Summary

• In 2024, an extreme cold event caused many B.C. wineries to lose most of their grapes. In response, the province allowed wineries to join a program allowing the import of U.S. grapes, a practice usually reserved for larger commercial labels. 
• The full rules about how sales of wine made with U.S. grapes would be taxed were released months after wineries had already bought foreign fruit. Each winery got a sales tax exemption on a specific quantity of wine — after that, taxes could reach as high as 89 per cent. 
• These taxes apply to all sales for as long as wineries sell any wine made with U.S. fruit, even if the actual bottle in question is made with 100 per cent B.C. grapes. The result, winemakers say, is losing out on years of profits and, possibly, going out of business.

The program offered a lifeline when the forecast was unequivocally dire. In January 2024, temperatures dropped below -25 C in B.C.’s Okanagan, Thompson and Similkameen Valleys — the province’s agricultural breadbasket. 

The cold snap in the Interior came right after unseasonable daytime highs of 10 to 13 C. The weather whiplash hit the area’s fruit trees hardest: acres of peaches, pears, plums, apples and nectarines were damaged, with the plants’ buds dead come spring. The ripe, juicy produce tourists flock to the Okanagan for in summer and fall never arrived.

The deep freeze also crushed one of B.C.’s most prized commodities: wine grapes. More than 90 per cent of the Interior’s annual harvest was lost, which meant nearly 90 per cent of the province’s total vineyard acreage. Suddenly, a $3.75-billion industry was in crisis. 

“There were zero grapes,” Paul Sawler, vice-president and general manager of Dirty Laundry Winery, a mid-sized winery in Summerland, B.C., recalls. The winery’s 100 acres of vineyards produced almost no fruit.

“Where we would normally see 300 to 400 tonnes [of grapes], we got less than half a tonne from all the vineyards combined,” Sawler says.

The solution seemed clear at the time: “There was no way to survive except to buy Washington State grapes.” 

In British Columbia, alcohol is regulated by the BC Liquor Distribution Branch, a government body long assigned to the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. In July 2025, it was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food — a nod to the realities of producing a weather-dependent consumer good in an increasingly volatile 21st-century climate. For winemakers and grape growers, who had seen several difficult years of damage to their vineyards from extreme weather, it was a welcome move.

Under the liquor branch’s policy, certain wineries — mostly larger operations that hold a commercial winery designation — are allowed to import foreign grapes to complement their B.C. fruit. Often acquired from the U.S., these grapes produce wines that the liquor branch taxes at high sales mark-ups — the dollar amount the branch charges a winery when it sells its wines directly to consumers, restaurants or other distributors.

Regulations normally prevent most small and mid-sized B.C. wineries from purchasing foreign grapes. This is part of the liquor branch’s complex policy, which involves different regulatory and taxation systems not just for different types of wineries, but also for direct-to-consumer sales versus sales through the liquor branch. The short version is that independent, “land-based” wineries are required to use exclusively B.C. fruit, in exchange for which a good chunk of their sales are tax-exempt. 

After the 2024 freeze, the liquor branch relaxed these rules, allowing a wider range of wineries to import grapes to salvage their businesses. But bringing in foreign grapes meant signing on to a program that limited each winery’s tax-exempt sales. 

“We really had no choice,” Sawler says of his decision at Dirty Laundry. Though most Okanagan wineries were committed to making B.C. wines with B.C.-grown grapes, the weather had decided for them. 

“If we didn’t buy the grapes, we would have had to lay off half our staff,” Sawler says. “We probably would have had wine to sell at the winery, but we would have lost our whole outside market — a market that we spent the last 20 years building.”

So, Dirty Laundry and 91 other wineries in the area rolled the dice and brought in foreign grapes to make their 2024 wines. 

“I don’t regret buying them,” Sawler reflects. “The quality was good; the pricing was good. It worked out well.” 

But the decision has come with a latent — and significant — unanticipated cost. The limit on wineries’ tax-exempt sales was based on a complicated calculation many did not understand at the outset. In fact, some didn’t understand they’d be subject to mark-ups at all. Now that the program is in its second year, some wineries have wine they can’t sell without a significant financial hit.

“A program that was basically designed to help wineries, in some cases may actually kill some wineries,” Sawler tells The Narwhal. “Those are extreme cases … but it is happening”

“We know how devastating the 2024 freeze event was for grape growers and wineries in the Okanagan and we’ve worked together with the B.C. wine industry to help them recover,” Minister of Food and Agriculture Lana Popham told The Narwhal in an emailed statement. 

“The Liquor Distribution Branch will continue to work closely with wineries and Wine Growers BC.”

A program that brought wine flowing back into B.C. has soured

The vintage replacement program, or just “the program,” as many in the industry refer to it, was first announced in July 2024 and laid out in fine print in a liquor branch memorandum that October. Importantly, this was after most wineries had already purchased U.S. and foreign grapes. 

For the 2024 vintage, the BC Liquor Distribution Branch would permit wineries that opted in to the program to purchase foreign grapes or a partially fermented product known as unfinished juice, and would treat any wine produced from those products the same as B.C.-grape wine. That meant the liquor branch would offer the tax exemption usually reserved for certain types of 100 per cent B.C. wine to all B.C. wineries using foreign grapes.

This main component of the program was a success. Wineries like Dirty Laundry and many smaller, newer wineries kept their staff, juiced their grapes and made wines they were proud of. The wider industry, which supports a substantial economy of restaurants, hotels, hospitality workers, supply companies, migrant agricultural workers and small family businesses remained afloat.

But the details were a shock to many.

The exemption wasn’t a blanket exemption. Each winery had what was known as a “support cap,” or a limit on tax-free exemptions. Wineries’ individual caps were based on an “Olympic average” of five years of previous mark-up exemption totals — for land-based wineries, of their B.C.-grape wines; for commercial wineries, of B.C.-grape wines certified by the BC Wine Authority’s Vintner’s Quality Alliance, or BCVQA. This was a dollar value calculated by taking the mark-up exemption on sales numbers from the past five years, dropping the highest and lowest numbers, and averaging the three remaining years. 

Sales over that limit were taxed at the liquor branch’s standard rates for foreign-grape wines — as high as 89 per cent on the first $11.75 of the wine’s per-litre value, and 27 per cent after that. 

The calculation didn’t pose a problem for many commercial wineries used to importing foreign grapes — and selling huge volumes. It was also doable for many established wineries that had relatively steady sales over the period in question and dedicated accounting departments. It did pose an issue for many newer, growing independent wineries, though. 

Another surprise was how long a program meant to help with one bad year was going to last. The ability for wineries to buy foreign grapes for tax-exempt wine was extended for the 2025 vintage, to account for any lingering cold snap effects on the province’s vineyards. Additionally, once participating wineries brought in foreign grapes, they were tied to the vintage replacement program until they’d sold every last bottle of wine containing U.S. grapes.

This all means the support cap will remain in effect until March 2028, to account for the added year of foreign grapes, and sales of wines that take longer to produce, like reds or sparklings. 

All that, and the mark-up exemption limit each participating winery received was not exclusive to its U.S.-grape wines. Post-limit taxes would be applied to all the wine a participating winery sold. 

Let’s say a winery had 5,000 cases of U.S.-grape wine — “replacement” wine — left to sell, starting this year. That newer stuff would likely share shelf space with bottles of carefully cellared, 100 per cent B.C.-grape wine from years past, too. Signing onto the program meant this B.C.-grape wine would count toward the winery’s annual mark-up exemption limit. Which means that once the winery hit the annual limit set by its Olympic average, this 100 per cent B.C.-grown-and-produced wine would be taxed the same way as malbec from Argentina: at up to 89 per cent. 

In an emailed statement on behalf of the liquor branch, the Ministry of Agriculture said that “to ensure revenue neutrality and fairness across the sector, the annual support cap … includes all wines sold within the fiscal year, including vintage replacement wines, BCVQA and 100 per cent B.C. grape wines.” 

The ministry added that a support cap based on historical sales data was recommended by Wine Growers BC.

“From the outset, there were very clear guidelines communicated to the wine industry about eligibility and annual support caps, and it was intended to help the industry keep the lights on during a very serious agricultural emergency,” Minister Popham told The Narwhal.

“It is in everyone’s interest to return to producing 100 per cent B.C. wine production.,” the liquor branch-attributed statement concluded.

Small, new B.C. wineries suffering the most under program’s limits

Paul Sawler’s neighbour in Summerland, Ron Kubek, started Lightning Rock, a small, family-owned business just up the road from Dirty Laundry, in 2017. It’s grown steadily ever since. 

“I think the problem in the wine business is that too many people in ownership or in the tasting room want to show how smart they are,” he says. His greatest pride is his winery’s consistent five-star ratings on Google, which show that everyday people appreciate Lightning Rock’s approach.

“Wine is supposed to be something that’s enjoyed among friends and family. Some of my favourite reviews are, ‘It was my first time in the tasting room and they didn’t make me feel dumb.’ We can talk about the technical stuff, but we’d rather just have fun.”

Kubek hasn’t shied away from sharing his views on the program, which his winery also opted into after losing its 2024 harvest. 

“We’re still small, but we’ve experienced tremendous growth, from just a few bottles in 2018 and 2019 to [when] the pandemic hit and wine sales went through the roof,” he tells The Narwhal. 

But that initially promising upward trajectory is now proving an impetus to further growth. The program calculated Lightning Rock’s mark-up limit using the low sales volumes of its early years, and now the winery isn’t eligible to sell much tax-exempt wine.

