I round a bend on Highway 29 just west of Fort St. John and a magnificent river valley opens up before me.

At the bottom of the winding road, farmers' fields stretch as far as the eye can see along the banks of the mighty Peace River.

This is the same valley explorer Alexander Mackenzie paddled through in 1792, noting in his journal that the valley was so rich in wildlife that in some places it looked like a barnyard.

“Ninety per cent of the people who take that drive remember it for a lifetime,” says local rancher Leigh Summer. [view:in_this_series=block_1]

Today, the highway toward Hudson’s Hope is dotted with trucks carrying canoes and kayaks, all converging upon one spot: the Halfway River bridge, where the 9th annual Paddle for the Peace will launch.

The Paddle is an annual pilgrimage for people who want the valley to be protected from BC Hydro’s proposed Site C dam, which would flood 83 kilometres of the Peace River and 24 kilometres of its tributaries. The two-hour paddle takes place on a section of the river that will be flooded if the dam is built.

Highway 29 between Fort St. John and Hudson’s Hope is home to several billboards with slogans like “Keep the Peace,” “Site C Sucks” and “Save the Peace Valley.”

With the federal and provincial governments expected to make their decisions on the project this fall, there’s an undercurrent of tension at this year’s Paddle as farmers, ranchers and First Nations wait to see what will be next in their decades-long fight to stop the dam (the project was first rejected in 1982).

The people of this area know a thing or two about dams given that the Peace River is already home to two major ones.

Leigh Summer was just 14 years old when his family’s ranch was flooded by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in 1967. His grandparents homesteaded that land in the 1920s and his mother was born there.

“We were told it was going to be good for the economy, so we took it in stride,” Summer says while sitting in his boat with his family during Saturday's Paddle for the Peace.

The W.A.C. Bennett dam stretches two kilometres across the head of the Peace canyon and creates Williston Reservoir, B.C.’s largest body of freshwater.

“I think the Williston Lake has paid dividends to the province,” Summer says. “But I think the time has come to realize that it’s a decent energy, but it’s a thing of the past.”

Now, 47 years after being flooded out for the first time, Summer's ranch is at risk again — this time from BC Hydro’s proposed third dam on the Peace, dubbed “Site C.”

With a price tag of $7.9 billion, the Site C dam is the largest infrastructure project in Canada and would produce about 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity each year. But the demand for the power has been questioned by economists and by the joint review panel that reviewed the project.

The panel's report, released in May, was inconclusive, saying both that the dam could provide cheap, reliable power for B.C. and that the demand for that power is not clear. The panel asked the provincial government to refer the project to the B.C. Utilities Commission to analyze the costs — something the province has yet to do.

“Justification must rest on an unambiguous need for the power and analyses showing its financial costs being sufficiently attractive as to make tolerable the bearing of substantial environmental, social and other costs,” the report says.

If the dam is built, Summer would be one of dozens of families who will impacted by flooding, slope instability and road re-alignments. His family could end up with a road through the field in front of their house. He finds it galling how BC Hydro talks about this being the Crown corporation's last chance to build a big dam.

“Why is this the last if this is such a good thing? They are admitting that hydro electricity was good in the 19th and in the 20th century. We’re in the 21st century … we have to either look to conservation or other forms of energy,” he says. “It’s so archaic. Building this dam isn’t even progress for the province.”

Leigh, his wife Darcy and their three young children spend most of the summer enjoying the Peace River. Their youngest son, a fifth generation Peace Country boy, is even called River.

Leigh Summer's family ranch was flooded by the W.A.C. Bennett dam in 1967.

River Summer spends a lot of time on the Peace River with his parents and two older sisters.

“I’m just sad at what they lost already with the two valleys,” Darcy says. “When you see pictures and when you do research on that, it was just beautiful, it was so magnificent. To think that we’re going to keep destroying it.”

This stretch of the Peace valley between Fort St. John and Hudson’s Hope is the last intact part of the river in British Columbia.

“Why can’t we leave a piece of the Peace intact for future generations?” Leigh says, his daughter sitting in his lap. “Let them have a choice. If we flood it, we take that choice away from them, from ever seeing what the Peace River was like.”

Out of sight, out of mind for the voting majority

For those trying to stop the Site C dam, one of the biggest challenges is that this part of the province — a 14-hour drive from Vancouver — is out of sight, out of mind for the voting majority of the province.

