SFU grad and crew are shredding pow while spreading awareness of environmental issues in BC
By Leah Bjornson
Photos by Bill Hawley Photography
A recent SFU graduate and his crew, called “Beyond Boarding,” are travelling across BC to investigate the myriad of industrial projects proposed in the province. According to the crew, a project like Enbridge is only one of many which are destroying BC’s natural playgrounds.
Beyond Boarding was initially created by a group of BC snowboarders who hoped to spread awareness of environmental and social issues in the snowboard community while trying to activate their fellow peers to make positive, green lifestyle choices.
Led by Tamo Campos, Lewis Muirhead, and SFU grad David MacKinnon, the organization uses video and photos to educate the community. The thought is that while not everyone may want to watch an environmental video, you can watch an exciting snowboard video while still learning about industrial projects and how they might affect BC.
“Snowboarders have an innate love for these natural places,” commented Campos, who is in the Global Stewardship program at Capilano University. “They play in them all the time, so they should be the ones on the front line defending them. I think it’s almost like our duty. We’re so fortunate to be able to play in these pristine mountains every day, and we need to take that and consider bigger issues.”
The crew’s plan was to load up a school bus powered by used veggie oil and travel around the province to investigate the various industrial projects and speak with the local communities affected. Additionally, the crew would surf and snowboard as much as possible, all the while getting footage that would hopefully make others want to check out their initiative.
“Its been an insane trip in the sense of how big [the province] is and how much development is being proposed in BC,” said Campos. “It’s hard to see that every single community we’ve been to during this trip is being affected by some sort of industrial project.”
Campos and MacKinnon were especially affected by their experiences at the Sacred Headwaters, a vast alpine basin that is the shared birthplace of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers. These three are some of the largest salmon bearing rivers in North America that remain undammed, and have supported the Haida people for 13,000 years.
However, they were recently declared the most endangered rivers in our province by the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC. Although a proposal by Shell Canada to to drill for coal-bed methane has been finally quashed, there remains 26 proposed mines in the area with tailing ponds (pollution left over from the mining process) in the Headwaters.
“It’s too easy to become depressed about these issues,” said Campos. “You have to spend half the time you do researching the tar sands and find out what is happening around the rest of the world, what solutions are there in place . . . it’s really kept us going.”
During their travel through the province, Beyond Boarding found several alternatives that give hope for BC’s greener future. Such alternatives include the following: wind power turbines on northern Vancouver Island; a sustainable mining company in the Sacred Headwaters which would provide jobs through environmentally conscious mining, not mountaintop removal; and off-the-grid farms in Smithers, where a day’s power could be created by using the exhaust from burning a 1-foot-by-1-foot bucket of wood chips.
Campos exalted these alternatives, saying, “The best thing we can do to arm ourselves against these projects is to educate ourselves about the solutions . . . In the sacred headwaters, every day the valley was filled with smoke as the forests were being clear cut to make way for the transmission lines. [The company was] burning the stackpiles because they’re not a logging company, they’re a transmission company. It should be mandatory that we do something with that wood, and you think about how that biomass could actually power all these other communities.”
Nevertheless, the boarders don’t feel that a solution can be achieved by individuals acting alone; calling instead for a complete change of mindset, one which might be difficult for many to accept.
“What climate change actually means is we have to totally rethink the way we’re doing things.” said Campos. “Our free market, resource extraction system is not working . . . we’re not going to have the same world 50 years from now. Accepting climate change is accepting that everything we have done up until now isn’t working, and that’s a really hard psychological issue to accept.
“50 years from now when we don’t have the tar sands, what is our country? That’s in our life span.”
Beyond Boarding will be wrapping shooting on their Northern BC project this September, and hope to take their movies on tour, as well as have them available for download on their website, [beyondboarding.org.] While they do have volunteer opportunities available for the right people, MacKinnon says involvement “starts at home.”
As an SFU student who made the decision in his own life to adapt a greener lifestyle, MacKinnon added positively that, “Canadians are as capable as anybody, and if we get people thinking that there is a better way of living, the sky is the limit.”
Check out our interview below with “Beyond Boarding” :