Kubek says his situation is “not because we brought in too many grapes from the U.S. — we brought in about 60 per cent of what we would normally do in a year after the catastrophic [harvest] loss — but because … [the liquor distribution branch] took what was a simple program and misapplied the Olympic average to help jack up revenues and get their bonuses.” 

Lightning Rock’s speciality is single-varietal wines, a large portion of which are reds and sparklings that take several years to age. That means Kubek will likely have to remain in the program until 2028. As a result, he has to carefully calculate the amount of wines from previous B.C. vintages he can sell each year without losing too much profit.

“The problem is that my previously B.C. [tax-]exempt wines are now being taxed or in danger of being taxed,” he says. “So I’m trying to grow, but I have a limitation, because if I do grow, I’m suddenly hit with an 89 per cent tax.” 

So Kubek, like many Okanagan winery owners, was holding back sales in March when he spoke with The Narwhal — waiting anxiously for the liquor branch’s fiscal-year turnover of April 1 to reset his mark-up limit. For a small winery with hard-won personal relationships with restaurants and other distributors, the cost is significant. 

“I’m having to tell my sales agents, ‘Hey slow down on sales,’ because I’m very, very close to going over my Olympic average and then suddenly I’m going to be paying 89 per cent tax on a bottle of wine.”

Kubek says he would have been able to sell an additional 1,000 cases of wine in the last fiscal year if it weren’t for his mark-up cap.

In response to The Narwhal’s questions about these limitations, the agriculture ministry noted, “While some wineries accessing the temporary supports have exceeded their annual cap and are facing payment obligations, many other wineries planned their operations around the annual support cap or chose not to access the temporary supports. Any changes to the policy directives or requirements mid-stream would not be fair to these businesses.”

Kubek feels frustrated. “I lost all my fruit. I had to pay for fruit to come in and now the government’s penalizing me if I try to grow.” 

He believes the program has hurt wineries like his the most. 

The support cap clause in the vintage replacement program was meant to prevent some of the Okanagan’s biggest wineries from bringing in more cheap foreign grapes than they normally would while paying below-normal sales taxes, Kubek says. It was supposed to prevent these grapes from flooding the B.C. market, which could have changed the industry’s local fingerprint and provided an unfair advantage to some. 

But what the government feared never happened, and the little guys are the ones now being hurt, Kubek says. He pointed to two wineries under the same ownership — Kelowna’s Mt. Boucherie Estate winery and Rust Wine Co., a smaller winery in Oliver — which confirmed they have had to lay staff off as a result of tax bills currently exceeding $500,000.

The agriculture ministry told The Narwhal, “In recognition of the payment obligations for those that exceeded their cap last fiscal, the [BC Liquor Distribution Branch] will continue to work with wineries to explore flexible payment arrangements within reasonable timelines.”

B.C. wine industry is pushing for solutions to a complex situation

Jeff Guignard is the CEO of Wine Growers BC, the primary industry marketing and lobbying organization for B.C. wines. He has heard his fair share of complaints about the vintage replacement program, including from Kubek, who he speaks to nearly daily. He also speaks with the provincial government every week, trying to find a solution for wineries who say the taxation approach has pushed them to the financial brink.

“This program was an essential lifeline to industry in a moment of generational crisis,” Guignard says. “It literally saved people’s businesses. There are wineries in B.C. that would not be in operation without this program. So we’re immensely grateful to government for that.” 

But, he adds, “It’s now clear — because things were rushed, and though everyone was doing their best — that the program has had some unintended consequences.” 

Guignard says the constraints built into the program for good reason are now injuring the very people and businesses the program was designed to support. 

“The constraint is acting as a limit on sales,” he says. “You could be selling, right now, a 100 per cent made-and-bottled-and-grown-in-B.C. wine, that was bottled years ago, prior to the freeze, and prior to the program being developed. But it counts against your business as though it were part of the program.” 

Guignard says the problem with the program is its one-size-fits-all approach, when the province’s wine industry ranges from huge, established players like Arterra Wines Canada or Andrew Peller Ltd., which both own multiple wineries, to medium-sized operations like Dirty Laundry and smaller newcomers like Lightning Rock. 

He says he knows of over a dozen wineries that have gone over their support cap and received invoices from the provincial government — businesses being treated “as though they were importing foreign wine into the province.”

“The program was designed to help you not have to do that,” he says, adding that one person told him, “ ‘I wish I hadn’t brought any fruit in. I would have had no wine, and I would have had to lay off all my staff, but my business would actually be in a better place, financially.’ ”

Adding to the challenge is the fact that the 2025 grape harvest in the Okanagan and Similkameen was — to everyone’s surprise — highly productive. Many of the vines that had survived the cold freeze produced abundant fruit, but grape growers unattached to specific wineries were left without customers. Businesses trapped in the “golden handcuffs” of the program, as Guignard terms it, weren’t buying, because they weren’t looking to make new wines they couldn’t turn a profit on. 

With growers, too, facing financial hardship, the program has in some ways simply deferred the crisis it was trying to prevent. The crucial support the program offered when the industry seemed on the brink of collapse has turned into an albatross hanging over some winemakers’ necks. 

“From a Dirty Laundry perspective, I’ve taken the position that if I had 1,000 cases of imported wine left over at the end of March next year, I’d dump it before I’d stay in the program another year,” Sawler says. “That’s the amount of impact it’ll make on our winery. We’d be better off to throw the wine away or to sell it for nothing … to make it go away.”

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Basia Bulat is running on a busy schedule these days. The Montreal-based singer-songwriter’s back from touring her latest album, Basia’s Palace, which she performed across Canada all spring and summer, but her calendar is still full.

While juggling a successful music career is demanding, it’s a different duty that’s been occupying much of Bulat’s time lately: daycare drop-offs and pick-ups. The multi-Juno-nominated autoharpist and Canadian folk-pop darling says she made her seventh album “in all the small hours of the night, when I was going through this period of time that many call matrescence.”

The mother to two young daughters remembers singing some of the album’s first songs while her youngest was just an infant, rocking her to sleep in her arms. “You’re finding yourself and figuring out who you are, while at the same time letting [yourself] escape into a bit of a fantasy world when the reality is changing nappies and waking up every few hours,” she says. “It’s not very magical or mystical, but at the same time, it is actually quite psychedelic.”

This transformational period prompted Bulat to reflect on her own childhood, which informed the songs on the new record. Now, she’s finding renewed inspiration by playing the music she made so quietly “super loud, on all the big stages.”

Originally from Etobicoke, Ont., but based in Montreal for the last decade, Bulat finds joy in watching her backyard garden grow and her daughters explore the teeming life around them one insect and plant at a time.

Here’s what else she had to share about her relationship with the natural world — including her soft spot for a tiny four-legged crooner — when she took our Moose Questionnaire.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. All opinions are the subject’s own.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

That’s very hard, because I’ve been to almost every province and territory, with the exception of Nunavut. But the most breathtaking has probably been the view of the Klondike, and just getting to the Yukon. It’s somewhere I was obsessed with getting to since I was really young. When I finally made it, I made an entire record up there, inspired by that trip, called Heart Of My Own. A lot of the melodies came up there. The beauty, the quiet, the energy, the air — everything.

But I also have to say Prince Edward Island. I’m so in love with the south shore of P.E.I, when the tide goes out and the red sand goes on forever and ever. [The Yukon and P.E.I.] are almost tied now. They are completely different, but I feel like they’re equal loves.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

There’s so many. We live on this beautiful jewel of a planet. I was lucky to get to go to Australia on a tour in 2019, two times, and the second time I gave myself quite a bit of time to explore Queensland and go to the Great Barrier Reef. That was probably one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill

I don’t want to kill anything! But I’ll kiss a moose, because there’s that great Robert Munsch book about the moose kiss. I’ll marry a beaver, because I think they’d be really good at keeping things together and a great partner. And if I had to kill one, just symbolically, let’s say the black fly, because I’ve suffered a lot from them in my medium-long life.

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

This one I really love. It’s just a very special and not super-known cause. It’s a group of people working to protect the western chorus frog. I’m going to give you the name in French: l’équipe de rétablissement de la renaitte faux-grillon du Québec. It’s a very beautiful, super tiny frog, the western chorus frog. It’s got a beautiful song. They’re vulnerable in Quebec right now and there’s so much pressure on their habitat from development, agriculture — from all sides.

It’s easy for people to forget them because they’re really tiny, so not everybody has seen one. They’re our tiniest cohabitants. This group is working hard to educate people and to preserve the habitat we have for them and get out awareness about the chorus frog. They’ve even partnered with the biodome in Montreal, to help move populations that are endangered to a new section. 

I fell in love with the frog myself. I should have said kiss the frog, I guess! 

Outdoor cats: yes or no?

Oh yes. I have an outdoor cat and I found him that way — or he found me. I was staying in a cottage in Saguenay and my cat was a kitten at the time. He found me and basically held on with his tiny claws to the screen door until I took him home. I don’t know if someone left him, but I couldn’t change his nature. He was already quite wild.

Tell us about a time you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I change my mind all the time, and I have to, to keep being an artist, so I don’t get stuck in my ways. Every record I’ve ever made has been an exercise in changing my mind.

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

I’ve learned the hard way that nobody wins an argument. This is what’s so hard about climate change, because people in many ways feel their identity is threatened, or they feel judgment. It feels like everybody goes from zero to 100 so quickly.