A September 2013 poll commissioned by BC Hydro found only four in 10 British Columbians had even heard of the Crown utility’s proposal to build a third hydroelectric dam on the Peace River.

“That’s what this event is all about,” says Roland Willson, chief of West Moberly First Nation. “There are people who are making a decision about this valley who have never even been here.”

Roland Willson, chief of West Moberly First Nation.

“There is nothing better in the world than to be able to put your boat on the water or go stand knee deep in the water and catch a fish and eat that fish. And drink the water. That in itself is something that’s worth saving,” Willson says.

Because the Peace River is the only river to break the barrier of the Rocky Mountains between the Yukon south almost to Mexico, it has provided a gateway for wildlife and people for thousands of years.

Although few British Columbians make it up to the Peace region nowadays, Fort St. John is the oldest non-native community in British Columbia, established as a fur trading post in 1794 — and First Nations have been here more than 10,000 years. Indeed, the Peace got its name from a peace treaty signed between the Danezaa people, called the Beaver by the Europeans, and the Cree signed in 1781.

As I float down the river in one of about 250 boats taking part in the Paddle, First Nations drummers start to sing alongside. At just that moment, an eagle swoops overhead.

About 250 boats were on the water for Paddle for the Peace on Saturday July 12.

“We’re prepared to take any means necessary to stop this project in support of the Treaty 8 First Nations leadership,” Grand Chief Stewart Phillip told Desmog Canada at the Paddle. “I really hope that this project is buried once and for all.”

People aren’t the only ones who will be impacted if the dam is built.

“Site C will make a major contribution toward severing that Rocky mountain chain that goes all the way from Yellowstone to Yukon,” says Sarah Cox, senior conservation program manager for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.  

“The science shows that vulnerable species like grizzly, wolverine and lynx will be greatly impacted to the extent that populations may not be recoverable,” she says. “It’s hard to imagine that the beauty of this valley will be completely flooded and underwater.”

Last week, the Sierra Club BC, Peace Valley Environmental Association and Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative launched a new website, StopSiteC.org, where citizens can sign a petition to voice their opposition to the project.

'The Peace … has paid her price'

Doug Donaldson, the NDP’s aboriginal affairs and reconciliation critic, spoke to the crowd of paddlers before they hit the water.

“I think that this river and the Peace River Valley and you have given enough to the province,” he said.

A billboard protests the Site C dam above Bear Flats in the Peace Valley.

Organizers said BC Liberal representatives were invited to speak, but did not attend. Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett has said he has not made up his mind about the dam yet.

For Leigh, who’s watching and waiting to see whether his family may be uprooted a second time by one of BC Hydro’s dams, the Peace has shouldered more than its fair share of the impacts of providing power for the province.

“The Peace River in British Columbia has paid her price for prosperity,” Summer says. “Do we have to completely destroy the whole Peace River in all of B.C.?”

He’s frustrated that the province has exempted the project from the review of the B.C. Utilities Commission, the independent regulator that turned the dam down in 1982.

“That’s wrong. We call ourselves a democracy; that’s not democracy,” Summer says.

“The truth would set us free here, but the truth never gets to the right people.”

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Two Ontario-based environmental organizations are calling on the recently reelected Ontario Liberal government to assess the potential cumulative social and environmental impacts of mining projects in northern Ontario's ‘Ring of Fire’ before mining begins. The ecological services Ontario’s Far North provides Canada and the world are too valuable to take for granted the organizations argue in a report released last week.

“Simply put, this is not a place that can be “offset” or restored if it is damaged or destroyed by poorly planned development,” the report, Getting it Right in Ontario’s Far North, states.

Northern Ontario is the single largest intact extant of boreal forest in the world. It is the last refuge for species at risk such as caribou, wolverine and lake sturgeon and the nesting grounds for thousands of songbirds. The region is a “critical storehouse” of carbon in the fight against climate change. The forests and peat lands of Ontario’s Far North absorb 12.5 million tonnes of global warming carbon dioxide emissions annually, and store ninety-seven billion tonnes of carbon.

The federal government estimates between thirty to fifty billion dollars worth of mineral resources lay beneath ground of the so-called Ring of Fire, a five thousands kilometer squared area (roughly the size of PEI) five hundred kilometers north of Thunder Bay in the northern James Bay Lowlands.

“We need a planning process that is equal to the scale and complexity of the challenge, rather than continuing to depend on piecemeal efforts that put wildlife species and human communities at higher risk in the face of global pressures like climate change and a race for resources,” Cheryl Chetkiewicz, associate conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Canada, said.

