4 - Wednesday, December 6, 1989

~- North Shore News

Bos
HUNTER

© strictly personal ¢

THE HEADLINE was wonderful, in its own twisted way. It
said: “Environmentalists threaten our future, loggers

warn.”

That's admittedly a new one —
although the motivation lurking
behind it is as ancient as avarice
itself.

The only thing modern about it
is that it involves a public relations
technique perfected by the Nazis,
known as The Big Lie.

It goes like this: when cornered,
tella whopper. In this case, when
it has become overwhelmingly ob-
vious to everyone that the en-
vironment is being literally ripped
apart, blame the people who are
trying to save it.

ce
} e’ve all driven

across Vancouver Island
to Ucluelet at one time
or another. [ hardly need
to paint a word picture
of the carnage we’ve
witnessed on the way...”’

Wonderful indeed! ! Worthy of
the Herr Goebbels Award for
Disinformation.

The headline referred to the new
“‘Share B.C."’ lobby group, a
coalition of loggers, ranchers,
hinterland business people and
rural municipal politicians, whose
founding meeting was held in
Chilliwack.

We are not informed as to
whether the forest industry is fi-
nancing this group in an upfront
way, behind the scenes, or at arm's
distance. But we may be sure that
the Adam Zimmermans of the
world are rubbing their hands in

glee.

Let the little guys fight the en-
vironmentalists, the forest industry
executives chortle among
themselves. St looks better. We’re
Goliath compared with the eco-
freak David. But if the working
stiffs march out against the
treehuggers, the media will be con-
fused as to who, exactly, the
underdog is.

One of the speakers at the
**Share B.C.”' gathering was Zelda
Busby, a director of Northcare, an
organization that supports the log-
ging of old-growth forests in On-
tario’s Temagami wilderness
region, the very last uncut tract of
ancient trees in another otherwise
totally once-, twice-, and thrice-
logged province.

If you want to get a handle on
where Ms. Busby in particular is
coming from, look no further than
the fact that her organization has
been funded to the tune of
$100,000 by a coalition of logging
companies, seedling companies,
prospectors and developers.

I don’t know about other people
at the Chilliwack meeting, but I do
know that among Ms. Busby’s
corporate sponsors are E.B. Eddy,
Consolidated Bathurst and Mac-
Millan-Bloede}, even though none
of them have a direct interest in
the Temagami region.

Their over-all interest is obvious,
however.

Groups like Northcare and
Share B.C. have much in common
with professional anti-environmen-
tal agitators like the Washington-
based Center for the Defense of
Free Enterprise, which specializes
in creating front organizations that
give the appearance of community
backing, while fostering hysteria
about job loss in the bush.

When the Share B.C. folks got
together to air their beefs about
nasty city people trying to save
forests, there were a lot of hypo-
critical speeches made, but I give
first prize to Ald. Mike Morton of
Ucluelet.

Quoth he:

“J left Toronto 10 years ago to
live on the West Coast because of
the scenery. But I believe tourism
and logging and others can live
together. One small group
shouldn't dictate the economic
policy of the whole West Coast.’’

We've all driven across Van-
couver [sland to Ucluelet at one
time or another. I hardly need to
paint a word picture of the carnage
we've witnessed on the way, pass-
ing through valleys west of Port
Alberni where clearcutting has left
a landscape that looks like a
plucked turkey.

Maybe it would have been better
all round if Ald. Morton, with his
peculiar tastes in scenery, had
stayed in Toronto, although I cer-
tainly agree that ‘tone small
group” shouldn’t dictate economic
policy.

So far as the history of British
Columbia is concerned, that is, of
course, exactly what has been
happening ali along.

And that one small group, so far
as our forests are concerned, have
been the cabal of industrialists
whose legacy is the vast tracts of
stripped hillsides with soil having
slipped down to the bedrock,
twisted and deformed trees that
were wrongly planted, soil degrad-
ed by slash burning, swatches of
stunted nursery-grown trees so
prone to disease that they have to
be bombarded with pesticides to
keep them barely alive, even as
dedicuous trees that grow natural-
ly, attempting to heal the wounds,
are strafed with herbicides to make
way for yet more genetically-iden-
tical garbage trees.

During the past 100 years, the
fact is that the forest industry has
relied almost entirely on the ever-
dwindling supply of old-growth
forests, averting their eyes from
the problems that company tree
plantations are encountering.

Polls show that across the coun-
try roughly 94 per cent of Cana-
dians want forests preserved for
future generations. It is for this
reason alone that the foresters put
their PR persons to work dreaming
up the term ‘“‘the working forest.’’

The best juxtapositioning of the
slogan is a sign with the words
**The Working Forest’’ on it
standing by the road in the midst
of a clearcut disaster zone near
Carmanah — all around only
stumps, shards, splinters and
cracking earth @®

NV man jailed for B&E |

AN 18-YEAR-OLD North Van-
couver man was sentciced Nov. 24
to one month in jail in North Van-
couver provincial court after he
pleaded guilty to charges of break,
entry and theft.

John Green was charged in con-
nection with an Oct. {i break-in at

Capilano Texaco Service Station
on Capilano Road and with the
subsequent theft of a Ford
Granada.

Appearing before Judge J.D.
Layton, Green was also put on
probation fer one year.

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