I usually try to live by “show, not tell,” and try to get a sense of where people are coming from. No one likes to be told. Once you start to see each other and meet people where they’re at, some kind of bridge starts to be built. But it’s challenging, so I just try to lead by example and hope that the people around me follow.

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Some of these questions are very unfair. But I’m going to say Great Lakes, just because I grew up going to the lakes — Georgian Bay, Lake Superior. I’m a Great Lakes girl.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

It’s heartbreaking that it’s gendered like that. I know the impacts of climate change on women in the Global South are stronger. Maybe I’m being too generalist when I say this — or maybe it’s my perspective as a mother now — but we call her Mother Earth. This is the mother that brought us all life. It could be that connection. I can’t really give an explanation, but it breaks my heart.

If you could dip a toe off Canada’s coastline, which ocean would it be in?

I love the Pacific and I love the Atlantic, but I haven’t been up far enough to dip my toe in the Arctic, so I would dip my toe there — if it would come out still, not in a block of ice.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

I’m going to say my Martin guitar. Because I’ve written so many songs on it. I think a lot of people would think it’s beautiful, and it just gives me a beautiful feeling.

What’s the farthest north you’ve ever been and what did you do there?

I think the farthest north is Dawson City, or just north of Dawson City. Some friends drove me a little bit farther north, and that’s where I took the album photographs for Heart Of My Own. It was a life-changing trip.

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

In my garden. I have a little garden, and I try to do something in there every day. Right now, it’s trampled a lot by tiny feet, but we’ve got grapes going, and I have a plum tree. Mostly the garden is feeding the animals, because I can’t get around to harvesting it myself. But the birds and the squirrels are very happy. I’m getting different birds right now, with the grapes I have. I have to figure out what they are — they’re much bigger, and speckled. I haven’t seen them before, in five years of living at this place.

Usually every morning I’m out there, sitting on the back porch with my kiddos and looking for birds. It’s really nice to have even a tiny place. It’s a little bit of heaven.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

Probably my mother and my grandmother. They’re both amazing gardeners. My mom, growing up, really tried to get us up into nature all the time. Camping, going up to an uncle’s cottage whenever she could sneak us in, and just making us go out into the forest. I have so many memories of just wandering around until she would blow this whistle and the dog we had would round up all us kids to come home for supper. 

And my grandmother, I don’t know how she did it, but she had the greenest thumb, so she could just take a branch off of anything and grow it into a tree. There’s a few trees in my mom’s yard now that are maybe 30 feet tall, that started from a stem my grandmother charmed. So I’m hoping some of that passed down to me.

Whose relationship with the natural world would you most like to have an impact on?

My daughters. I’m trying to do that now, all the time. We just spent the summer on Prince Edward Island, and right now we’re really into bugs — understanding that they’re not all scary and that we can learn about them. My daughter is very into snails right now, and hermit crabs and starfish. I’m getting amazing questions from my four-year-old about, like, groundwater, and where the water comes from. And why we don’t just throw things away, and why we have to do all these things like recycling and composting. With all the questions, it’s like, oh yeah, here’s my chance to let it set in early.

Yes, you have to choose: smoked salmon or maple syrup?

That’s easy. Maple syrup — on everything.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

I want to visit Raffi on Salt Spring Island. He’s always posting his beautiful views and I would love to go visit him in B.C.

Camping: yes or no?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I’m not a great portage-multiday-trekking person, or someone who’s super skilled in terms of survival skills, but I love camping, and hopefully I’ve still got time to work my way up to that level.

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Consider the beaver. Iconic Canadian rodent. National symbol of industriousness and resourcefulness. Sometimes a nuisance. Cute, furry and cutting a fine figure on our nickels since 1937. 

For author Glynnis Hood, beavers have occupied significant mental real estate for decades. In fact, the animals have become such an important part of her life’s work that they’ve made her something of a beaver expert. Earlier this week, the professor emerita of environmental sciences at the University of Alberta celebrated the second-edition release of her 2011 book The Beaver Manifesto.

Hood has studied how semi-aquatic mammals — mainly beavers — interact with and influence their environments for many years. The subtitle of her book alludes to what she’s discovered in doing so: “Conservation, Conflict and the Future of Wetlands.” 

Beavers may be a beloved national icon, but there are some who decry the animals’ destruction of natural environments — think, taking down beautiful trees — to build their homes. What Hood has learned in her research paints a more nuanced and favourable view: beavers can help mitigate climate change and drought in the wetlands and other habitats they occupy.

Born and raised in B.C.’s Creston Valley, where she spent her summers boating off the shores of Kootenay Lake, Hood now lives on Miquelon Lake in Alberta’s Camrose County, where her closest neighbours are a family of — you guessed it — beavers. 

Here’s what she had to share about her relationship to the natural world in our Moose Questionnaire.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity — all opinions are the subject’s own.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed between the Pacific, Atlantic, 49th parallel and Hudson Bay, i.e. Canada?

Chown Creek in northern Jasper National Park. When I was a backcountry warden in Jasper through the 1990s, we would ride into side valleys and check seldom-used trails. Seeing flowers growing up to my horse’s belly and waterfalls flowing right out of the sides of the cliffs of the surrounding mountains stopped me in my tracks. It also helped that there was no rain or snow that day. There was so much beautiful country that the horses and I rode through to access the area, but something about that view stays with me even today.

What’s the most awe-inspiring natural sight you’ve witnessed outside of Canada?

Watching a group of mountain gorillas at Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Two of the trackers quietly indicated for me to follow them while other people in the group were photographing other gorillas. The trackers and I soon came into this patch of forest to see a family of gorillas complete with babies, parents and juveniles. It was among the best 30 minutes of my life.

Think of three iconic Canadian animals. Choose one each to kiss, marry and kill.

Kiss? I suppose the right answer is cod, although the screech owl might do me in. Marry a beaver, because it comes with a house, works hard and never fails to bring home food. And kill a mosquito. Enough said.

Name a person or group doing something meaningful for the environment that everyone should know about.

The people at the Beaver Hills Biosphere in east-central Alberta. The multi-agency group behind this UNESCO biosphere started from the ground up and have become a model of community engagement, environmental stewardship and integrating Indigenous perspectives and reconciliation into everything they do.

Name one person who could significantly help mitigate the climate crisis if they really wanted to.

Each and every one of us.

Outdoor cats: yes or no?

Only wild ones — cougars, lynx, bobcats, etc.

Tell us about a time you changed your mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

When I first started working with Parks Canada in the late 1980s, I thought that national parks were untouched wilderness and were free from human development and exploitation. Very soon I saw the rapid development of infrastructure inside the park. It was then that I realized that everything is managed — either to protect it or exploit it (sometimes at the same time).

Tell us about a time you tried to change someone else’s mind about something, environmental or otherwise.

As a professor, I worked hard not to tell students what to think, but encouraged them to learn to see the world from multiple perspectives, so they could develop their own ideas. Some, however, became as engaged with beaver ecology as I was, once I put them on snowshoes for our annual winter beaver lodge occupancy surveys. Some are still coming back years later.

Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes?

Rocky Mountains. I was born and raised in the mountains and they will always be home.

Researchers at Yale University, the France-based Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society and other institutions have found women tend to be more concerned about climate change than men. Why do you think that is?

Part of me wants to say that women are more aware of the influence of heat on their daily lives, but overall, I think women are used to listening and observing more than men. This added awareness reveals the obvious changes more readily.

What’s a beautiful or useful thing you’ve owned for a really long time?

My mother gave me a Swiss Army watch when I was a backcountry warden in Jasper. My last watch was broken when I fell from one of my horses (I was not broken). She went to the local sports store in my hometown and asked the owner to sell her the best watch he had that wouldn’t let me down in any situation. I still wear it more than 30 years later. It has never failed me.

What’s one way you interact with the natural world on a daily basis?

I live next to a beaver pond, which is part of a provincial park. Sometimes I eat breakfast while watching moose sleep on my lawn. At night the owls, coyotes and red-necked grebes sing me to sleep.

If you could ask one person, alive or dead, their thoughts on climate change, who would it be?

Jane Goodall. Her perspectives across various environments and accumulated insights over time would be invaluable.

Smoked salmon or maple syrup?

Maple syrup, sometimes on salmon.

Who in your life has had the greatest impact on your connection to nature?

My mother. One of my earliest memories is of her pointing out robins on our front lawn and explaining how to distinguish between the male and female and how they fit into the natural world around us.

Whose relationship with the natural world would you most like to have an impact on?

People who never get the opportunity to interact with nature outside of urban centres. Sometimes that one experience can set off a new way of seeing the world.

Would you rather be invited to Victoria and David Beckham’s Muskoka cottage, or Harry and Meghan Sussex’s B.C. escape?

Neither. I will always be partial to our family cabin on Kootenay Lake — you just can’t beat the view.

Camping: yes or no?

Yes, regardless of season.

Enjoying the Moose Questionnaire? Read more from the series here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter.

On a warm September evening nearly 15 years ago, Katie Sardinha had her first real glimpse of what life as a farmer could be. It was harvesting season in Summerland, B.C., where she’d grown up on her parents’ 10-acre apple orchard. Though she’d spent her summers picking cherries on other Okanagan farms and had watched her parents pick apples and run the farm her whole life, they had never recruited her or her brother for the harvest. They didn’t want to pressure them into farming. Sardinha had just finished her undergraduate degree and was preparing to pursue a career in academia. 

