro transis a great river, and mission lines.

Insect hatches are prolific on the Stellako, where you we’re lucky to have can expect to encounter varieties of the following: mayflies, including Tricos, green and brown drakes; caddis flies, it on our northern comprising spotted, cinnamon and Grannom assortments; and stoneflies, comprising salmon flies, golden, little olive and yellow sallies groups. Some of the most effective dry-fly doorstep.

Touted by Canadian Fly Fisher Magazine as number one on BC’s do-it-yourself fly fishing destinations list, the Stellako River rarely disappoints a wandering fly fisher, boasting gin-clear fertile water, breath-taking scenery and superb accommodations.

The Stellako is not only a majestic, pristine and magnificent river—it is a great river, and we’re lucky to have it on our northern doorstep. Revered by local fly fishers and flyfishing enthusiasts all over the world as a must-do river on their bucket lists, the Stellako offers trophy-class wild native rainbow trout to anglers that will take the time and make the effort to learn the intricacies of her challenging water.

The Stellako is accessed from Highway 16, four kilometres west of Fraser Lake. Turn southwest onto Francois Lake Road, travel 11 km on pavement, and you’ll meet the Stellako at the Glenannan Bridge where it exits Francois Lake. The river is short, only 11 km in length, and empties into Fraser Lake east of Highway 16. The Stellako Lodge, situated on the river at the bridge, offers excellent lodge or campsite accommodations if you wish to stay a few days or weeks.

Day-use access to the river is available from the parking lot at the bridge, where there is a rough foot trail that traverses the south side of the river for a few kilometres downstream. After that, the trail is very primitive, and the river is best accessed by pontoon boat, kayak or rubber dinghy put in at the

patterns include the Adams hook sizes 12-20, Elk Hair Caddis variations sizes 12-18 and a variety of stoneflies sizes 6-16. Nymph fishing is also effective, using small pheasant tail nymphs, caddis emergers and stonefly variations in all sizes of flies.

The Stellako has special restrictions: a Classified Waters licence is required, open season is beginning of June to mid-November, and there are rainbow trout release and fly-fishing-only sections. Please consult the regulations for complete information. Enjoy the river—it’s special!

N

S, f BRAS TS o s le a and S UMEN entals RING INSTR R , ir a ST Rep WIND & WOOD Northern BC’s Professional Repair Service

Smithers | 250.847.0318 Michael Nelligan www.horncraft.ca | michael@horncraft.ca

CONTACT US FOR ALL YOUR MUSICAL INSTRUMENT NEEDS

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 29

F ro g g i n g h e a v i l y l o a d e d b o a t s t h ro u g h s h a l l o w u p p e r re a c h e s o f t h e C ro o ke d R i v e r.

Summit Lake Summit Lake sojourners dick corles s collection

Stories of early settlement

by H i l l a r y Cr owley hcrowley@mag- ne t . c om

The community of Summit Lake has a long and chequered history. Today, outdoors enthusiasts come to enjoy canoeing down the popular Crooked River canoe route or climb nearby Teapot Mountain. The tiny population increases significantly in the summer when people flock to their cabins. In winter, however, apart from the occasional snowmobile, a lone skier can cross the lake without seeing another soul.

There are several Summit Lakes in BC, but this one is situated 50 km north of Prince George. In the early part of the last century it served as an important transportation hub, being situated on the Arctic Divide. The Crooked River flows north from Summit Lake to the Parsnip and Peace rivers and then to the Arctic Ocean.

The nine-mile-long Giscome Portage trail connects the Fraser River to Summit Lake. First Nations originally used this trail, then later Europeans, during the Omineca and Peace gold speculation of the 1860s. In 1871 the trail was upgraded to a wagon route and was used extensively by miners and fur-traders.

IntegrIty

Professionalism

Q ua l i t y

Albert Huble established a homestead at the south end of the Giscome Portage on the Fraser River in 1904 and added a store in 1912. Business was brisk with riverboats, paddle wheelers and steamers bringing people in. He re-cut this wagon road in 1910 and built a warehouse at Summit Lake. In 1919, the Hart Highway was built north from Prince George to Summit Lake, decreasing use of the Giscome Portage, but Summit Lake continued as an important hub for trade, goods being carried by river from this point north.