The authors of the report – Wildlife Conservation Society and Ecojustice – detail the need for the Ontario government to change its assessment approach to the Ring of Fire, the largest mineral find in Ontario in decades. The report recommends Ontario conduct a regional strategic environmental assessment (R-SEA) that would investigate the potential social and environmental impacts of mining and associated infrastructure developments on the entire region. 

“Adopting an R-SEA planning process is a way of building consensus around where, when, and in what form development is appropriate as opposed to our current processes that ask communities – social and ecological – to bear the long-term impacts of new development,” Chetkiewicz said in a statement.

Ontario’s current assessment process only looks at the impacts of a proposed infrastructure project or mine when a company applies. This ignores the overall impacts on multiple mining and infrastructure operations in an area that has seen very little industrial development.

First Nations Must Be Decision-Makers Before Mines Are Approved

The report also advocates ensuring First Nations peoples living in the Ring of Fire – the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Omushkego (Cree) – have greater influence in the approval process and in a regional strategic environmental assessment of the proposed development area:

“First Nations also must be decision-makers in the process or any development will be mired in delays and conflict,” the report states.

Although the Anishinaabe/Omushkego* have been generally supportive of Ring of Fire development, both groups insist they recieve adequate consultation on the risks and benefits of mining in the area before any project is approved and receive their fair share of economic benefits. 

“R-SEA, by contrast, requires a proactive, participatory approach that engages decision makers such as government and First Nations and other stakeholders, including local communities, NGOs and industry, to determine what the future looks like and how we will get there,” the report concludes.

Last year, the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs warned the Anishinaabe/Omushkego were “some of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in all of Canada,” which could impede their ability to economically benefit from the Ring of Fire development.

Uncertainties In Developing the Ring of Fire Remain

Premier Kathleen Wynne pledged one billion dollars to develop the Ring of Fire during the Ontario provincial election earlier this month but, as the report points out, beyond building a road there are no comprehensive plans for the development. Even the building of the road, an access road, remains in dispute.

It is unclear what exactly Wynne's one billion dollars can accomplish at this stage. And as the newly released report highlights, it also remains far from certain if development can proceed without causing irreparable damage to the fragile ecosystems of Ontario’s Far North.

“We question whether the Ring of Fire can be mined without being a massive financial burden on Ontario taxpayers, or without trashing the province's most pristine watershed,” Ramsey Hart, Canada program coordinator for MiningWatch Canada said in an interview with DeSmog Canada last year.

Chromite, an essential ingredient in the making stainless steel was accidentally discovered in the area in 2008. It turned out to be the largest deposit of chromite in North America.

*Anishinaabe and Omushkego are the names for the “Ojibwe” and “Muskeg Cree” First Nations peoples of northern Ontario in their own languages. The author has used “Anishinaabe/Omushkego” instead of “Anishinaabe and Omushkego” to recognize the interconnection and sharing between these two cultures that has taken place in northern Ontario.

Image Credits: John Cutfeet, Wildlands League; Wildlife Conservation Society Canada: Government of Ontario

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Ontario's largest mining find in decades – a 5000 square km region known as the Ring of Fire – won't be developed by Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources without facing significant obstacles.

“We question whether the Ring of Fire can be mined without being a massive financial burden on Ontario taxpayers, or without trashing the province's most pristine watershed,” says Ramsey Hart, Canada program coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, an Ottawa-based organization.

“It is also unclear if this development will proceed in the best interests of the First Nations living in the Ring of Fire,” Hart told DeSmog Canada.

A briefing note to the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs from earlier this year warns that the Anishinaabe/Omushkego* (First Nations of the Ring of Fire) “are some of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in all of Canada” and this could prevent the Anishinaabe/Omushkego from benefitting from the Ring of Fire mega mining project.

Stumbling Upon the Ring of Fire

The Ring of Fire is a proposed mining development the size of Prince Edward Island located in the Northern James Bay Lowlands of northern Ontario. The prize for the mining industry in Ring of Fire is “chromite,” a key ingredient in the making stainless steel which was accidentally discovered in the area in 2008. It turned out to be the largest deposit of chromite in North America.

Mining the Ring of Fire enjoys the rare support of practically all parties involved – federally, provincially and even quite a few Anishinaabe/Omushkego members. The federal government estimates between $30 billion and $50 billion worth of mineral resources lay in the ground.