“Back then, we had a lot more big trees on the orchards,” she recalls. “We used wooden ladders with stakes on the end. With wooden ladders and stakes, you can do things on hills that you can’t quite do with the metal ladders that are more standard now. You can angle them in just these insane ways. I remember I turned around and my parents were picking apples into their bags, and I thought, ‘Wow, my parents are ladder acrobats!’ I was so impressed. They were so nimble.” Though it would be several more years before Sardinha decided to go into farming herself, she remembers that evening as pivotal.

Sardinha’s reality as a farmer has been quite different from that of her parents. Though her love for the job remains, she’s faced economic, climate and other challenges on a much greater scale than her parents did. She is farming in a new paradigm.

B.C.’s agriculture industry — which is still mostly comprised of small-scale farms like Sardinha’s — has been suffering for years. Mounting costs for essentials like animal feed and fertilizer, high land prices, labour shortages, extreme weather events and a retail market dominated by large grocery stores have made farming an increasingly difficult endeavour. And while slogans like “Buy Canadian” and “Shop Local” are gaining momentum because of U.S. tariffs, buying apples from Washington or spinach from California is not only cheaper but also easier than buying local for many B.C. residents.

Compounding these issues, B.C.’s agriculture industry is the lowest-funded in the country. Only 2.5 per cent of the province’s agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is funnelled back into the industry, compared to a historical national reinvestment figure closer to 12 per cent. “We’re kind of the lost child of federation in agriculture,” Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, and a leading researcher in agricultural innovation and food policy, tells The Narwhal. “It’s frustrating that we could be an agricultural superpower and agriculture does not get the respect that, say, the oil and gas industry does.”

As the Canada-U.S. trade war drags on, the impact on B.C.’s food system will be significant. The challenge may provide an opportunity to remake the system, but a rehaul won’t come without struggle — and thorny questions already litter its path forward. Can a new food system succeed without leaving farmers like Sardinha behind?

Could the farms of the future grow 12,000 heads of lettuce on one acre?

In a large, warm, airtight room that looks like the inside of a spaceship, rows of lettuce grow stacked on top of each other at Avery Farms, a vertical lettuce operation in Okanagan Falls, B.C. People wearing white hazmat suits patrol the rows, making sure the lettuce heads are properly watered and lit. They aren’t wearing the suits to protect themselves from hazardous materials, but to protect the plants from contaminants. This is a farm of the future — and it’s already arrived in B.C.

“In one acre, we can [produce] 12,000 heads of lettuce a day, every single day of the year,” Avery Farms owner Garry Peters says. In 2020, Peters and his wife Victoria, retired entrepreneurs, witnessed the panic and fears about food scarcity created by the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to invest in something that would contribute to B.C.’s future food security and give back to the community they’d grown up in.

The farm starts lettuce plants as seedlings grown in water. They are lit and heated by electric sources and moved to new rows as they grow. It takes about 45 days for the lettuce heads to grow to market size. Avery Farms can produce 100 to 150 times the amount of lettuce grown in field farming on much less land, while the crops don’t require pesticides and use about 90 per cent less water than traditional agriculture. 

When the lettuce plants are ready for market, Peters says they’re sold exclusively within B.C. to a mix of small and larger retailers, for about $3.90 a head. Pioneered in Singapore and Japan, vertical farm technology presents one potential option to scale up B.C.’s food production and grow imported produce year-round.

But there are significant challenges to implementation. After a year-and-a-half in operation, Avery Farms is only just breaking even. The upfront investment required for vertical farming — in the tens of millions of dollars — is unfathomable for most farmers.

Peters says they’re currently working at scale — producing at an industrial capacity while reducing their input cost per item — because of U.S. tariff threats and increased consumer demand for local produce. “We have an opportunity now,” he says. “If you’re not going to try and make something better because you can’t make a profit on it right away, you’ll never be able to make a profit on it. You need those people who will go in there and pioneer the industry and go, ‘Okay, this isn’t working, so what about this?’ ”

Climate change and land costs hinder expansion of B.C. food production 

B.C.’s agriculture industry is small compared to other Canadian provinces, even though the province has some of the richest agricultural land in the country, favourable growing conditions and the country’s most diverse food production profile — producing everything from meat and dairy products to grains, oil seeds, fresh fruit and a wide variety of vegetables. But expanding the province’s food production has proved a challenge in recent years. 

According to Farm Credit Canada, a Crown corporation supporting the food industry, farmland values in B.C. rose more than 10 per cent between 2023 and 2024 — part of a 30-year unbroken upwards trend. In B.C.’s South Coast region, which includes important agricultural hubs like Richmond, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Langley and Pitt Meadows, an acre of farmland costs between $72,000 and $255,000. 

In the Okanagan, where growers like Sardinha produce the majority of the province’s tree fruits and wine grapes, Farm Credit Canada reports average acreage prices up to $120,000. The high cost of land makes getting into the business difficult for new farmers. And for those already in the industry, like Sardinha, other challenges abound.

While the pandemic and its aftermath led to labour shortages, inflation and disruptions in supply chains, farmers in B.C. have also faced climate issues and extreme weather events in recent years that weren’t present even a decade ago. Last year, a January cold snap in the Okanagan damaged more than 90 per cent of tree fruits in the valley, wiping out acres of apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries and wine grapes. It followed a similarly destructive cold event the previous winter.

In the summer of 2021, the heat dome that hit B.C. cooked fruit on trees and berries on bushes. It was followed only a few months later by an atmospheric river that flooded the Fraser Valley, killing more than 600,000 livestock, affecting more than 1,100 farms and 37,000 acres of land and costing farmers and government millions. In a warming world, where our weather seems increasingly unpredictable, growing food off the land is a bigger gamble than it’s ever been.

And for a domestic industry competing with an influx of cheap produce from other countries, including the U.S., while grappling with increased production costs and low returns, the cards were stacked even before the threat of U.S. tariffs.

B.C. is dependent on international food imports as the U.S.-Canada trade war deepens 

B.C. consumes only one-third of the food it produces. The rest is exported to international markets, including to the U.S. Nearly 40 per cent of the province’s food supply comes from other countries. While B.C. is self-sufficient in supply-managed commodities like dairy, poultry and eggs — which means the milk in your coffee this morning likely came from a local producer — the province relies heavily on international imports of most fresh produce (roughly $2-billion worth in 2021).

According to research from the University of British Columbia, in 2022, B.C. sourced more than 80 per cent of its lettuce and spinach from California and Arizona. The province imported more than a quarter of its tomatoes from California and nearly 60 per cent of its onions from Washington state.

B.C. also depends heavily on fruit imports from the U.S., even though it produces many of the same things. In 2022, the province imported 75 per cent of its strawberry supply from California. Though B.C. farmers like Sardinha grow some of the most beautiful heritage apple varieties in North America, the province sourced nearly 60 per cent of its apples from Washington state — where producers benefit from larger-scale operations, more government support and cheaper land — and 17 per cent from China.

“Ultimately, we’ve got a food system that is designed for and responding to consumer preferences,” Tyler McCann, managing director of the Canadian AgriFood Policy Institute, a non-profit research and advocacy organization, tells The Narwhal. “Increasingly, consumer preferences relate to being able to go to one place to buy products, to be able to buy the most affordable products possible. And that was true before we saw significant food inflation. In my mind, that’s often the starting point for understanding what’s happening all along the food system.”

McCann says this has encouraged the proliferation of big box stores, where people do all their grocery shopping at once and buy in bulk (think Costco, Walmart and Loblaws). It’s known as retail consolidation. The impacts have trickle-down effects on the rest of the food system, making it hard for smaller farms and operations to get their products onto grocery shelves at a fair price.

This has also played a role in B.C.’s dependence on international imports, which offer consumers choice, availability and affordability. “Canadian consumers and Canadian agriculture have both benefited from predictable and reliable trade and market access,” McCann says. “We do export a lot of things, like canola, but we also import a lot of fruit and vegetables that we can’t produce here and can’t produce year-round.”

In addition to exporting high-value commodities like Okanagan cherries to markets in Asia, or Fraser Valley blueberries and mushrooms to the U.S., B.C. farmers also send their raw products to the U.S. to be sorted, stored and processed into other food items like baked goods, cereals, freeze-dried items, nutritional bars and meat products, which are then sold back to Canadian consumers.

Goods included in the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement weren’t part of the latest round of U.S. tariffs, announced in early April, but agricultural products could eventually fall under this category. If they do, Canada could respond through retaliatory tariffs.

McCann says the impacts would be felt on multiple fronts. “It’s important to think about it in the two ways that those flows happen,” he says. “It’s the American tariffs that will hurt Canadian farmers and food producers, and Canada’s retaliatory tariffs that are likely to impact Canadian consumers. The impacts could be quite significant.”

For many in the food industry, the threat is also an opportunity for innovation and investment. For McCann, the stakes could not be clearer: “The question is really, ‘How do we produce affordable, accessible food in a way that is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable?’ And do that at a time when the risks that people in the food production system are facing are increasing in ways we would not have thought possible a few short years ago.”  

Agritech could help scale up B.C.’s food production

Vertical farms like Avery Farms are only one example of the indoor, controlled-atmosphere growing already found in B.C.’s greenhouses, which produce everything from blueberries and strawberries to cucumbers and peppers. They are also part of a burgeoning global industry referred to as agricultural technology or “agritech,” which uses technological innovations to enhance and streamline agricultural production. According to many industry experts and a food-security task force initiated by the B.C. government that produced a 2020 report called “The Future of Food,” it’s part of what’s needed to strengthen the province’s food system.

“There’s so much potential,” Newman, the director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, says. “Canada could really be an agricultural technology superpower.” 

