The Great Bear Rainforest is protected. So why is an abandoned industrial site leaching heavy metals?

The Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate coastal rainforest in the world. It’s been home to First Nations for over 12,000 years. It was an immense achievement in conservation when it became a protected area in 2016. The British Columbia government calls it a “global treasure.” It’s beautiful and rich with life.

All of that is true — but what’s also true is that an abandoned cannery in the Great Bear Rainforest has been leaching pollutants for decades, even after it was protected. Today, some contaminants like mercury are between double and 200 times regulation standards. 

Heiltsuk people have been fighting for the cleanup since the 1980s. The site is home to Namu, an ancient Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) village. The Heiltsuk never ceded their land, but much of it, including Namu, was seized and treated as private property. In 1893 a settler named Robert Draney established a bustling cannery. It was an economic success and the centre of a vibrant community, employing many Heiltsuk people, until it was suddenly shuttered in the 1980s after industry profits dropped. 

Within the imposed colonial system, Namu traded hands without Heiltsuk permission. The most recent corporate owner is now legally dissolved and the Namu lands have reverted to the Crown. 

The Heiltsuk want to protect their land, and to make it habitable again. 

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“My kids and I want to go back there and build a house on the land where my parents lived,” Chief Ken Campbell says. Campbell is hereditary chief for Namu and the surrounding area, called Mawas.

His nation needs support to repair the damage caused by outside players — and prevent harm to the surrounding rainforest.

As long as the cannery deteriorates, ‘our work is not done’

The Great Bear Rainforest agreement was finalized in 2016, in collaboration with First Nations and the forestry industry. In total, 85 per cent of the forest was conserved, including 70 per cent of its old-growth trees. 

But the metal and concrete continued to slowly crumble, year after year. About a decade ago, you could still walk around Namu. “You can’t do that anymore,” Chris Tollefson, a lawyer and co-convenor of the Renew Namu working group, says, warning it’s at the point of “becoming a crisis.”

“The condition of the site has deteriorated dramatically. It’s falling into the ocean.”

Heiltsuk Nation has been pushing for cleanup for decades and was drafting a memorandum of understanding with B.C. and Canada to fund and undertake the clean up of Namu that was put on hold due to last fall’s B.C. election. But the nation is making sure the site remains on the recently re-elected NDP’s radar. 

In January, Heiltsuk leaders, allies, B.C. ministers, senior officials and negotiators convened at Simon Fraser University. Tollefson says the meeting was meant to restart discussions about Namu’s future and celebrate the work that has been done so far by the Heiltsuk. Two newly elected B.C. ministers were in attendance: Randene Neill, minister of water, land and resource stewardship, and Tamara Davidson, minister of environment and parks. Davidson, a Haida citizen, is the first Indigenous woman to be elected in North-Coast-Haida Gwaii.

Haíɫzaqv Chief Councillor K̓áwáziɫ (Marilyn Slett) says that Namu made a few people a lot of money — and was left in decay. The nation is working to protect what the world knows as the Great Bear Rainforest, but to the Heiltsuk, it’s home.

“We have a lot to be proud of with the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, land use agreement and moving into marine protected areas and conservancies,” she says. “But when Namu continues to deteriorate and fall into the ocean and get into the earth, we know our work is not done. We need to work together to restore it.”

Contaminant levels for mercury, lead at cannery site ‘off the charts’

Namu is right in the centre of the Great Bear Rainforest, on the central coast of B.C. Heiltsuk Nation contracted an environmental consultant to measure contamination, which found mercury at levels 92.8 times higher than regulation standards for contaminated sites. 

The foreshore, one of the most contaminated areas, was designated a conservancy in 2008, in the run-up to the creation of the Great Bear Rainforest protected area.

Other contaminants were also drastically higher than regulation standards, like tributyltin (toxic to sealife and humans), fluoranthene (which may cause kidney and liver issues), phenanthrene (which can cause reproductive issues in animals) and anthracene (which can cause skin irritation, nausea and inflammation).

“It’s off the charts,” Slett says. 

This is based on a preliminary site assessment, and some areas have not yet been sampled. Tollefson expects further contamination will be identified.

Still, Heiltsuk leaders emphasize that Namu has been inhabited for 10,000 years. While they’ve waited more than 40 years for repair, leadership is determined to secure a prosperous future for Namu for generations to come.

Every Heiltsuk community member has a ‘great story’ about Namu

Hím̓ás Wigvilhba Wakas (Hereditary Chief Harvey Humchitt) was a little boy in Namu. Families would move there in the summer so the adults could work. His dad was a fisherman and his mom worked at the cannery.

“Namu was a thriving village,” he says. “For me, it was a real adventure.”

Harvey worked at the cannery as a teenager — once for 29 hours straight, he says, unloading 250,000 pieces of salmon.

He recalls families walking down the boardwalk like a parade when they left for lunch. His daughter, Megan Humchitt, remembers walking along the boardwalk decades later too.

“Talk to any Heiltsuk community member about Namu, they’re going to have a really great story,” Megan says. “Everybody thinks about Namu with a good heart.” 

“We need to continue to have generations of people — youth, kids, parents, families — come and be able to experience what walking on the boardwalk is like in Namu.”

In 2011, Harvey was central to negotiating the return of Heiltsuk ancestors’ remains from Simon Fraser University, travelling to Vancouver with Hereditary Chief Campbell to bring their ancestors home. 

The work of bringing the remains home also took years, which means Harvey knows such monumental projects can happen. His vision is that B.C., Canada and everyone on the working group work with Heiltsuk to bring Namu back to health.

“It’s in a state where it really needs a lot of attention,” he says. “We need to do something about it.”

One member of the Renew Namu working group, philanthropist Warren Spitz, used to fly north to Namu to work as a teen. At the January meeting, Spitz says he was “terribly embarrassed” that non-Indigenous people descended on an ancient village that had existed for over 12,000 years, “extracted all of the resources from the sea” over less than a century and “made tremendous amounts of money and left.”

“The Heiltsuk, who were the stewards of this land for that millennium, are now simply asking that we help remediate the damage that was done and turn it back to their stewardship for probably another millennium or more of great stewardship,” he says.

Heiltsuk’s vision for the future includes Namu becoming a satellite community, close to the nation’s central community, Bella Bella. Leadership sees potential for a marine transport and safety hub, a cultural centre and ecotourism.

Slett says they just need to keep pushing. She points out that through reconciliation agreements with B.C. and Canada, the nation was able to purchase Shearwater Resort in Bella Bella. In the 75 years it first operated, just one Heiltsuk person worked there, as a cashier, she says. Now, the nation owns it and 54 per cent of its employees are Heiltsuk. She holds that the same can happen for Namu.

“It’s going to take the business community, B.C. and Canada, Heiltsuk and people that care,” she says.

“We’re here to bring everybody together.”