Summit Lake to Fort Ware Dick Corless built riverboats at Summit Lake, which were used to haul freight to the Hudson Bay posts at Fort McLeod, Finlay Forks, Fort Graham and Fort Ware. Corless ran this successful freighting business from 1936 to 1956.

In 1946 he wrote, “At Summit Lake we have warehouses and a boat house for storing and building our river boats. There are several summer cabins and at odd times, during summer months, a store.” He had a fleet of seven long boats in use at a time. These boats were 44 feet in length and

for

Working

Community SuCCeSS.

L o c at e d i n S m i t h e r S & S e r v i n g t h e r e g i o n • 2 5 0 . 8 4 7 . 4 3 2 5 • w w w. e d m i S o n m e h r . c a 30 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

could carry a payload of 9,000 pounds. The going rate was $7.95 per 100 pounds (45 kg) to freight from Summit Lake to Fort Ware, a distance of 350 miles.

During the war years, supplies were needed by the American army for surveying a route through northern BC and Alaska to the coast to protect against Japanese invasion. Corless’s freighting company was used extensively to carry aviation fuel and supplies. Prospectors, trappers and miners were also carried. It took 10 to 14 days round-trip from Summit Lake to Fort Ware.

Summit Lake and the Crooked River continued as important transportation routes through the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. In the ’50s, Summit Lake was bustling with activity as there were not only trappers, boat-builders and freighters, but also loggers and sawmills. The Hart Highway was built north of Summit Lake in the early ’50s, so the river gradually decreased as a transportation route.

Early settlers Ed and Elsie Buchanan came from Montana in 1925 with two young children. They established

Ent m E l E 5 AcuprEssur E Acupressure Bodywork promotes full body relaxation by calming the negative mental chatter in our heads and fully releasing stress and tension in our bodies.

A helpi ng hand along your journey in health

Julie chaplin

cHHp, FEAp

5 Element Acupressure & Holistic Health practitioner 250.643.3477 • Full Circle Studio • 1283 Main St. Smithers

R IGH T: A l l en S tev en s an d B i l l R ah n m ov ed th e S tev en s & R ah n Mi l l from S al m on Val l ey to Mi l e 4 n or th of S u m m i t L ak e i n 1 9 5 0 .

their trap line by the Wicked River up on the Peace.

This excerpt from Elsie’s letter to her mother in February 1931 demonstrates the toughness of these early pioneers: “We’re at Fort McLeod. 62 miles to go yet. We plan four days for it and no more stops.”

It took them 16 days to snowshoe 175 miles (280 km) from the Wicked River to Summit Lake with two young children by toboggan and dog team.

They had to make it out before the lakes and rivers thawed as they depended on these frozen waterways for travel. In the ’50s, they settled at Summit Lake and set up Buck’s Store.

Wilfrid and Mary Erickson settled at the lake in 1946. Wilfrid trapped, passing these skills onto his children and grandchildren who still maintain the trap line. Trapping brought people north to populate these areas because the furs brought a good price, especially in Europe. This also brought in the Hudson Bay Company, but many of the posts, except Fort McLeod, closed when the price of fur dropped in the late ’40s. Prospecting and mining continued to bring pioneers north. People relied on supplies being brought in on the riverboats from Summit Lake and the furs being carried south for sale.

In 1911, Del Miller headed north along the Giscome Portage to Summit Lake, then north down the Crooked River system. He lived and

trapped up the Finlay River, moving his large family to Summit Lake in 1948. His daughter Betty said, “My mother was from Moberly Lake and I was the only one of the family able to talk with her in her Beaver language.” Betty remembers how squirrel pelts brought in 75 cents each.

She also picked huckleberries and sold them in Prince George for 20 cents a pound. Betty’s worst memory is when a toddler fell headfirst into the store outhouse: “His hair was covered in maggots and his grandfather had to give him mouth-tomouth.”