Newman, who participated in the task force, believes B.C. and Canada will need to rely on agritech over the next decades to feed a larger, more urban population and to weather the impacts of a changing climate. 

By 2050, the United Nations predicts global agricultural yields will have decreased by as much as 25 per cent due to climate change. While Canada faces its own challenges, the countries from which it sources the bulk of its produce — the U.S. and Mexico — are at particular risk. Growing food indoors on vertical farms, incorporating Artificial Intelligence or computer-assisted technology like robotic machinery, sensor monitoring and drones and investing in seed genomics — selecting certain genes to improve plant hardiness — may help reduce those impacts.

Newman says agritech is one of two major focus areas needed to expand B.C.’s food production and make it more resilient in the long-term. “We really need to pull out all the stops and do these two things: radically increase our year-round production … because we have the technology, and if we don’t, we can develop it. And number two, radically grow our processing capacity,” she says. The latter won’t come without a fight, because of what it will require. “[We do this] by putting processing back on the Agricultural Land Reserve, where it was supposed to be in the first place.”

Changes to B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve would boost food processing  

B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve was established in the early 1970s to protect valuable farmland in the province. The first legislation of its kind in Canada, it has kept some of B.C.’s most fertile agricultural areas out of the hands of private developers. But its powers are limited, and over the years the land reserve has been eroded. “When I look at the Agricultural Land Reserve — and I map it — what we’re seeing is every year, despite the need, more and more acres are falling out of farming,” Newman says. In Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, she says, only 50 per cent of the Agricultural Land Reserve is currently used for farming. 

This is not only due to general under-use, but family farms being sold off by aging farmers whose children don’t want to continue farming, leaving the land to potentially be bought up for private residences. Because the land is zoned as agricultural, new owners can benefit from the tax exemptions that come with this designation even if they’re not farming. In recent decades, mega-mansions have appeared on agricultural reserve land in Richmond and Delta, pushing farmers out of the area and driving up farmland prices.

Newman helped alter the policy in 2017 to limit the size of residential developments, but she says it’s still a problem. “[The land] is being purchased by people who want a nice residential place to live. And it’s a great deal. If you sell a house in Vancouver for a few million dollars, you can go buy five acres. You can have a nice big green lawn and you get a tax break.” 

Speculative investment is also an issue. In recent years, corporate developers have purchased portions of agricultural reserve land; many believe they are waiting to have it rezoned if a future B.C. government changes land reserve regulations. When it comes to B.C.’s food security, much hinges on the future of this hotly contested farmland.

Expanding both agritech and processing — making food into refined and value-added products — will require large, affordable swaths of land. Newman and others are advocating for B.C. to change the rules and allow food processing on agricultural reserve land.

“Originally, when the Agricultural Land Reserve was launched, it included a food processing zone,” Newman points out. “Dave Barrett (B.C.’s first NDP premier, whose government established the land reserve) famously said, ‘Why grow strawberries if you can’t make strawberry jam?’ ” In the early 2000s, the former B.C. Liberal Party government removed processing from land reserve regulations. Since then, B.C. has lost most of its processing industry.

Processing facilities can currently be built on agricultural reserve land only if at least 50 per cent of the processed product comes from the land the facility is on. “They made it so it was nearly impossible to build processing on the Agricultural Land Reserve … so we lost our green bean industry, we lost our green pea industry, we lost our strawberry industry,” Newman says. “Our potato industry is down about 70 per cent, because processors are moving elsewhere.”

Those who oppose building out large-scale processing and welcoming the Saputos and McCains of the world onto the Agricultural Land Reserve say they should instead build on industrial land. But, Newman says, it’s not so simple. 

“I’ve worked with municipalities to try and site food processors on industrial land and the parcels just don’t exist because we didn’t protect our industrial land. Ironically, we were supposed to have an industrial land reserve that was supposed to come in the same legislation that created the Agricultural Land Reserve, but it never happened.” As a result, she says, Metro Vancouver has about a third to one-half the industrial land of equivalent-sized regions.

Welcoming industrial processing on the agricultural reserve could damage valuable topsoil and further displace B.C. farmers, opponents believe. But Newman says reserve regulations could be altered to include soil class, outlining which areas would be dedicated to field farming and not available to processors.

If food processors — even small or medium-sized operations — were to get the green light to build on the land reserve, it still raises questions around whether farmland should be used for growing food outdoors or making industrial-scale food products indoors. But Newman says it shouldn’t be an either-or issue, especially with a trade war underway. “This is a giant problem and it’s easy to fix. We drive blueberry south, we drive cranberry south, we drive beef south. What do we do with the blueberry harvest this year if there’s a tariff? We should immediately be building processing in those industries.”

Newman thinks the time for stalling on the issue has long passed. “It’s frustrating,” she says. “It’s a political issue, definitely, and it’s one that’s felt in the heart. This [is a] philosophical fight over whether the Agricultural Land Reserve is an industrial food production zone or a greenbelt. And if it’s a greenbelt, just decide that, and I’ll move somewhere else and do my work.”  

Will B.C.’s family farms be left behind as the food industry scales up?

Questions surrounding use of the land reserve get at the heart of larger existential issues facing B.C.’s food system. It’s personal for many, including for Sardinha. Like many young people in the industry in B.C., she comes from multiple generations of farmers. Her grandparents worked the apple orchards before her parents did. Her farm, Kaleidoscope Fruit Ranch, produces four varieties of apples for the commercial market, and she and her husband perform almost all the farm labour and upkeep by hand.

While Sardinha supports expanding the province’s processing capacity, she isn’t sure agritech developments will prioritize her needs. “There’s certain things like drone technology that I could see working on my farm. [But] a lot of it is very capital intensive, so I’m never going to be able to afford it,” she says. “I worry that it presupposes a future where we don’t have farmer-operators like me on farms anymore; we have hedge fund owners from Washington state. It can be really great, but it needs to be done in a way that allows access for people like me. We’re happy to adopt technology if it’s friendly in that way.”

Like many others in the industry, Sardinha and her husband have taken off-farm jobs to make ends meet. If they were both working full time at minimum wage, she says they would be making more money than they are from farming. The only reason they’ve managed is because they own their land and house and produce most of their own food. At the end of the day, they don’t want to give up farming.

Sardinha and many others believe the most fundamental issue is that B.C. has lacked a vision for its agriculture industry for too long.

“Farmers end up needing to ask the government for money and then taxpayers are paying for it too. In a profound sense, we don’t really have agricultural policy here. We have sort of this background belief that the market will decide, and we’ll evolve a system that will work within the market. Making food a priority would change things.”

In February, the provincial government announced the creation of a new task force that will focus on food security and sector growth, uniting producers, retailers, advocacy groups and experts, who will weigh in on the industry’s future amid trade war threats. The group will meet quarterly over the next 12 to 18 months.

In the meantime, Sardinha and other farmers aren’t holding out hope for top-down solutions. They believe immediate action needs to be taken from the ground up to strengthen the province’s food system. “I imagine the best thing would be a connected system of non-profit, cooperative distributor-retailers that are basically working to make sure everybody gets paid and we still keep consumer prices down,” Sardinha says. “And I do think that’s possible.”

Grower-owned co-operatives have flourished in Quebec and other places in Canada. In countries like Italy, the entire agricultural system is built around co-ops, which produce both raw products and processed foods. Newman and other researchers at the University of the Fraser Valley support the co-op model as a way for small growers to stay in the business and to maintain a place for local, handcrafted foods and food products in the food system. Land reserve regulations also support the presence of co-ops as a way to build out processing capacity (the processing clause stipulates that 50 per cent of the processed food must come from the property or from a co-op the farm is part of), but experts say it’s a vastly underused tool.

Ultimately, Newman says, we need to find a middle way to resolve the tension between expanding the scale of our food system and maintaining local industries like B.C.’s tree fruit sector. An important component will be getting more young people involved in farming. “I think what I would see as success is more pathways for people to enter the industry if they weren’t born into it. If you don’t inherit a farm in B.C., it’s really hard to start farming. And I don’t know what we do about that.”

Sardinha believes the problems are solvable, and she thinks the trade war offers a good opportunity to begin — with consumer choices. “Consumers will understand what is happening. We are outsourcing our food production. We send all our best stuff abroad and our leftovers are for our market here.”

Her parents showed her that farming was a valuable pursuit. The money wasn’t always great, but they had time to pursue hobbies, volunteer and build a meaningful life. After converting her orchards to organic a few years ago, Sardinha was reminded of why she chose to follow in their steps, despite the hurdles she’s faced. “I saw and continue to see this huge increase in biodiversity. I love the insects. I love just seeing life everywhere. It’s fundamentally a beautiful thing. I like farmers and I like our culture. There’s a struggle to keep that culture,” she says. “But it’s worth fighting for.”

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Spring in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley is usually a time of optimism. In the province’s fertile agricultural hub, April and May mean blossoms on the valley’s fruit trees and bud break in its many vineyards, signs of the growing season ahead. This spring was different.  

“At the end of the day, when it was blossom time, there were no blossoms. That’s when you realize, well, the soft fruit was dead.” 

Pinder Dhaliwal, a third-generation farmer in Oliver, knew his orchards were in peril all year. In January, a cold snap dropped temperatures across the Okanagan down to nearly -30 C degrees from unseasonable highs. The extreme fluctuation damaged grape, peach, nectarine, pear, plum, cherry and apricot plants across the region. In the spring, Dhaliwal realized his 12 acres of orchards had lost all their soft fruits, save for 30 per cent of the farm’s cherries. It was only the first loss of several.  

