Riding for the Tour de Cure BC

My son Kevin and his partner Lin cycled 260 km over two days for Tour de Cure BC this August Starting in Cloverdale and finishing in Hope, they helped raise over seven million dollars for cancer research and equipment. 

 

Saturday was their first day of the Tour de Cure. Kevin sent me a link to follow his ride in real time on Garmin. It was so cool to watch him move along the various roads to the finish line! On the first day, he and Lin went a hundred and sixty km (hundred miles) at an average of 20-22 kph for over 7 hours from Cloverdale to Chilliwack! 

 

They camped there overnight and started the following morning at 7:30, travelling 100 km toward the finish line in Hope. Good friend Anne and I drove to Hope to greet them at the finish line. It was so exciting and I confess I was very emotional. I was so proud of them both! 

 

After lots of hugging, we had some burgers for lunch then a beer at the beer garden and visited in Memorial Park (by the finish line). I noticed their mud-covered faces, particularly Lin’s—and how very clean Kevin’s jersey looked—and it was explained to me that cyclists, when riding together, take turns leading and drafting each other(riding directly behind) to get a break while the leader breaks the wind and sets the pace; hmmm… what was Kevin doing? 

 

Kevin and Lin got a ride back with their bikes and Anne and I made our way back to Ladner, where Anne lives and I was visiting from Ontario. We celebrated with an ice cream cone! 

 

You can still donate through Kevin's page here: 

https://tourdecure.ca/fundraiser/kevinklassen

Thanks so much!

In gratitude,

Nina

 

 

Warrior, A Spirit Bear in the Great Bear Rainforest

Her name was Warrior, for the scar gauged across her nose, just below her left eye. The close-up of this female Spirit bear (Ursus americanus kermodei) was captured by photographer Michelle Valberg in the Great Bear Rainforest. Warrior was one of four intimate close-up face shots used in a 2019 Canada Post stamp series, featuring also a black bear, polar bear and a grizzly bear. “Warrior walks around like she owns the forest,” said Valberg to an interviewer when the stamps were first issued. “There’s a regal elegance about her stride that’s incredible to watch.” The Spirit bear has white or cream-coloured fur and has long been featured in the oral traditions of coastal First Nations people.

Intrigued, I needed to know more about this female bear, captured so intimately. So vulnerable. So beautiful and somehow iconic of Canada. I later learned that it is, in fact, the official animal of British Columbia.

So, I did more research. I’d already watched several excellent documentaries on the Spirit Bear in its natural habitat in BC’s northern west coast. An excellent documentary appeared in David Suzuki’s “Nature of Things” entitled “Spirit Bear Family.” 

Narrated and filmed by Canadian wildlife filmmakers Jeff Turner, the documentary chronicles the lives of a mother bear and her young two cubs within the Great Bear Rainforest, part of the largest expanse of temperate rainforest left on Earth. Turner and wife Sue were the first people to film these elusive creatures twenty-five years ago. In this episode of Nature of Things, they return with their children to see the bears again. “Although any bear can be frightened by a human presence,” Turner says, “experience has taught me that if you are relaxed, the chances are the bear will be too.”

First of all, the Spirit bear is not an albino; it is, in fact, a subspecies of American black bear, which have white fur when they carry a double-recessive gene unique to their subspecies. Most commonly they are known as the Spirit bear, a romantic alternate to the Kermode Bear, named after Frank Kermode, a former director of the Royal BC Museum. To the Gitga’at First Nation they are known as Moksgm’ol, the Ghost bear. It is estimated that fewer than 400 Spirit/Kermode/Ghost bears are currently in existence. Turner also tells us that, while a white black bear can very rarely occur in other places, the higher numbers—one in ten—of white bears on these west coast islands is due to their isolation in the Great Bear Rainforest and the territory of the Gitga’ata people.

Warrior fishing (photo by Richard Sidey)

I ran across this wonderful personal experience of photographer Richard Sidey with Warrior and an older female bear—likely her mother, named Ma’a: 

“Early in the afternoon a Spirit Bear appears on the far bank of the river, no more than ten-metres away from my position. The bear looks around slowly and sniffs the air, appearing slightly hesitant as it surveys the river scene ahead. Marven [the Indigenous guide] is speaking quietly explaining that this is an old bear known to him as Ma’a (Grandmother), due to her having raised at least three sets of cubs. She is not quite white, but more vanilla in appearance with darkish rings around her eyes. Ma’a appears to recognise Marven’s voice, immediately dropping her guard and ever so slowly makes her way to the river’s edge. 