Summit Lake school and sawmills In 1948, a one-room school was established at the lake. Connie Buchanan was the first teacher and taught there for 13 years. In 1956, a second building was added to accommodate an enrolment of 53 students from grades 1-8. There were consistently over 40 students up to 1960, when the school reduced to grades 1-3 until it closed in 1965.

Anne Miller, who taught intermediate students from 1959 to 1960, said, “The teacher before me was very strict and the school board expected me to give the strap every other day.” The teacher had to split wood for the school and Betty, the janitor, hauled the water from the lake.

Sawmills sprouted all around the area in the early ’50s. The largest of these was Summit Lake

s ubmitte d by la mo nt s te ve ns

Britis h Co lumbia Arc hive s

LE FT: A n ol d m ap show s th e 3 5 0 mi l e frei gh ti n g ro u te from S u m m i t Lak e an d th e C rook ed R i v er to F or t Ware. It w as incl u ded i n D i ck C or l es s ’s ar ti cl e “R i v er Frei gh ti n g Dow n N or th , ” dated J a n u ar y 1 9 4 5 .

Sawmills, whose lumber was sold to the planer mills in Prince George. Lamont Stevens relates how his father, Allen, and partner, Bill Rahn, moved another mill, the Stevens & Rahn Mill, from Salmon Valley to Mile 4 north of Summit Lake in 1950.

They also established a school there in order to entice workers and their families north. In 1956, they moved the mill and school north to Kerry Lake. There were nine sawmills and two planer mills in the immediate vicinity around 1959, but many mills closed in the early ’60s, when larger corporations took over.

In the early ’70s, there were still some sawmills dotted around the lake and three trappers and a snowshoe maker, but the school was already gone. The store still flourished with a gas bar and post office, and there was an excellent restaurant, Three Gables, where people drove out from Prince George for a good steak.

This is all gone now. There is no store, restaurant or post office, but there is still a great community hall, which community members built in 1952.

The hardwood floor withstands the pounding of country dances as people twirl to the lively fiddle bands. Summit Lake is a recreation destination in the summer and a place of peace and tranquility in winter.

N

Extraordinaire Fat STONE •• NO NO Sugar Dairy GROUND •• NO NO Preservatives BREAD JUST GOOD BREAD! Organic Grain Milled Daily

All BAkiNG MADE FROM ScRATch!

4630 Park Ave. Terrace (across from Dairy Queen) For orders 250-615-0419 / 1-877-775-3535 Tues.-Sat. 9am-5pm

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 31

l orie fa rre ll

The search for local cheese culture

P a t ric k Fa rrell’s ho m em ade g o uda. Also i n h i s reper toi re are br i e, s w i s s an d gr u y ere, an d appenze l l a r i s n e x t o n t h e l i s t .

by E mily Bul me r a d v e n t u re m ily @ y a h o o . c a

Eco-friendly Paints & Stains EnvironmEnt FriEndlY • WatEr-BaSEd • loW-voC ProduCtS • littlE or no HazardouS FumES • not dEEmEd HazardouS WaStE

250.847.2246 • www.smitherslumber.com 3528 Yellowhead Highway 16, Smithers 32 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

Mmm… smooth, creamy, stinky cheese. Humans have been making cheese for almost as long as they have been domesticating animals, which archeological evidence shows is at least 5,000 years.

Before refrigeration was available, making cheese was a way of creating a food high in calories and protein that was easy to store and transport.

Cheese, bread and wine make up the Holy Trinity of food. While it is common for people to make bread and wine at home, small-scale cheese makers are a rare and shy breed. The search for local cheese-makers sounds like this: Open with, “Our mutual friend so-and-so mentioned to me that you make cheese…” to which the prospective cheese maker will likely respond, “Oh. I don’t do that anymore” or “I’m not really the one to talk to, you should call so-and-so” or “Yes… but can I call you back?”

It seems that the first rule of Cheese Club is that you do not talk about Cheese Club. Fortunately, Bulkley Valley resident Patrick Farrell is willing to open up about the delicious food.