At the end of July, the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative, an 88-year-old organization that provided packing, storage, marketing and sales services for roughly half of the Okanagan’s 600 tree fruit growers, announced its closure. It was just a week before Dhaliwal was set to harvest his summer apples and the news left him and many other farmers scrambling. 

“It’s kind of a specialty apple,” Dhaliwal says of the sunrise variety that dominates his orchard. The co-op had given him an estimate of how much of his fruit it would take. “The co-op had all its clients and buyers lined up for that apple, so [the closure] made it very difficult for me.” Half of Dhaliwal’s crop was left hanging on the trees. He couldn’t find enough private buyers to take it, nor labourers willing to wait between workdays as he secured clients. 

Dhaliwal’s story is only one among many similar experiences B.C. tree fruit growers have faced in recent years. Apple growers have been especially hard hit. Pummelled by increasingly frequent extreme weather events, rock-bottom prices, a fractured local economy, increased competition with international markets — and minimal government support — the province’s apple farmers have been left to fend for themselves. 

Okanagan tree fruits contributed $162M to B.C.’s economy in 2019

Tree fruits have been a part of the Okanagan since settlers first planted orchards in the area in the late 1890s. Eighty per cent of B.C.’s tree fruits are grown in the North, Central and South Okanagan as well as in the Similkameen and Creston Valleys. The region’s varied climates, warm, hot summers and historically mild winters have allowed orchards to prosper. In 2019, the tree fruit sector’s contribution to the province’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $162 million.

Apples are an integral part of the industry. The valley grows more than 12 different varieties, and apple orchards account for 50 per cent of the more than 12,000 acres of fruit trees in the area. In the fall, roadside stands and markets are lined with gala, ambrosia and honeycrisp, enticing in all their red, green and yellow glory. 

Yet as costs have increased alongside a competitive international market and retail consolidation, the industry’s mostly small-scale growers have struggled to stay afloat. 

According to research out of the University of British Columbia, in 2022 B.C. imported nearly 80 per cent of its apples from other countries, a 30 per cent increase from 2018. Almost 60 per cent of imports came from Washington state, where producers have similarly favourable growing conditions, but also cheaper land costs, larger-scale operations and government subsidies. Chain grocery retailers have long favoured apples from across the border, say B.C. farmers. 

Over the last few years, growers have also faced damage caused by the 2021 heat dome, rising summer temperatures that have impacted labour conditions and two winters of cold freezes. The dissolution of the BC Tree Fruits co-op was only the last chip to fall in a game that already seemed determined.

The BC Tree Fruits Cooperative was formed in 1936, as a way for farmers to consolidate operations and power. The co-op provided growers with bins, packing services, cold storage facilities and marketing and sales. Farmers who worked with the co-op would arrange contracts early in the season, promising a certain portion or the entirety of their crop. For many, it was a way to ensure transparency. 

But over the last decade, private packing houses have emerged as competition, with offers of marginally higher returns tempting some away from the co-op as it buckled under various pressures. 

“We were members, but about 20 years ago I left. I just got kind of frustrated with the management,” says Peter Simonsen, a Naramata-based apple, peach, pear and nectarine farmer and president of the BC Fruit Growers Association, an independent members’ organization. 

Simonsen and other growers The Narwhal spoke with describe the co-op’s issues as multifold: the difficult economic realities of the industry, as well as climate challenges producing lower yields. But the co-op was also suffering from mismanagement and infighting between the board and members. One former grower says there had been complaints around lack of versatility and innovation for nearly 15 years before its dissolution. 

Simonsen has sent his fruit to private packing houses or sold to private clients for the last two decades. It’s not always a safe bet.

“We deliver our fruit into this system and it is unaccountable. I don’t know what they’re selling it for, and I don’t know what they’re charging me,” he says of the private packers. 

The system operates on an annual payout, with growers receiving their cut after the packer has sold the apples. 

“Six months later they’ll say ‘I sold all your fruit, prices weren’t very good, and here’s all your money,’ ” says Simonsen. “And you’ll go, like, ‘Why isn’t it more?’ ” The most trustworthy packers, he adds, have full rosters and aren’t accepting new farmers. 

The Narwhal reached out to two of the Okanagan’s largest packing houses but didn’t receive a response from either. In 2021, the Tyee reported some growers paying 30 to 35 cents a pound to produce their apples, while packers were offering as low as 12 cents a pound in return. 

The co-op announced its closure in an email to members on July 26, citing “extremely low estimated fruit volumes” after the winter freeze and “difficult market conditions.” It was more than $50 million in debt. The business filed for creditor protection two weeks later, and all its assets, including several processing plants and cold storage facilities, are currently up for sale. While former members have called on the B.C. government for assistance, the NDP said it was unable to intervene on behalf of a private business that had moved into the court system.

The co-op’s dissolution has left many apple farmers desperate. Dhaliwal believes nearly all growers have been able to secure clients this fall, but the closure has raised serious questions about the future. 

“We’re fourth and fifth generational orchardists here,” Simonsen says. “This industry, it’s a beautiful thing. It really is a beautiful thing. We grow fruit in the best place in North America to grow fruit, and it’s just so tragic.” 

Farmers say B.C. government offers less support than other provinces and nearby Washington state

Government neglect has fanned the flames of an already-precarious situation. 

“I’m just so disillusioned with how we’ve been treated by the NDP government. We just haven’t been listened to,” Simonsen says. “We have gone to them to say ‘Look, all the other provinces in Canada support their agriculture: the US is getting direct subsidies and competing with us.’ And they have just ignored us. It seems so strange that something as important as agriculture would be considered so flippantly.” 

Simonsen is not alone in his disillusionment. Many growers blame the current government for the situation tree fruit farmers are in. British Columbia has more fruit farms than any other province in Canada and the agriculture sector contributed $2.25 billion to the province’s GDP in 2022. But according to the BC Agriculture Council, the province only reinvests 2.5 per cent of that contribution back into the sector. It’s the lowest reinvestment figure in the country, where the national average has historically been closer to 12 per cent. This low investment has meant the sector has missed out on opportunities for federal dollar-matching. 

Simonsen says the government is also neglecting the increasing, unpredictable effect of climate change. After the 2021 heat dome cooked and sunburned many of the province’s cherries and apples, the government paid out $17 million in heat claims to businesses: $11.9 million went to tree fruit growers — or about 0.8 per cent of the province’s agricultural GDP contribution. In Saskatchewan, which had a provincial agricultural GDP of $6.8 billion in 2022, the government paid out roughly $2.4 billion for crop insurance claims, about 35 per cent. 

In Washington, the federal government sent growers emergency funding after the same January cold snap, and has offered farms low-interest loans to recover from an equally challenging 2023 season. Washington’s apple growers also received direct federal payments during the pandemic.

B.C. does have a crop insurance program called AgriStability that growers can access if their annual yields fall below 30 per cent of their historical records. In August, Premier David Eby announced the province would invest $15 million into the program for 2024 and increase compensation rates for crop losses from 80 to 90 per cent. This announcement came on top of $5 million for a Tree Fruit Climate Resiliency Program that will help farmers purchase equipment to deal with future climate events. In March, the province also announced $70 million to help grape, berry and tree fruit producers replace dead or diseased plants with more climate-resilient varieties. 

But growers say it simply isn’t enough. Crop insurance assessments often only factor in quantity of a harvest, says Simonsen, but quality has also been a problem when weather events result in smaller or damaged fruits. And replanted trees take several years to reach full productivity. More immediate solutions are needed.The Ministry of Agriculture told The Narwhal it was unavailable for comment as a result of the upcoming B.C. election. 

Consolidation of Canada’s grocery industry makes it difficult for apple farmers to negotiate prices

Everyone agrees: the situation and solutions are complex. But, says Simonsen, one issue is an undeniable contributor: “When you have an open border and five buyers, you don’t have to be very business-savvy to figure that one out.”  

The five buyers he’s talking about are Canada’s biggest grocery retailers. Nationally, there are Loblaw (which owns No Frills and Your Independent Grocer), Sobeys (which owns Safeway and Ontario’s Longo Brothers), Costco and Walmart. In B.C., Pattison Foods is the fifth main buyer, while Metro joins the pack in Ontario and Quebec. These retailers command nearly 80 per cent of the market share, making it difficult to negotiate. 

“Often we sell for less than the Americans because we just basically rely on what the retailers say, like that they can get fruit from Washington for $25 a box,” Simonsen says. 

The solution he and other growers are banking on is a marketing commission. It would allow growers greater control over three key elements, including regulating the quality of the product. Another is the ability to data-share between farms and with the Canada Border Services Agency to learn the price of apple imports. The last is promotional services, which would also bring opportunities for provincial and federal dollar-matching. 

Commissions allow individual agricultural producers to consolidate, with the aim of providing fair, stable incomes for farmers and high-quality products for consumers. Dairy and poultry are managed under similar federal commissions, which allow eligible industries to intervene in national policy related to their product. Under B.C.’s Natural Products Marketing Act, certain agricultural commodities are already eligible, and vegetables and cranberries are regulated under provincial commissions. 

“It also shames the retailer into buying our fruit,” Simonsen says “Right now they have no real reason to buy our fruit, [and] they say it’s because people just care about cost. We can advertise our apples and educate people about our apples and why they’re the best. We’re organic growers [ourselves], but most of the apples in the valley are pesticide and residue-free.” 