“The entire province will feel the positive economic impact, especially the north with its mining consulting and equipment industries, as well as its supply and service sectors. We have to get it right, especially for the Aboriginal communities to ensure they have the tools to fully participate in the development,” says Christine Kaszycki, coordinator of the Ontario government's Ring of Fire secretariat, the provincial body responsible for developing the Ring of Fire.

‘Getting it Right’ With the Ring of Fire

Using the catch-phrase ‘getting it right’ when discussing the Ring of Fire mining project has become as popular as the region's Johnny-Cash-song-title name. The mayor of Thunder Bay wants his city, which lies 500 km to the south, to be “the next Fort McMurray” referring to the tar sands-boom town in Alberta. However the mayor insists “we’re hoping to do it right” if the development is approved.

‘Getting it right’ to ensure the Anishinaabe/Omushkego are positively, not negatively, affected by mining the Ring of Fire will most likely prove more difficult than mining chromite in the area.

A briefing note to the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs obtained by the CBC last June warned low education levels, housing shortages and lack of access to clean drinking water could “jeopardize” the ability of the Anishinaabe/Omushkego to enjoy the economic benefits of the Ring of Fire development.

The 70% high school drop out rate in Anishinaabe/Omushkego communities creates a huge skills gap between Anishinaabe/Omushkego hoping for employment in mining the Ring of Fire and the skills and qualifications mining companies will seek for their operations.

Canada and Mining Company Thwarting Anishinaabe/Omushkego Call For Joint Review Panel

Although proponents of mining the Ring of Fire claim they want to do what is best for the Anishinaabe/Omushkego, the behaviour of some proponents seems to indicate otherwise.

The Matawa chiefs of the Anishinaabe/Omushkego mounted a legal challenge in 2011 demanding a independent joint review panel (JRP) be established to deliberate over mining company Cliffs Natural Resources' chromite project called 'Black Thor' instead of relying on an environmental assessment conducted by Cliffs.

“What we have now is a paper-based (environmental assessment) process, run completely outside of the communities affected, with no meaningful involvement of First Nations, and is non-transparent,” said Aroland First Nation Chief Sonny Gagnon in a statement.  

“It needs to be made accessible, by holding hearings in the First Nations and using an independent panel,” Gagnon concluded.

A JRP would be more thorough and require more time than the comprehensive environmental assessment Cliffs and the federal government want. The JRP would also be required to travel Anishinaabe/Omushkego communities to hold meetings and consultations with residents.

Cliffs claims the legal challenge is “impeding the progression” of their project. Last March a federal judge ruled in favour of the Matawa chiefs and a judicial review on whether a JRP should be conducted on the Black Thor project will take place this summer. The judge also criticized Cliffs and the federal government for causing unnecessary delays in the case.

“Cliffs has been neither cooperative or helpful during this entire process. They should not be surprised that they themselves are facing delays with their project,” says Hart of MiningWatch. MiningWatch is one of a handful of organizations supporting the Matawa chiefs' call for the JRP.

The Ring of Fire May Not Be Economically Feasible

The necessary infrastructure investment alone to mine the Ring of Fire will be at least $1 billion and mining companies are looking for Ontario or the federal government to foot a big chunk of this bill. This area is a relatively untouched wilderness with few roads.

In addition massive investments into the Ring of Fire project – whether by a company or a government – may be difficult to justify given the recent decline in commodity prices.

An Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) analyst described the economics of Cliffs' Black Thor project as questionable given the current price of refined chromite or ferrochrome.

Value-added jobs such as refining chromite for Ontarians will not be in abundance as many had expected. Cliffs wants to refine 40% of Black Thor's chromite outside of Canada. The other half is to be processed in Sudbury, Ontario but a processing centre still needs to be built. It is anticipated Cliffs will likely rely on subsidized Ontario electricity rates to off-set the cost of energy-intensive chromite refining.

“The world is not going to stop using stainless steel anytime soon. The chromite in the Ring of Fire is not going anywhere. There is no need to rush the development," Hart told DeSmog Canada.

“If mining the Ring of Fire is truly in the public's interest – and that is a big if – why not take the time to do it right?” he said.

*Anishinaabe and Omushkego are the names for the “Ojibwe” and “Cree” First Nations peoples of northern Ontario in their own languages. The author has used “Anishinaabe/Omushkego” instead of “Anishinaabe and Omushkego” to recognize the interconnection and sharing between these two cultures that has taken place in northern Ontario.

Image Credit: Tony Dang Flickr, Government of Ontario

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