**October 2012 Focus - Focus Magazine

Born of the Elements, Living the Prophetic Life
with Mary Jane Wilson CND MA. On four Tuesdays:
Oct 9 - Oct 30, 10 am – noon. $75 or $20 drop in at
Friend’s Meeting House, 1831 Fern Street, Victoria
Film Screening: Journey of the Universe (Brian
Swimme & Mary Ellen Tucker) with Gertie
Jocksch SC DMin. Thurs Oct 18, 7 – 8:30 pm.
$15.00 at Royal Roads University, 2005 Sooke
Road, Victoria. Registration: RRU Continuing Studies
www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies.
Imagining Sustainable and Just Future: a Call to
Action with Karen Hurley, PhD Fri Oct 26, 7 – 9pm
to Sat Oct 27, 9:30am – 4pm. $80.00 Please bring
lunch, refreshments provided. Location: Queen
Alexandra 2400 Arbutus Road, Victoria.
earthliteracies@gmail.com
250-220-4601 • www.earthliteracies.org
BC battles Northern Gateway
Thank you for your editorial on Enbridge
and its Northern Gateway project. Vocal opposition
is growing. It is grassroots and widespread,
despite Mr Harper’s claims that opponents
are just foreign extremists.
Enbridge is just one head of the hydra. If
Northern Gateway doesn’t fly, there are several
other pipelines—Kinder Morgan, Pembina,
etc.—waiting in the wings. They will, if
approved, carry bitumen from Alberta and
fracked un-natural gas from BC and Alberta
to service the ravening maw of the Chinese
market, which Harper seems determined to
feed. China is being given increasing and unexamined
control of the Canadian economy
with no real benefit for Canadians. We are
fast becoming a petrostate with all the lack of
democracy and environmental degradation
that involves, as we are swept backwards into
a role we should have outgrown—hewers
of wood and drawers of water.
On top of all that, Mr. Harper, the same man
who made his public apology to First Nations
a few years back, disregards crucial issues of
their health and well-being as the tar sands
poison their land and pipelines devastate it.
At base, this is about climate change and
corporatization. Our glaciers and our permafrost
are melting; the Arctic Ocean barely freezes.
We must connect the dots so that we understand
every pipeline as part of the mega-issue
that puts our future at risk. Times are hard now.
They will be a whole lot harder for our children
and grandchildren unless we get serious right
now and do everything we can to get Canada
onto the course of listening to our scientists and
caring for our fragile and miraculous planet.
Dorothy Field
Exporting opportunity
Congratulations to Focus and writer Katherine
Gordon for describing BC log exports as an
opportunity. This helps increase understanding
for solving this complex and controversial issue.
BC exports logs to other countries because
they produce more value from our timber
than we can. Offshore markets will pay $90/
per cubic metre for certain logs that in BC
sell for $50. Countries with strong forest products
economies import more logs than they
export. Sweden’s strong forest economy in
2008 imported 5.8 million cubic metres, and
exported 2.5 million.
In contrast, BC, in 2011, exported 6.9
million cubic metres, and imported less
than 100,000. Many BC sawmills and pulp
mills have permanently closed, while 2011
readers’ views
log exports increased to 10 percent of the total
logged. Increasing log exports are a symptom,
not the cause, of a weak forest products economy.
BC’s coordinated actions for building a strong
forest economy (and removing the incentive
to export) will include: growing high quality
wood to produce an increasing supply of valuable
timber to attract investment; selling domestic
logs at competitive prices so local mills have
access to the logs they really want in the desired
species, grades, and sizes—and predictable
quantities; and manufacturing high-quality
forest products the world wants, so BC can
compete successfully in global markets.
When this occurs, the evidence is that log
exports are a non-issue. If we do not control
our own destiny, someone else will.
Ray Travers, RPF
Great issue, especially the two stories by
Katherine Palmer Gordon. The log export one
really hit a chord as we see our beloved Vancouver
Island being raped and pillaged by the likes of
Rick Jefferies and Bill Dumont, whom I have
fought for years over forest protection and
management issues.
And Leslie Campbell’s editorial was great
too. We will beat Enbridge but then there are
the other proposed pipelines; no easy wins
there. An ongoing battle and absolutely no
thought of climate change.
Vicky Husband
Promontory
Sorry, I beg to disagree about the impression
made by a 21-story “bump” coming to
the horizon of Vic West. What distinctive
feature justifies the height of this building being
so far above that of others in the local environment?
Such a blimp on the horizon only
makes me wonder, sadly, about the community
price paid for the politics and backroom
manoeuvring of land rezoning.
Prudent buyers/renters in some countries,
with due regard to the increasingly severe
climate and political disturbances we all seem
headed for, consider five storeys the optimum
level for human habitation. Consider also
Arthur Erickson’s suggestion that mental health
is optimized if one can look out of their apartment
into Nature—not down on Nature.
Marilyn Leslie Kan
Is the Gorge actually safe for swimming?
Rob Wipond’s September article on stormwater
contamination in the Gorge is excellent!
The startling 2007 map of CRD stormwater
problem discharges [shows] how many storm-
6 October 2012 • FOCUS