Washington has an apple commission, and several other key growing regions across the United States and Canada have them in place for agricultural products. The B.C. apple commission would throw a wrench into the current system of private packing houses, and Simonsen says some private packers are already pushing back, but he and other farmers see it as one potential route forward.   

Start a cidery, rip out an orchard: how B.C. apple farmers are coping

For the time being, B.C.’s apple farmers are making do. Nearing retirement, Simonsen maintains hope that his children and grandchildren will be able to continue his family’s multi-generational farming legacy. Since 2018, his daughter Annelise Simonsen and daughter-in-law Kaleigh Jorgensen have used a small portion of the orchard’s annual crop for their on-site cidery, Creek & Gully. 

“We started the cidery so we could use our own apples. We kind of had a ‘can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ approach,” Jorgensen says. It allows the next generation to have something of their own, she explains, while making use of lower-quality fruit and diversifying revenue streams. 

More recently, the family has started offering non-alcoholic cider, dried fruit and wedding bookings.“You have to get creative and evolve or you just can’t farm anymore,” Jorgensen says. 

She’s saddened by the crisis the industry is in. “You see people chopping down their orchards. All these trees. It’s depressing and scary. This is food. We’re not an airline, we’re not an oil and gas company.” 

In Oliver, Dhaliwal is preparing to rip out his sunrise apple orchard. He doesn’t foresee any future for the crop without the controlled-atmosphere storage the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative offered, which significantly extended the apples’ three-week shelf life. 

“I just see that a lot of other packers don’t want to take [the apple],” he says. “They want to streamline everything, make it efficient, make it cost-effective. It’s a summer apple, so they don’t want to run around every three weeks and make sure everybody gets it. They don’t care if the consumer wants it. They’ll say, ‘OK, we’ve got winter apples.’ There’s less stress there.” 

Dhaliwal’s other fruit trees are also suffering because of the damage from the heat and cold events of recent seasons — many are dying, while others are no longer strong enough to fight off insects. Like B.C.’s apple industry, they’ve fallen victim to a domino effect: “When something gets weak, other things start collapsing.”  

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Rajen Toor’s 2023 harvest should have been an occasion to celebrate. Toor and his wife Bree, the duo behind wine label Ursa Major, had just purchased their own vineyard in the fall of 2022. For six years, Toor had been making his small-batch wines from grapes purchased from his family winery in Oliver, B.C., and, more recently, from a vineyard he and Bree leased on the Naramata Bench. Harvesting the first crop from their own vineyard would have been a triumph for two young winemakers.

“We’d seen the place and fallen in love,” Toor says of their Keremeos vineyard. But after a mild winter — an increasingly common occurrence in B.C.’s Interior — a sudden cold snap dropped temperatures in the Similkameen Valley down to -25 C in December 2022. The Syrah, Viognier and Zinfandel vines that were already planted on the property were severely stressed. “It not only killed the buds, but most of the vines,” Toor says. Now, more than a year later, he’s ripping dead vines out of the ground. 

The B.C. wine industry — specifically the Okanagan–Similkameen regional district, home to over 90 per cent of the vineyards in the province — has weathered several difficult years. On top of pandemic-related labour shortages and supply issues, inflation and diminished tourism revenue, wineries and growers have faced devastating climate events that have affected the wider agricultural industry. Summer droughts and extreme heat events have stressed and weakened plants, while vicious wildfires have exposed grapes to smoke, leading to the risk of smoke-tainted wines. Warmer winter temperatures followed by spring frosts and cold snaps have resulted in disease and destroyed entire vineyards.

The reality is undeniable: the area’s climate is changing, and with it, an industry that will need to adapt to survive. But for a wine region that’s still defining its identity, the climate challenges present not only practical questions, but also existential ones.

Devastation of Okanagan and Similkameen vineyards prompts government relief

Just a year after the extreme temperature drop in December 2022, another deep freeze descended on wine growers. For several days in January 2024, temperatures across the Okanagan and Similkameen, as well as in the Thompson Valley to the north, dropped below -25 C from unseasonable daytime highs of 10 to 13 C (Canada’s warmest winter on record). The damage from the previous winter’s cold snap had already resulted in a nearly 60 per cent loss of grape and wine production across the province. For the 2024 harvest, the industry is predicting a 97 to 99 per cent loss from both bud and vine damage. In short: decimation.

“It’s going to be ugly, that’s for sure,” says Evan Saunders, head winemaker for Blasted Church Vineyards, a mid-sized winery in Okanagan Falls, in the central Okanagan. Blasted Church had already lost 50 per cent of their buds from the 2022 freeze — buds that would have otherwise grown into tendrils, leaves and fruit. The surviving plants had been stressed to their limit, and Saunders feared that another temperature plunge would be too much for them to endure. Late last December, he watched the weather forecast with mounting anxiety. “Looking at the 14-day forecast, everyone started noticing those -28s and -30s popping up and it seemed like it couldn’t possibly happen,” he says. “It was far too cold. Then, we woke up on Friday and our daytime high was -19 C. We stayed below -18 for 56 hours, which is just an eternity for a grapevine.” 

“The best-case scenario would be no fruit from the Okanagan, Thompson or Similkameen valleys this year, but at least maybe the vines will be alive.”

Winemaker Evan Saunders

Saunders doesn’t expect to get any fruit from Blasted Church’s 40 acres of vineyards this year, nor from the additional 40 acres the winery sources from farther south in the valley, where many grape growers are based. “The best-case scenario would be no fruit from the Okanagan, Thompson or Similkameen valleys this year, but at least maybe the vines will be alive.”

More than 80 varietals are currently grown across the province, the vast majority of which are European Vitis vinifera grapes. Merlot, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are the most widely-planted grapes in B.C., and also among the most popular and well-known wines in the world. The B.C. wine industry is still in its infancy, relative to other New World wine regions such as those in California and Australia, but it has grown significantly in recent years. 

Between 2011 and 2019, the industry’s economic impact increased by more than 86 per cent to $3.75 billion. The industry supports an extensive ecosystem of supply companies, wineries, growers, restaurants, hotels, retailers and workers, with wineries across the semi-arid Interior and the cooler, coastal zones of the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island. Like other wine-growing regions across the world, its climate issues have affected the entire commodity chain. 

Wine Growers BC, a leading industry association, estimates the damage from January alone will cost the industry $440 to $445 million. In December, just before the cold snap hit, the organization lobbied the provincial government for assistance for climate-related damage to crops and vineyards. While most wineries and growers purchase crop insurance, the financial impacts the industry is facing far exceed the costs that current insurance options cover. 

In March, both the provincial and federal governments heeded the call and announced funding for B.C. and Canada’s wine and agriculture sectors. The federal government pledged $177 million for a three-year extension to its Wine Sector Support Program, acknowledging the challenges Canada’s broader wine industry is facing, and the province contributed $70 million to expand its 2023 Perennial Crop Renewal Program. The latter will help growers across B.C.’s agricultural sector replace dead or diseased plants and adapt to climate change. While the support falls short of the $162 to $317 million Wine Growers BC estimates the B.C. industry alone will need to successfully replant thousands of acres of vineyards, it has been a welcome relief. But even if the money were enough to fund a full replant of the region, it doesn’t account for extreme weather events that seem likely to reoccur in years to come. 

Though the Okanagan climate is changing, the cause of cold snaps is uncertain

Cold snaps like those that have afflicted the Interior in recent years are caused by disruptions in atmospheric circulation patterns. Periodic waves in the atmospheric jet stream lead to northerly winds funnelling cold air from the Arctic farther south, creating Arctic outbreaks, often referred to as cold snaps. They can happen across Canada but are more likely to occur on the western side, and the Okanagan Basin’s inland location makes it particularly vulnerable. 

Scientists are divided as to whether these outbreaks are correlated with climate change and Arctic warming. “Cold snaps like these are part of weather, and a part of winter,” Dr. Rachel White says. White, an assistant professor of atmospheric science at the University of British Columbia, studies the atmospheric circulation patterns that lead to both cold snaps and heatwaves. “With climate change, we generally expect cold extremes to be getting warmer, so overall we would expect fewer cold snaps like this. But … it doesn’t mean that weather and variability stop.” 

When we think about differences because of climate change, we’re thinking about timescales of decades, White explains. And over the next 30 to 50 years, the Okanagan–Similkameen’s climate is poised for a drastic shift.

In 2016, the Investment Agriculture Foundation, a non-profit, industry-led organization, released the results of a multi-year study on climate adaptation strategies for the Okanagan’s agriculture industry. In partnership with the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria, the report included predictions for the area’s climate from the 2020s to the 2050s, based on projected levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The predictions for the 2020s are on track: higher overall temperatures with drier, hotter summers and more extreme heat events like drought and wildfires, and increased winter precipitation, with decreased snowpack and more variability of conditions. By the 2050s, the area and its various microclimates are expected to have increased by 2.5 degrees from the 1971–2020 baseline, with nearly seven times the number of extremely hot days (defined as days so hot they used to occur only once every 10 years) anticipated. For the agriculture industry, the results were clearly spelled out: “damage to crops and increase in susceptibility to disease,” and “inconsistent yield and quality of previously suitable crops.”

An industry learning to adapt to climate change

Wineries and growers have been working to adapt their practices to the changing climate. The BC Wine Grape Council, another industry association that facilitates viticulture education initiatives, leads a project called Sustainable Winegrowing BC, which helps wineries gain sustainability certification and be responsive to environmental concerns. Severine Pinte, chair of the organization and head winemaker and viticulturist at Osoyoos’s La Stella winery and Oliver’s Le Vieux Pin, says the group has been working to educate wineries and growers on climate resiliency. 

