of the provincial government.
I had been canoeing in Temagami for three years and Maple Mountain was a pivotal icon in the heart of the ancient pinelands. The ensuing fight to protect the mountain from being developed into a world-class ski resort became a national issue. The Native land claim effectively put a block on specific development within the district (mining, prospecting, and cottaging), but it was still business-as-usual for the logging companies who were penetrating the wilderness with intrusive roads. By 1978 — the year I was conscripted by the government to maintain the district portage trails — Maple Mountain became the vital focal point for a broader protectionist stand to save the surrounding wilderness from clear-cut logging operations. One of my duties included a guiding trek up the mountain with an assemblage of environmentalists, media personalities, local government officials, and representatives from the Teme-Augama Anishnabe reserve.
It was one of those dog days in mid-summer when you sweated profusely even while sitting motionless in the shade. Everyone collected at the old ranger’s cabin at the base of the mountain, four kilometres from the summit. My trail crew had already cleared the old fire tower trail and built boardwalk and bridges across the bog holes; still, the climb was legend amongst canoeists — steep, precipitous inclines and a steady one-thousand vertical foot ascent to the apex.
The newly formed Preservation of the Lady Evelyn Wilderness Committee organized the event and had invited one of Ontario’s most reputable environmental groups, represented by a thick-bearded executive director. It was a tough walk for many. Hot, constant uphill, rock-strewn slopes, biting flies; water bottles were empty by the time we reached the top of the mountain. Luckily, there was a water spring at the top, once used by the fire tower rangers. I was with a handful of dehydrated hikers, first to get to the summit, and we headed straight for the spring, located a couple hundred metres past the tower. It was covered with a piece of plywood to keep animals out of it and birds from shitting in it as they perched in the trees above. To keep the silt on the bottom from getting stirred up, you had to dip your cup carefully in the still water. But before anyone could fill their cups with clear, clean water, the environmentalist broke through the bevy of parched trekkers, fell to his knees, and stuck his hairy, sweaty, bearded head deep into the cool spring. He retreated quickly after filling his cup, still catching his breath and waving at the flies, moaning about how hard the climb was. Nobody said anything. We all waited for the water in the spring to settle; someone skimmed the hair out of the disturbed pool while others preferred to go thirsty. Quick speeches were made, some left tobacco as an offering, and the bearded eco-warrior had already headed back down the mountain.
Why I’m relating this story is critical to how I personally envisioned life as a green crusader. Champions of the wilderness, I thought, would be gallant, self-sacrificing and noble individuals. The social revolution already had its heroes deeply wedged into the psyche of North Americans. Canada had Greenpeace — spearheaded by writer Bob Hunter and activist Paul Watson; and in the States, Edward Abbey’s book, “The Monkey Wrench Gang” — a how-to book for would-be saboteurs — spawned the formation of the direct action environmental group, Earth First!, under the tutelage of Dave Foreman and Mike Roselle. But the egoistic antics of the bearded enviro guy — the jerk — confounded my perception of green guardians; in fact, over the years I was to come to the realization that there were more zealots, monomaniacs, fanatics, and hedonists within the green movement than I would encounter either within the industrial or the bureaucratic authority. Plunderers of the green Earth know exactly what they want and the means to which they will go to obtain it. Their motives are clear-cut and money-driven. Environmentalists, on the other hand, whose intentions are more cryptic and symbolic, are motivated by passion, often to the point where they lose sight of reality.
Not to completely trash the green movement, but it functions primarily as a consciousness monitor — to prompt us to keep taking our blue box to the curb for pickup. I have lost my faith in the mainstream movement as they tend to compromise away the very wild lands the in-your-face environmentalists work so hard to protect. And this happens because the green leaders want to remain affable and polite in the eyes of the wolves — they don’t want to be eaten up in the process. Process bogs them down in boardroom parley until they give in. Drawn out negotiations are simply industrial stall tactics, but … we need the mainstreamers to lend credibility to the movement, chiefly because Canadians are polite, obliging people and they’d sooner open their wallets to respectful, non-confrontational canvassers.
But, what about the other part of the movement … the “direct-action” advocates, front-liners, and monkey-wrenchers? Even Greenpeace has backed off from their action tactics — one reason why co-founder Paul Watson formed his own break-away group, The Sea Shepherd Society, now based out of Los Angeles. Watson realized that direct action could have far better results than polite debate. Direct action is a more radical form of civil disobedience and is wholly dependent on media for its success. It goes a step further than symbolic action (banners and protests) and its directive is to inflict enough economic damage so the company retreats (from mining, road building or logging, or factory fishing, whaling, etc.). Tree-spiking and trashing heavy equipment by putting rice in their radiators or sand in their gas tanks can be considered common practices of ecotage. Authorities tend to criminalize ecotage by branding it as a modern form of terrorism. According to the FBI, since 1996 there have been over six hundred incidents of domestic “terrorism” perpetrated by the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, where arson is used to debilitate industrial activities in wilderness areas. Individuals who engage in environmental sabotage activities can claim them on behalf of the ELF if they meet three guidelines: (1) To inflict maximum economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment; (2) To reveal to, and to educate, the public about the atrocities committed against the Earth and all species that populate it; and (3) To take all necessary precautions against harming life. To date, no one has been injured or killed in any of these actions.
Jim Flynn, an Oregon-based environmentalist, in a 2007 USA Today article says: “I think that’s really what all these actions are about, is really getting public attention to some of these issues … if we were able to affect policy change through more legal means, then certainly that’s the way these people would go. Nobody enjoys being underground, and that lifestyle.”
Ecotage works and the authorities are unwilling to admit it. They can’t, because there would be a total breakdown of the system of order. The politics of wilderness (and wilderness is now considered a valuable commodity because of its scarcity) demand a stringent adherence to management doctrines, as one-sided as they may be toward industry. Allowing the armour to be chinked could crash the guiding principles of a multi-use objective. It would also give credence to the viability of the left-wing fringe environmental movement. Paranoia is the reason why the establishment has come down hard on the perpetrators, setting higher penalties for green crimes. In Marin County, California, three enviro-crusaders were arrested and sentenced to one year in jail and a total of fifty-thousand dollars in fines. Granted, these were serious actions against public and private property. In the United States, the FBI has clustered the granola-munching green activist with the bonified gun-wielding terrorist in an attempt to make any threat against homeland security one and the same as far as the law is concerned. The fixation on “terror-isms” that is rampant in the States is not quite as apparent in Canada, probably because we lack the proliferation of cult followings and radical left-wing green earth crusaders. We’re just nice people.
One form of ecotage that has had proven results worldwide is the construction of illegal trails; trails usually built on public land owned by the state or province and, in most cases, through a tract of land that may be threatened by development. The emphasis here is to attract people to the location, encouraging them to participate in a particular issue; and if enough people flock to the newly hacked out trail, their collective letters and complaints to the local administration just might be enough to halt plans for logging or mining.
In Temagami, while I was mapping out the canoe routes for the government guidebook, I also included upgrades on all the historic fire tower trails. The strategy behind this was to get canoeists off the water routes and onto land-based trails where the protection of viewscapes could be included in the master plan … much to the chagrin of local foresters whose old arguments in favour of clear-cuts to the