“My wife Lorie and I have a little farm and we wanted to be more self-sufficient. We had a goat and I had a book with a small section on making cheese,” he says. The experimenting began in Farrell’s kitchen six years ago at about 11 p.m. “I didn’t really know what I was doing … and the first few cheeses I made were pretty dry.” But the process had him hooked, and he started doing more research.

“The difference between each cheese is the kind of milk used, the temperature you cook the milk

at, as well as the starter bacteria and the aging process,” he explains.

Goat, cow and sheep milk are all commonly used for making cheese, and each type has its unique characteristics and flavour. Cow’s milk creates cheese that is more yellow in colour, the curd is firm and the fats separate more easily.

Goat’s milk has no carotene, which makes it very white. It is more acidic than cow’s milk, which also makes it ripen faster. Sheep’s milk is different again, having a higher solids content, which means it makes more cheese than the same volume of milk from a cow or goat.

The milk’s flavour can vary between each animal and also depends on what the animal is eating. Farrell notes, “When the cows are in the dandelions the cheese has a strong flavour and when they are eating clover the cheese is sweeter.

We now have Dexter cows and the cream in their milk doesn’t separate as easily as other breeds.”

Bacteria are the second ingredient, giving cheese its unique flavour. Historically, storing cheese in caves and earthen cellars was the only option for keeping it at the right temperature while it matured. Different kinds of bacteria and moulds lived in these caves, and would become part of the cheese and give it a flavour and consistency unique to that specific spot.

Penicillium roqueforti is the blue mould that gives stilton, roquefort, danish blue and gorgonzola cheeses their strong flavours and blue-green colouring. Brevibacterium linens is a bacterium common to munster, limburger and port-du-salut, and produces a reddish colouring to the body and rind of the cheese. In modern cheese making, the

B u l k l ey Val l ey res i den t P atr i ck Far rel l w i l l l au n ch h i s l ocal l y m ade ch ees e bu s i n es s i n th e s u m m er of 2 0 1 4 .

e mily bulme r

Natural Fibres for your Spring Fun!

Terrace 4548 Lazelle 638-1711 bacterium is added during the cooking process.

The next influence on cheese is how it is aged.

“Fortunately, I have a cold room in the farmhouse. The ideal temperature range for aging cheese is 10 to 14 degrees Celsius with very high humidity. I have a wooden cabinet for cheese aging, and when it is full of cheeses, they give off their own moisture and keep the humidity high within the cabinet,” Farrell says.

As for advice for beginner cheese makers, he says, “Cleanliness is extremely important. Sanitize everything with boiling water.

Many of the reasons for cheese Patrick going wrong can be traced back to equipment not being sanitized properly.” He also says that it is very important to follow directions and understand why you have to do each step.

“Without understanding the why you may be tempted to take shortcuts that will ultimately make the end product not as good. I would also recommend buying a starter culture. You could use store bought yogurt, but the starter culture is more precise and you will get a more consistent product.”

Farrell adds that his favourite cheeses to make are reblochon or limburger—both especially smelly cheeses.

“It smells bad while it is aging, but when it is done, the cheese has a sweet, nutty flavour. I make brie, swiss and gruyere as well. Appenzellar cheese is my next challenge. There’s a special rub they put on it and I’m trying to crack the secret— of course nobody in the factory will tell what it is,” he says.

Now that Farrell has unlocked a few secrets and perfected his recipes, he is undertaking the process of becoming certified to sell cheese commercially.

“My wife and I work in the mining business and we wanted to have an option to stay home more. We did some research on what it would take to make a business out of cheese making, and have been working towards it for a couple of years,” he says.

Farrell’s permits are in place, and he is converting an existing building on his property to a fully functioning cheese plant—sterilized walls, sealed floors and installed Farrell sinks and other equipment to ensure everything meets food safe requirements—in anticipation of the final inspection. He says he hopes to be selling his cheese by summer, with production starting at about 250 pounds (113 kg) of cheese per week. With a raw milk operation, the cheese is required by law to age for at least 60 days.

