Think of the large-scale terror-activities of the last few years. The bombings in London, Madrid, Bali, New York, and Washington, Air India, the wars in Iraq, Somalia and Bosnia, the genocides in Africa. Imagine the shock and lasting emotional effects of these acts on those directly touched by these events.

Now imagine the marine life on the wild Cheakamus and lower Squamish Rivers in British Columbia on the morning of August 5th, when suddenly, a bio-terrorist armed with a rail car of caustic soda unleashes 40,000 liters of this highly toxic substance into their watery homes.

No humans were seriously harmed. No one was even forced to relocate, so news of the spill never hit the front page.

Now think of the dedicated Streamkeepers, who for years have spent hundreds of volunteer hours nurturing this precious aquatic ecosystem back to health after a century of logging, hydro electric development, pollution and now global warming. On August 5th they were akin to the firefighters who cleaned up after 9/11, wading through the polluted waters unceremoniously assessing the damage, rescuing the few creatures that survived and counting the dead.

They will never shrug off the experience of that day.

News of the spill spread quickly through the Streamkeeper's list servers. The numbers were staggering. Miles of water and two river systems poisoned, thousands of fish dead. In the words of Caroline Melville from Instream Fisheries Consultants, "This disaster should not be diminished, the repercussions for the ecology of the lower Cheakamus are huge."

The dead included: steelhead, dolly varden and rainbow trout; coho, chinook and pink salmon; as well as an almost complete extermination of resident char, sculpins and lampreys in the mainstream Cheakamus River. Not to mention the spill's effects on the scores of other aquatic organisms, potential groundwater pollution, the struggling ecotourism operations who run rafts on the river and the emotionally overwhelmed Streamkeepers cleaning up the mess.

Ian Mann, speaking for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said the department had no choice but to shut down the fishery. "The spill was at a very bad time," he conceded. "The fry are wiped out, and the returning adults and eggs are being killed." As for the pinks, he said, "we'll have to wait two years to see how bad the damage is." The news is reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez and other aquatic disasters. One wonders if we ever learn from our mistakes.

To appreciate the scope of this spill one must appreciate the significance of this wild Canadian river. A vital link from glacier to ocean, it comes upon you suddenly along Highway 99 from Vancouver to Whistler as you move deeper into the Coast Mountain Range. Born in distant mountains the Cheakamus dances and sparkles in a small streambed until it joins the Squamish, another larger wild river, to finally connect to a rich saltwater estuary at Howe Sound.

More that simply beautiful, the Cheakamus is integral to the surrounding ecosystems. Nature's majestic highway. Every year thousands of fish travel this inland river waterway to the sea and back up again during their short lifecycles. Lifecycles totally reliant on a healthy, nurturing ecosystem.

On August 5, the river became the tainted cycle. The fish who were in the river on that day and their offspring are the life forever lost.

Nexen Chemical Company describes caustic soda as "one of the largest and most important commodity chemicals. [Without it], many products we use every day would not exist. We would not have paper, plywood and even steel. Your life and the lives of your loved ones are made better, easier, and safer every day by products made with caustic soda."

Nexen is telling us our society cannot function without caustic soda. Or can it? Have we even tried?

Like many other industrial accidents, the Cheakamus spill shows us how much we rely on industrial chemicals and their processes for the comfort and convenience of our everyday life, as well as the extent to which we trust our transportation systems to carry them safely from one place to another. We "need" lots of pulp, paper, steel, resin and plywood. We also "need" to get it all cheaply and easily. But one has to ask, at what cost?

Apparently we have evolved to "need" these deadly substances in our everyday lives. Never mind that the minerals that create these products come from the earth's core, and that their toxicity has been sealed there for millions of years, allowing life to flourish above. But who is minding this chemical store? CN Rail? Consider this: they had a massive oil spill in Alberta only two days before the Cheakamus spill, dumping 500,000 litres into Lake Wabamun, 65 Km west of Edmonton. Both of which took an inordinately long time for them to report. What about the Federal Environment Ministry? Consider this: Seems they needed to be pressured by the private watchdog group the Sierra Club to even consider prosecuting for environmental damage in these two cases.

In the words of Stephen Hazell, Sierra Club conservation director in Ottawa, "We felt strongly about this because we've got two aquatic ecosystems that have basically been destroyed. We haven't heard much from either level of government about what they plan to do about it, even though we have environmental laws in this country that cover these exact sorts of situations. These two instances are among the most egregious that I can recall."

In a society that continues to endorse economic policies that pander to a bottom line which still doesn't adequately include natural capital--the value of nature as an essential part of our economy, as an integral component of our GNP--our wild rivers will always be undervalued and the fish will always be poorly represented. In cases like this, our society's ethical policemen, the government and the market prove terribly inadequate.

How can we not see what is of true value? It wasn't that long ago that we sat on riverbanks or seashores and caught our own fish. We measured the tides, waiting for the right season and the right moon until the fish gave themselves up to us. If we didn't respect the fish, and the medium that nourished and moved them, we starved.

Today we prefer food moved by vehicle rather than ecosystem. We prefer Styrofoam wrapped meals to wild food. We are so squeamish about death, while we continue to sow the seeds of death simply through the way we choose to live.

The truth is we can't feed 6 billion people on wild food alone and we can't reduce our reliance on industrial chemicals completely. But is large-scale farming of fish, forests, animals and plants, and massive industrialization the only way? Does the evidence suggest we are making healthy choices? Besides encroaching pollution and shrinking ecosystems around the globe, we are terribly disconnected from our mammalian roots and the ways of the wild world.

The natural world that provides us with all, yes all, of our sustenance has very definite limits and if we don't stop and figure out what those limits are, they will be figured out for us. Diversity will disappear, disease will kill total families of biological organisms, aquifers will shrink, and pollution will prevail.

The truth is humanity needs wild systems for our physical sustenance. Regardless of how clever we think we are, we cannot manufacture all the resources necessary to sustain us.

We can't continue to consign wild to theme parks and movie theatres where it is organized, sanitized and often misrepresented. Wild means real, it feeds us as mammals. And it feeds our soul. Wild is the world as the Great Creator intended. It is magic. It exists on its own. Value it. Conserve it. Leave it be.

I challenge Canadians to consider how their lifestyle compromises could save our shrinking wild ecosystems. Think about what you buy and where you buy it. Think about where your food comes from and how you are actively protecting wild ecosystems. Follow the example of the wild salmon that fight their way upstream against all odds to plant some wild seeds for the generations to come.

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© Celia Brauer
All Rights Reserved

Celia Brauer is the Artistic Director of the Salmon Celebration, a BC Rivers Day event in SE False Creek in Vancouver which is everything about the connection between wild salmon and our everyday lives. This year, Sept 25th marks the 26th anniversary of BC Rivers Day and the First Annual World Rivers Day.