Ma'a fishing (photo by Richard Sidey)

All bears fish in different ways with varying amounts of energy exertion and success. It is immediately evident that Ma’a one of the passive, patient hunters. Completely still, except for her constantly swivelling head, she watches and waits for the perfect opportunity to collect her fish. After nearly twenty minutes of focus she does just that, and quietly eats her fish just metres from where I sit experiencing a wave of emotions.” Then Sidey sees another bear approach. “…a second Spirit bear appeared from the forest behind Ma’a and joined her in the riverbed. This was Warrior, a younger bear and likely an offspring of Ma’a due to their apparent comfort being in close proximity of each other. She is beyond striking in appearance, with completely white fur and a large diagonal scar on her nose [from] which her name was derived.” “Over the next three days I spent several hours with these two rare and beautiful animals, observing, learning, filming and photographing. Late in the final day of my journey, I was watching Warrior at a distance downstream in a dark area of the forest, when she walked into a narrow beam of afternoon sunshine streaming in from a low angle. Against the darkness Warrior was illuminated in an intense warm light that spread throughout her magnificent white coat. With the harsh contrast she appeared suspended in complete darkness and I became overwhelmed in emotion. Through a viewfinder filled with flowing tears I took several photographs before she exited the ray of light and disappeared into the forest.”

Protecting the Spirit Bear and its Habitat

Although the Spirit Bear is not currently listed as an endangered species, considerable conservation efforts to maintain the rare subspecies' population have been made, thanks in part to the bear's cultural significance. Main threats to the bear include habitat destruction from oil pipelines and trophy hunting of black bears.

The Spirit Bear gets most of its protein from salmon during the fall season. salmon are a keystone species and are important to the nutrient intake of both aqueous and terrestrial environments. The salmon contribute nutrients to water during spawning and contribute to the land with decomposition of their carcasses when predators, such as bears, scatter them throughout the forest. 

Pipeline spills could cause damage to salmon populations by polluting ecosystems. This would not only affect the bears but also the entire ecosystem. The bear's habitat was recently under threat from the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines, whose planned route would have passed near the Great Bear Rainforest. Indigenous groups including the Gitgaʼat opposed the pipeline, which was ultimately rejected by the federal government in 2016.

References:

Guly, Christopher (2016-11-29). "Canadian government rejects pipeline through rainforests of British Columbia". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035.

Hilderbrand, Grant V.; Farley, Sean D.; Schwartz, Charles C.; Robbins, Charles T. (2004). "Importance of salmon to wildlife: Implications for integrated management" (PDF). Ursus. 15(1): 1–9. doi:10.2192/1537-6176(2004)015<0001:iostwi>2.0.CO;2  

Langlois, Krista (2017-10-26). "First Nations Fight to Protect the Rare Spirit Bear from Hunters". news.nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved 2017-12-11.

Reimchen, Thomas E.; Klinka, Dan R. (2017-10-01). "Niche differentiation between coat colour morphs in the Kermode bear (Ursidae) of coastal British Columbia". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 122 (2): 274–285. doi:10.1093/biolinnean/blx079. ISSN 0024-4066.

Shoumatoff, Alex. "This Rare, White Bear May Be the Key to Saving a Canadian Rainforest", Smithsonian Magazine, August 31, 2015.

Temple, Nicola, ed. (2005). Salmon in the Great Bear Rainforest (PDF). Victoria, British Columbia: Raincoast Conservation Society. pp. 3–21.

Nina is a Canadian scientist and novelist. She worked for 25 years as an environmental consultant in the field of aquatic ecology and limnology, publishing papers and technical reports on water quality and impacts to aquatic systems. Nina has written over a dozen eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy novels. An award-winning short story writer, and essayist, Nina currently lives in Toronto where she teaches writing at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Her non-fiction book “Water Is...”—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, teacher and environ- mentalist—was picked by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times as 2016 ‘The Year in Reading’. Nina’s most recent novel “A Diary in the Age of Water”— about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world—will be released in 2020 by Inanna Publications. www.NinaMunteanu.ca; www.NinaMunteanu.me

Water and Fire…And the ‘New Normal’

Last weekend, I drove with Pixl Press director Anne Voute beneath smoke-induced blushing skies from Vancouver to Calgary. We were heading for the eighth annual writers festival, When Words Collide in Calgary. As we drove, we were thinking: wildfires.

The drive took us out of BC’s coastal western hemlock region northwest towards Kamloops into the heart of wildfire country where hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest are now burning. The day we left, a wildfire had broken out much closer to home—between Hope and Agassiz, just west of BC Highway 7. We smelled the smoke as it billowed up and filled the valley. While a majority of fires were concentrated in areas northwest and southwest of Prince George, a number of them were already filling our coastal skies with enough particulates to create a red ball of the sun—and prompt air advisories throughout BC. The smoke stayed with us throughout the entire drive to Calgary.