“This is a very small amount of cheese as far as the industry goes,” says Farrell, but for him it is about creating a local cheese supply. Farrell will start selling at the Bulkley Valley Farmers’ Market and then see if local restaurants and small retail outlets are interested.

“As far as the local food scene is concerned, cheese is the only thing that’s missing,” he says, eager to fill the gap. He’s also keen to share the knowledge and encourage others to start making cheese at home. “I want to hold seminars on how to make cheese, too. I think everyone should make homemade cheese.”

As far as the local food scene is concerned, cheese is the only thing that’s missing.

N

Clothing Boutique + Shoe Boutique

side by side.

Spring Tonic

10-day detox & cleanse

April 25 - May 4 yoga • green juices nutritional planning • meditation ETF • infrared sauna Call for Details and to register at Full Circle and Nature’s Pantry.

250-877-3387 SMITHERS Full Circle Studio–4th & Main St. TELKWA 1613 Riverside St.

250-847-3943 • 3744 1st Ave., Smithers

www.full-circle-yoga.ca Phillipa Beck, C.Y.I, Y.Ed.• 250-877-3387 w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 33

Resource Directory ACCOMMODATION

COUNSELLING

CREATIVE SERVICES

•

ARTS & CRAFTS

HOME HOME HOME

BED & BREAKFAST

LEGAL

COMMUNITY

MARKETPLACE

34 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

... continued from Page 13

I n d u s t r y in Hou st on c o ntributes to particulates in th e atm os ph ere on a s ti l l w i n ter ’s day. Mos t of th e w h i t e plume s a re st e am , but the haze in the valley s h ow s th e par ti cu l ate pi l i n g u p.

Feb. 8, 3 p.m. Telkwa: -18 C, clear, wind 0.6 metres per second from the north.

PM2.5 has been below 5 most of the day, but now it has risen to 22.

The BVLD Airshed Management Society (AMS) was founded 10 years ago.

It is a cooperative effort between the Ministry of Environment, mills, pellet plants and concerned citizens to improve air quality from Moricetown to Endako. “The idea of this group,” explains AMS secretary Greg Tamblyn, “is that everyone needs to do their bit—for everyone to reduce their emissions.”

Clean air is more than a health issue, points out Tamblyn. “There are people who have left the community due to air quality and there are people thinking of leaving. So it’s also a community development issue. If a place develops a reputation for bad air, people will find that a reason not to move there.”

Industrial sources produce a good bit of PM2.5. In 2012, the pellet plants in Burns Lake and Houston reported emitting 176 and 108 tonnes, respectively. Timber mills are smaller contributors, that same year showing PIR at 6.5 tonnes, CanFor 11, Houston Forest Products 7.9 and Babine Forest Products less than one. Ideally, all industrial sources stay up to date with the latest emissions-reducing technology.

MARKETPLACE

bc minis try of environment

“The idea is continuous improvement throughout the industry,” Tamblyn says. For example, Pinnacle Pellet near Burns Lake will soon install a $5 million wet electrostatic precipitator to reduce its PM2.5 emissions.

An equally significant contributor is residential woodstoves. A 2003 study

by UBC estimated that woodstoves in the airshed put out more than 340 tonnes of PM2.5 a year. They are a dispersed source, with stoves scattered all over the airshed, but where clustered together they can have a huge local impact. Mobile monitoring indicates that older, denser neighbourhoods and trailer parks often have worse air quality than town’s official monitor would indicate.

AMS’s woodstove exchange program, which ran from 2007 to 2013, attempted to clean up the worst emitters. Owners of classic airtight stoves, which have no ability to re-burn smoke, could trade them in and get a $250 rebate on a new, EPA-certified stove. Almost 650 stoves were switched out in the airshed. Colin McLeod, who directed the program, says that although it improved air quality in certain neighbourhoods, it didn’t do as much as AMS had hoped.

“I think where we hit the stumbling block,” he explains, “is that the new stoves are capable of burning 90 percent cleaner, but they require burning differently and, more importantly, burning seasoned firewood.”

