In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,105
spread. Containment and absorbent booms proved ineffective, often breaking in rough weather and storms. A cluster of islands on the outer coast has been contaminated for an unknown period of time—a heavy blow to the community’s food sources, culture, and economy.
In spite of this tragedy—and perhaps in a small way because of it—the pendulum is swinging again toward more responsible decision-making for the coast. Successive governments at both the federal and the provincial levels have charted a slightly different course from their neoconservative predecessors. Between my travels and the time this book went to print, the Great Bear Rainforest agreement was ratified, in 2016, bringing additional protection to the region. Two of the more controversial pipeline-tanker initiatives slated for the coast—including Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project—have been canceled. In May 2018, a federal law known as the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, designed to restrict the largest ships carrying crude and other oils from plying the north coast of British Columbia, was passed in Canada’s House of Commons.
And in a dramatic turn of events, in December 2017, the provincial government aligned with many indigenous communities on the coast, and much of the general public, to ban the trophy hunting of grizzly bears across all of British Columbia. The lion’s share of responsibility for this shift in policy rests in the work of a core group of people, some of whom appear within these pages.
Not all individuals and communities on the coast, or across the province, support these changes. The cyclical nature of governments combined with deeply polarized politics nowadays means there are no firm guarantees that some of these decisions won’t be overturned. But optimism remains high among those who seek to maintain these changes.
Meanwhile, the world of Sasquatch research lost one of its pillars.
On January 18, 2018, wildlife biologist and Bigfoot-studies doyen John Bindernagel died after a two-and-a-half-year battle with cancer.
In the years between his diagnosis and his death, Bindernagel tripled his efforts to get his research into the public domain, posting his video lectures on YouTube and appearing as a guest on TV and in podcasts. Up until his final days, he was meticulously filing and documenting eyewitness reports. In the end, he never realized his dream of encountering a Sasquatch at close range or seeing his theories vindicated by mainstream science.
ADDENDA
Addendum 1
Incident at the Deer Pass Cabin, as Related by Mary Brown
There was another situation about three years ago at the Deer Pass cabin in Troop Passage. I run the Restorative Justice Program, and one of the programs that we have is isolation for people who are in trouble with the law, or who are going down the wrong path. Their families come together and say, “We need to help this person get back on track.”
This case involved a young man. He was nineteen years old. He was put into isolation at the Deer Pass cabin in August.
We occasionally go to check on people put in isolation. On the first visit, I brought one of the councillors with me. When we saw him, he seemed fine. He said, “You know, I’m a little scared, but I’m managing. I hear things at night, but I think it’s just wolves in the bush.”
The second week we went up there to check on him again. We could tell that this time the young man was spooked. He told us, “I can hear things. I’m starting to smell things. It’s really stink. I think there’s something out there. I don’t know if it’s a bear—or what it is.”
We returned again during the third week. As soon as I walked up the trail to the cabin, I saw that there was a huge bonfire burning outside it. It scared me because we only do small campfires there because there’s a lot of trees around.
I ran up and said, “Hey, what’s going on?” When I got there I found the young man just sitting by the fire. As soon as he saw me, he literally fell to his knees and embraced my legs and screamed, “You gotta take me in! You gotta take me in! There’s something out here!” He was crying and was absolutely terrified.
I said, “Get ahold of yourself. Try to calm down and we’ll talk about this.”
So we spent a little while talking and he was kind of jumping all over the place from story to story about what he heard, what he smelled, and what was there. He was scared stiff and insisted that he’d learned his lesson.