“We’re trying to transfer knowledge from what’s being used around the world: helping growers understand how to manage problems with water, or talking about cover crops, nutrient programs and regenerative agriculture.” They do what they can, she says: “We’ve worked with irrigation, we’ve worked on soil health — because these are things we can control.” Extreme weather events like cold snaps are, of course, beyond winemakers’ control, and Pinte says most Okanagan-area vineyards are not designed to endure drastic drops in temperature, unlike those in other wine-growing regions in Canada. 

In Quebec, Pinte explains, winemakers grow their vines much closer to the ground, so they’re able to cover them with dirt after pruning, insulating the plants from cold exposure. Some winemakers in eastern Canada also use a system called geotextiles — specially engineered tarps — to cover the vines. 

Saunders has been looking into both options for Blasted Church’s vineyards but, like other Okanagan winemakers he’s spoken with, he believes the practice of partially burying vines may be a better option for the region, given geotextiles’ high cost and labour-intensive upkeep. “There are some cultural practices that we may be able to work into our program that could allow the vine or even a few buds to survive, so maybe you miss a vintage but you’re not looking at an entire replant.” 

Viticulture and winemaking strategies from eastern Canada may hold other lessons for B.C.’s wine industry. Part of the provincial funding promised to the agricultural sector in March has been designated for a wine-grape sector task force. Over the next two years, the group of industry experts and researchers will be charged with determining which new grape varietals may be suitable for the Okanagan’s shifting climate.

New grape varietals may help the Okanagan confront its shifting climate

In recent years, winegrowing regions across the world have started diversifying their vineyards with sturdier varieties that are more resistant to disease and climate extremes. Even heavy-hitter Old World regions like Bordeaux in France, which is known for growing classic Vitis vinifera grapes like Cabernet and Merlot, have approved new varietals to deal with the unpredictable weather. In Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and parts of the northeastern United States, where the seasonal temperatures have historically been more extreme than in British Columbia, hybrid varietals have been in use for decades. Vidal, a hybrid grown in Ontario that tolerates cold well, is used in the province’s icewine production. Wines made from L’Acadie Blanc, Nova Scotia’s signature hybrid grape, have even won international awards. 

Hybrids, which currently represent fewer than three per cent of grapes grown in the province, may provide a roadmap for B.C. to chart its own uncertain climate future, especially as growers prepare to replant cold-damaged vineyards in the coming years. But their introduction into the Okanagan Basin presents complex questions for winemakers in the area. 

Elizabeth Wolkovich is an associate professor of forest and conservation sciences at the University of British Columbia who studies the changing phenology of wine grapes — their natural life cycles — in response to climate change. To survive cold winters, explains Wolkovich, grapevines, like many other woody, temperate plants, shift their cellular structure as they are exposed to cold. But this adaptive mechanism requires gradual exposure to increasingly low temperatures in order to build resilience to further temperature drops. 

She notes that many of the vines in the Okanagan were already quite cold-hardy in January, but that it wasn’t enough. “They were pretty close to maximum hardiness, at -22, -24 C, but the temperature drop was rapid and extreme, so it went from an average evening temperature of -18 to almost -30, depending on where you were in the valley. Plants can’t take rapid cold like that and withstand it without their cells bursting.” Replanting the Okanagan with hybrids is, in her view, a plan with a fatal flaw: “There isn’t a variety on the market that I’m aware of, hybrid or not, that could have withstood a drop in temperature that rapid and extreme.” 

With climate models for the area predicting warmer winters, Wolkovich notes it will be increasingly difficult for plants to develop cold-hardiness. Research suggests that some more heat-tolerant varieties currently being grown in regions of Spain, southern France and Greece may be a good fit for the Okanagan. But ultimately, Wolkovich says, taking a long-term view of resilience will be key for any climate adaptation strategy — something that’s hard to do when the last two years of cold snaps are still fresh in everyone’s minds. “We [currently] have no evidence that cold snaps are going to increase with climate change for the Okanagan,” she says. “The heat extremes and the fires will definitely increase.” The question of how to respond to these conditions will require more data, a challenge given the Okanagan’s unique climate. “There’s not a clear climate analogue for somewhere that’s this cold in the winter and this hot in the summer.”

Hybrids and climate change mean telling a new story about Okanagan wine

If B.C. winemakers were to begin planting more hybrid varietals in response to the shifting climate, they would find themselves facing marketing and regulatory challenges. Wine in B.C. is regulated through the Liquor Distribution Branch, which provides mark-up exemptions to wines certified through the BC VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance), an appellation of origin system similar to those used in other wine regions around the world. Regulated by the B.C. Wine Authority, the appellation only permits certain hybrids, and certified wines must be made from 100 per cent B.C.-grown grapes — a regulation that may pose issues for some wineries in the coming years, as they look to purchase grapes from Washington or Ontario to compensate for their crop losses.

Many of the area’s biggest producers operate under provincial regulations that will allow them to purchase grapes from outside B.C. for future vintages. Evan Saunders describes their discussions about the region’s climate challenges as “generally closed-door.” (None of the large commercial wineries in the Okanagan The Narwhal contacted for this story responded.)  

Introducing experimental hybrids would not only mean revising the VQA regulations that currently govern many small and midsized wineries’ business decisions, but also convincing consumers to adjust their expectations of Okanagan wines. In the past thirty years, the region has largely produced classic styles such as Merlot and Chardonnay that are immediately familiar to wine drinkers from around the world.

But Kelcie Jones, a wine educator and wine director at Vancouver’s Michelin-starred Burdock and Co restaurant, says most people who drink B.C. wines (most of which are sold within the province) are interested in the region because of their personal connection to it. They’ve visited a winery or tasting room and are loyal to certain producers. This connection may serve in the area’s favour as Okanagan winemakers contemplate wines made from less familiar but more climate-resilient varietals, including hybrids. “We have so much choice, so narrative can differentiate something. If you meet a producer and hear their story, that’s something you can connect with on a human level,” Jones says.

Jones believes hybrids and new varietals will be an important part of the Okanagan’s future. While there is doubt about what may work for the area in the long-term, Jones says she’s heard from some producers who currently grow hybrids that they’ve seen green on their vines after the cold snap, a positive sign of resilience. 

An equally important part of the picture will involve organic and regenerative farming that respects the land, something many small-scale vintners like Rajen Toor are embracing. “I hope climate will be a bigger part of the story [of wine] moving forward,” Jones says. “I think the wine industry has done a good job of talking to ourselves about it, but it hasn’t been conveyed to consumers in terms of how much it will change things.” There is an opportunity there, she says, with customers knowing, at least on a basic level, of the industry’s climate issues. “People are really aware about fire now — they ask about that a lot.”

Future B.C. wines may taste a little different, but producers are staying flexible

For Evan Saunders and Blasted Church, as for most winemakers in the Okanagan–Similkameen, the coming year carries much uncertainty. The winery is hoping to source grapes for its 2024 vintage from Washington state, where Saunders says the terroir and varietals are similar to the Okanagan’s. They will need to jump through complex regulatory loopholes to do so, but Saunders says he wants to keep his team busy doing what they’re there to do: make wine. “There’s a lot of different ideas out there and everyone’s going to have to figure out what works for their business. If there are wineries that have a lot of inventory, that’s great — they can take off a vintage and they’ll still have wines to sell,” he says. “But I want to keep my staff employed and to keep working with the same team I’ve been working with for a long time. So Washington is the plan at the moment.”

“We’d already gone through the anxiety and grieving and panic, so this year, the plan has not changed.”

Winemaker Rajen Toor

He says the crisis is a chance to get more creative about climate strategies. “We’re taking it as a bit of an opportunity, because what else can you do at this point?” It is farming, after all, as he points out. “No one got into the wine industry thinking it would be easy.” He thinks diversifying Okanagan vineyards with hybrids and new varietals may be a good approach. “Maybe you don’t need to be entirely planted with hybrids, but you can at least hedge your bets.” 

For Rajen Toor, narrative has always been a part of his work with Ursa Major, and climate is just another element to the story. His wines’ names often recall poetry, and his 2022 Cabernet Franc, “Welcome to Hard Times,” feels especially prescient. He says there have been a lot of “doom-and-gloom” conversations since the cold snap in January, but he and his wife have mostly chosen to stay out of them after coming to terms with the devastation of the previous winter. “We’d already gone through the anxiety and grieving and panic, so this year, the plan has not changed. We’re just going to keep trucking along.” 

Toor was born on the vineyard his parents planted in Oliver, and feels like winemaking is in his blood. He can remember when winemakers in the area started replacing older plants — some hybrids — with more marketable varietals in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was still a kid. And he can also recall a time when winters in the area were more consistent, with more snowpack to protect the vines from cold. His Similkameen vineyard replant will include Marquette and Seyval Blanc, two hybrids he was introduced to in Quebec, and which are not just more cold-hardy but more disease-resistant and require less irrigation — a plus as the Interior heads into an anticipated drought season. It’s an approach he thinks more winemakers need to embrace if they want to survive.

For the time being, Toor is focused on his own future, and on the winery he and his wife plan to build this year on their Similkameen property. “The last few years have definitely been a test in patience and endurance,” he says, “but what’s keeping us going right now is just keeping the daydream alive: envisioning ourselves standing in our own winery, in our own production building, with the vines that we’re planting this year in full production. We’ve come so far, and we feel like we’re right there, but just need to push through this last barrier.” 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.