Next, AMS will be taking a look at municipal bylaws and what role they might play in reducing PM2.5 emissions. If all this motivates you to get involved and maybe clean up your woodstove act, check out cleanairplan.ca.

Feb. 10, 9 p.m. Burns Lake: -13 C, wind 0.9 metres per second from the north.

PM2.5 has been below 10 most of the day but is now spiking to 24.

Thanks to the AMS, annual average PM2.5 numbers are declining slightly in the airshed. On the other hand, mobile monitoring shows that unless you live next to the town monitoring site, the official numbers may not represent the air you’re actually breathing.

We need to know more about how air quality varies throughout the airshed.

And when we find out, there may be difficult societal and lifestyle choices to be made. Could we require woodstove owners to have licences? What if plants that couldn’t decrease emissions over time were shut down?

N Take a deep breath and think about it.

FOR RENT

Want to sound like a pro when talking to friends and family about air quality?

Here are some terms you can casually drop.

Come share a creative workspace with us!

PM2.5: Particles suspended in the air you breathe that are less than 2.5 microns across.

2 offices available (2nd floor) in professional heritage house, downtown Smithers, shared with Northword Magazine & graphic design studio (main floor). call Sandra Smith • 250-643-6221 • 3864 2nd ave, Smithers • sandra@northword.ca

PHOTOGRAPHY

Air quality objective: The average concentration of a pollutant that the province considers acceptable for health purposes.

Air quality advisory: A public notification from the province that the air quality objective (25 micrograms per cubic metre) for the 24-hour average of PM2.5 has been exceeded.

Venting: The atmosphere’s ability to carry smoke aloft and disperse it.

Vertical mixing: Movement in the atmosphere that exchanges upper level and ground level air Nephelometer: An air-sampling machine that measures particulate concentration in the air right here, right now.

N

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 35

column

Top Culture

A Big Little Book

by Rob Budde rb udde@shaw.ca

Ken Belford’s Internodes (Talonbooks, 2013) is about 13 by 20 cm and light enough to mail cheaply across the continent. It rests easily in the hand. In it are poems that are spry organisms assembled from the language of body, land and politics. An internode is the part of the plant between nodes, where leaves emerge, and is where changes in a

plant’s growth pattern occur. It is part of how plants think.

The traditional tools of poetry, narrative and image are displaced and dispersed as Belford creates a highly harmonic moment of listening.

His poems thrum in response to texts, media and the land itself. Because the poems don’t run on description or story per se, they function as deft turns of thought—the reader must be nimble to follow on these seldom-used paths.

One of the first pieces in the book (Belford doesn’t title each poem, instead they each read as a part of a series) twines three vines of language: plant behaviour (“sprigs and sprouts and internodes and twigs”) with power dynamics of family and gender (“the illusions of the fathers”) with animal studies (“I see animals differently”). The three come together to reveal how they are interrelated and to form a (temporary) whole vision of a new way of looking at the world.

There are many strands of knowledge in the Couturpower e andstructhersrelations, book: plant Feaanimal D nixand

P ho e

EAN and B

tures, media and health. One of the most prevalent is a recurring address, a call out to men to become self-aware and to forgo the traditional masculine values that create violence and oppression. Belford writes: “men are the privileged signifiers / who manipulate the language” and “too many men believe what they / say are the laws of reality.”

As a whole, Belford’s book resists conventional thinking as it applies to gender, land use and animal abuse, but he writes in a way that also resists conventional forms of writing that have helped create those ills. It is the pretty image and the good story that have produced the unsustainable context we are in and Belford writes his way out of that tradition and into a new, fluid and uncertain poetic path.

Using the forms of plant growth, Belford’s writing sends tendrils and rootlets toward healing light and nutrients: “but now I grow / through gaps and veer away from competition.”

esig n

NORTH COFFEE to take hom e!

N

Mountain Eagle Books & Cappucino

The Book...

• finest used & collector book stock in the north

The Steaming Mug...

• best coffee & chai

Cool Sips

Gifts of all kinds...

• for all kinds

Cards to Give...