In a recent article in “The Grist”, Kate Yoder mentioned the extensive heat maps that cover most of Europe. A new shade—magenta—was created to show the extreme over 35 degree temperatures blanketing much of Spain, France and Germany. According to Yoder, the Carr Fire in California was one of the most severe in their history; it burned down 1,000 homes and even spun a fire tornado through the air—uber scary!

“Over a decade or so, we’re going to have more fire, more destructive fire, more billions that will have to be spent on it,” California Governor Jerry Brown said recently. “All that is the ‘new normal’ that we will have to face.” Yoder asks: “Why on earth is the word normal being thrown around to describe such extraordinary times?” Normal is a dangerous term to use for many reasons. Most places can’t afford a future where climate change and sea level rise are the ‘new normal.’ Calling anything like this ‘normal’ suggests acceptance and hints at complacency. 

In my upcoming book A Diary in the Age of Water, limnologist Lynna contemplates in her journal on our tendency to turn a blind eye to environmental destruction. In one of her entries, Lynna discusses UBC fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly’s description of generational differences in the perception of dwindling fish populations. In 1995, Pauly coined the term ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ to describe peoples’ shifting concept of ‘normal and healthy’ in a shifting landscape. Inevitably, the past ‘normal’ is forgotten as the new ‘normal’ is embraced.

“Personally,” says Pauly in an interview with Yoder, “I think it’s wrong [to use the ‘new normal’]. We’re in the middle of a shift that can destroy what we hold dear, and to call this ‘normal’ is absurd.”

The term ‘normal’ suggests a static and relatively constant phenomenon, one that can be measured and predicted based on a known pattern. One of the reasons some people dismiss the reality of climate change is its very unpredictability (if we can’t measure it, it isn’t real). We are on the steep side of a curve whose slope is shifting with each year. NPR correspondent Kirk Siegler defined it this way: “The ‘new normal’ may be that things are just going to keep getting worse.” 

On our approach to Kamloops, we drove through kilometres of Engelmann Spruce and subalpine fir, changing to Ponderosa Pine with pockets of sagebrush Chaparral near Merrit. Last year, Kamloops lurked beneath a gray blanket of wildfire smoke and smelled of an old campfire; this year, despite ongoing wildfire activity nearby, we could see where we were going. The winds were on our side—for the time being. That would change; by the time we returned to Vancouver, the winds had moved southwest to blanket the lower mainland with a peach-coloured sky.

As we headed for Golden, dominant vegetation shifted to Interior Cedar / Hemlock, where extreme drought conditions prevailed. We saw evidence of previous and recent fires in the Engelmann Spruce and Subalpine Fir forest stands as we continued through the south end of the Rocky Mountain Trench into the Rockies then on to Banff, Canmore and finally Calgary. Smoke clung like grease to steep mountain sides and blanketed the valleys.  Blue cliffs emerged from gray-pink low cloud, floating and suspended like a Lao Tse painting. Then, like ghosts, they vanished.

The limnologist in my book A Diary in the Age of Water also writes about Peter Kahn, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, who coined the term ‘environmental generational amnesia’ to describe how each generation can only recognize—and appreciate—the ecological changes they experience in their lifetimes. In an article in The Meaning Of Water I argued that the inability to feel and connect beyond our immediate line of sight is a good thing—a kind of selective memory that allows us to adapt to each “new normal.” Mothers of several children can testify to the benefits of “forgetting” their hours of labour to give birth. Hence the ability and willingness to repeat this very painful experience.

Is this part of successful biological adaptation in all of us? The ability to reset? But, for the environment and our relationship with it, it is never really a reset. It is more like quiet acquiescence as we whittle our environment—and ourselves along with It—one unobtrusive forest at a time. I’m reminded of the lobster in the pot of water slowly coming to a boil. It doesn’t realize it’s dying until it does. And on some level, it doesn’t care—it is not sufficiently aware of its environment to appreciate what the incremental change means to its own survival. When does dis-ease turn to alarm? Who is to say that if that lobster wasn’t confined in a pot it would not have slowly edged away from the source of heat—like some of us deciding not to buy property in a 100-year floodplain?

The phenomenon described by Kahn’s environmental generational amnesia is not so much about not understanding or caring about the past, but of not being sufficiently connected to and caring about the present.

Each generation has its chance to connect and make a difference. Each generation is its own “reset”, providing a fresh perspective, and free to connect in its own way. It is all about connection. To return to my example of the mother gladly giving birth again and again—it is not that she has forgotten the pain; it is rather that she chooses to relegate her memory of it behind something far more beautiful and wondrous to remember: the miraculous birth of her child. Environmental generational amnesia is really part of a larger amnesia, one that encompasses many generations; a selective memory driven by lack of connection and short-sighted greed.

A Diary in the Age of Water explores identity and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”—George Santayana