• like nowhere else

Music to Hear...

• for warm days

• all our local musicians & more

The Bowl of Soup...

Tickets & Info...

• best homemade soup in town

• for what’s really happening

3775 3rd Ave., SMITHERS. Tel: (250) 847-5245 or 1-800-668-5119 36 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

morgan hite

Seymour Ridge trails

by Morga n H it e morga njh@bulkley.ne t

This is a wonderful set of trails that melt out early.

Thanks to their location on a south-facing ridge, they can often be walked in April and certainly in May. They have great views and a few hidden gems: perfect for a spring hike. They offer several loops and the potential to walk down to the edge of town through the forest.

The Seymour Ridge trails are just one piece of a larger trail system within the Smithers Community Forest, established in 1991. The goal was to protect the cross-country ski trails and provide an outdoor classroom for the public to learn about forest management (check out the Harvest Demonstration Trail with its interpretive signs).

Smithers Community Forest volunteers continue to maintain the trails.

There are four primary trailheads to access these trails, all reached by driving Hudson Bay Mountain Road out of Smithers. Seymour Lake trailhead is on your right 500 m after the orange “carry chains” sign. The Seymour Ridge trailhead

is above the switchbacks at the seven-kilometre marker (hydro pole 85). Still higher, you can park at the Nordic centre, and enter the trail system via the Nature Trail and the backcountry Goldeneye Trailhead (very curious: a trailhead you have to walk to on another trail!). Or you can follow the logging roads in to the Dahlie Creek trailhead.

From the Seymour Ridge trailhead, follow the lettered signs along Seymour Ridge. The rough road you cross between A and B was put in recently by an adjacent landowner. If you go all the way to H, you can continue right down into town on the mountain bike trails Meanstreak and All Screwed Up (both are multi-use, but bikers have the right of way). They’ll bring you to the old Bug Block Road, which you walk down a short distance to R, and then along the boardwalk to the Duthie trailhead.

The Nature Trail is maintained by the BV Naturalists. They recently repaired all the boardwalks,

and the interpretive markers and brochure have been upgraded.

One interesting feature along Seymour Ridge is the sackungen, visited on the newly-flagged alternate route between C and D. Sackungen are cracks in bedrock that occur when a ridge-top is spreading under its own weight. Fissures form, similar to the ice spreading on the surface of a glacier. The sackungen on Seymour Ridge are not crevasse-sized, but they are fun to visit.

The Waterfall Trail is a steep, stair-like trail, an express route to the top of the ridge, that takes you via a cascade that is likely to be booming in spring. There is no sign or parking where the Waterfall Trail leaves Hudson Bay Mountain Road but, as you are driving out of town, the trail takes off about 700 m after the Seymour Lake trailhead, where a small stream of water splashes out from the slope on your right. A large cottonwood tree grows just across the road from it.

N

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 37

column

Ba rom eter

Really, really good soup

by C h a rlyn n To ews edit or ial@no rt hwo rd. c a

Don’t feel bad when barbecue season is delayed or interrupted by cold, wet weather. Use the opportunity to make homemade chicken noodle soup.

My kid’s girlfriend, a quiet and reserved young lady, recently enthused about my soup. She said, “Thank you very, very much!” as she helped herself to seconds. I was ecstatic!

Later, I asked my son, “What was it about the soup that made it so good?” I wanted to know exactly why she liked so much. “She said,” he reported, “the spices in the broth were perfectly balanced.”

Wow! High praise! But what did I do, exactly?

I must retrace my steps of that really, really good soup or that pot may be the last of its kind, never to be created again.

Begin by finding a man who likes to cook, and marry him. Hubby had to go out of town to work for a few weeks, so on the Sunday before he left, in addition to making us all supper, he stuffed and roasted not one but two chickens to help tide

us over. It was the leftovers of Chicken Number Two that went into that soup. Prep time: 26 years.

I am a foodie—I love watching cooking shows and googling ingredients and wondering about foie gras. I enjoy cooking, but I can’t call myself a Good Cook. (In fact, many years ago, my son asked me to please stop baking—it just wasn’t working out. Thus my ecstasy at getting that compliment from the quiet girl.) I have been cooking enthusiastically and with gusto and much bad luck since I was in my earliest 20s, but until last November I had never bought or used cumin.

Imagine, all those pots of chili, year after year, countless Grey Cup parties and I didn’t add the umami-inducing spice. Discover cumin: prep time exactly 32.5 years.

Discover the trinity of aromatics, mirepoix— say it: “meer-pwah.” It’s fun! This combination of chopped carrots, celery and onions adds flavour and aroma to stocks, sauces and soups.

The proportions are 50 percent onions, 25 percent carrots and 25 percent celery. OK, I always had an onion or two ready to be chopped up and thrown in, but the carrot’s sweetness and the celery’s naturally occurring sodium nitrate (umami again) and acidity make for the trio’s popularity around

the world. Prep time: 34 years. Oh, I know, I know—I am slow on the uptake!

Hmmm, and that duck stock certainly improved the flavour. Marry a man who gets along great with his mother who raised ducks and geese on their hobby farm when he was growing up and comes over for duck dinner often. Prep time: let’s give that about 50 years to simmer.

As a young adult working in Winnipeg, I tasted the soup in a trendy new restaurant and immediately surmised the chef-owner, like me, was of Mennonite extraction with roots in a small town.

I asked him, and he admitted it readily, but how did I know?

It was the borscht, you see. Made with cabbage (never beets—beets are Ukrainian) and the necessary and dynamic duo of dill and bay leaves. You see, I have the soup gene, inherited from my mother. I don’t recall her actually teaching me to make soup, but I can make soup, and I always put in dill and bay leaves.

Since my mother just turned 80, and it is her genes I inherited to make really, really good soup, I’ll have to revise my preparation time for this recipe again: 80 years.

N

ALL OUR COFFEE IS CERTIFIED 100% FAIR TRADE ORGANIC

two sisters Daily fresh maDe soups with local, organic ingredients New luNch features all week! all-Day breakfasts oN saturDays!

Newly reNovateD patio opening soon!

New meNu items (including open-faced sandwiches) coming soon!

3763 4th ave smithers 250.877.7708 info@twosisterscafe.ca • www.twosisterscafe.ca

Sign

Slow Down 24,400 animals are killed each year For more driving tips

Animals are unpredictable. and to make a tax deductible donation, Actively watch for them, check out especially from dusk www.wildlifecollisions.ca to midnight.

250.828.2551 38 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca

In spring and summer, animals are attracted to early plant growth in roadside ditches.

Slow Down.

Watch for wildlife!

mail order or purchase coffee

at any of these fine NW BC retailers Fort NelsoN: Down to earth Health shop BurNs lake: Health In order smItHers: mountain eagle Books & Café muNCHo lake: Northern Dreams terraCe: sidewalkers PrINCe GeorGe: spruceland News PrINCe ruPert: muskeg Cove FestIval veNDor: Nomad’s kitchen

www.beannorth.com • 867-667-4145

Free wireless internet & pet-friendy rooms available. NEW! Coin laundry on-site for customers

in Smithers, base yo

urself at the

Centrally located on Smithers’ Main Street, the Fireweed Motor Inn is the place to stay! We‘re walking distance to the town’s best restaurants. Or book a kitchenette and fill the fridge with groceries from one of Smithers’ two grocery stores, literally across the street.

1515 Main Street, Smithers, BC Tel: 250.847.2208

stay@fireweedmotel.com • www.fireweedmotel.com

Nisga’a MeMorial lava Bed ProviNcial Park

lAvA cone tourS School Group / Drop-in / river / MoDifieD Auto tourS cAMpinG • niSGA’A MuSeuM • trADitionAl luncheS • SAlMon BBQ

250-633-2733

ohnson, Owner/Operator Steve J

Nass Valley Tours info@nassvalleytours.com www.nassvalleytours.com

w w w. no rthwo rd .ca

| APR/MAY 14 | 39

40 | APR/MAY 14 |

www.n o rthword.ca