The sound of cars passing is a constant hum, so constant it’s almost meditative. Every so often one bleats out a honk of support. On the shoulder of the highway stands a man, holding a sign that reads: “Save the Salmon.”

Cheeks ruddy from the cold, he clutches it with gloved hands from behind a waist-high concrete highway barrier. Dark eyes glitter warmly behind glasses, and over his knitted wool toque is a black baseball cap emblazoned with the image of a tree, water and paddles. 

This is Tsartlip First Nation Elder Carl Olsen, also known by his traditional name, ZȺWIZUT. He’s 78 years old. For the last three years, he’s been coming out here every Tuesday — through rain, snow and even sickness — to stand out on the shoulder of the Malahat highway and protest.

It’s December 30, 2025. Olsen grins, surrounded by supporters who wave at cars and shake their own homemade signs. But it wasn’t always this way. When he first started out, it was just him, his granddaughter and a supporter from the local book club Olsen runs.

At his back is Goldstream Provincial Park, or as Olsen knows it, SELE₭TEȽ. At 477 hectares, it’s bigger than New York City’s Central Park, a verdant gem on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, just a 20-minute drive from Victoria. The park features waterfalls, Garry oak meadows, 600-year-old Douglas fir trees, flowering dogwood, western red cedar trees, Oregon grape and salmonberries.

In front of Olsen is the Malahat, a busy two-lane highway that cuts through the park and sees an average of 25,000 vehicles a day pass by. The park’s accessibility means more than 600,000 people visit each year to camp, hike and hang out. Many come in the fall to watch the huge runs of chum, Chinook and coho salmon that return each year to spawn in the Goldstream River.

What prompted Olsen to go out there in the early months of 2023 was learning of a proposal put forward by the province to widen the Malahat that would catastrophically affect the adjacent Chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat in the Goldstream River. 

According to the province, the highway expansion, estimated in 2024 to cost $162 million, was needed to improve safety and reliability along a 1.7-kilometre section that bisects the park.

One part that especially concerned Olsen was the expected “permanent loss or alteration of aquatic salmonid and amphibian habitat” next to the Goldstream River. This impact and others were detailed in a 139-page environmental assessment report commissioned by the province and completed in 2024 by consulting firm McElhanney. The area’s Chinook and coho salmon spawning habitat falls directly within the project’s footprint.

Within half a kilometre of the project site, at-risk species were likely to be affected, including western screech owls, northern red-legged frogs, wandering salamanders and the endangered sharp-tailed snake. Expand that to within five kilometres of the project site and that list lengthens to at least 200 endangered and threatened species possibly affected.

Olsen was also horrified to learn that, among a host of other environmental issues, approximately 715 trees would also be removed from an area along the highway during construction.

He thought about the owls and nesting birds, about the spe’uth (bears) that make their homes in SELE₭TEȽ and fed beside him while he and other nation members harvested fish for winter. He thought of how the noise and vibration from excavation and rock blasting might affect the vulnerable salmon fry, hiding out in the darkness under fallen logs in river pools until they were big enough to head to the ocean.

“The canopy that creates the coolness of the water in the stream — if that disappears, those fish will disappear, because then the water starts to get too hot. It’s about 12 degrees difference from the sun to the shade. So that’s what started me,” he says. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. I can be the voice for the salmon.’ ”

Every Tuesday for the last three years, Olsen wakes up at about 5 a.m. in the house his grandfather built, on the W̱JOȽEȽP Tsartlip reserve. He heads down to the beach right outside his door on the Saanich Inlet and starts his day with a prayer at the water’s edge. 

“I meditate about what I would like to see in my day,” he says.

After his prayer, Olsen heads to a local café for some toast and tea. 

Typically, a group of supporters show up to tag along with him to Goldstream Park. Others meet him there. Some are members of local churches and the Wilderness Committee, or participants in Olsen’s Indigenous authors book club.

One of those book club members is Christine Willes, a settler from a group called Goldstream Protectors that helped organize a protest with Olsen and others at the legislature in October. 

“What he says to anybody who asked him is, ‘Well, I can go and stand by the side of the highway,’ ” she says. “And that’s what he says to other people. ‘Do what you can.’ So I thought, well, I can go stand on the side of the highway too.”

For Olsen, this fight is now broader than the highway project. It’s a flashpoint in a much larger and contentious discussion around Indigenous land rights, title and reconciliation that has consumed the province, and has repercussions for the entire country. It’s also about the ability for Indigenous people to make land decisions in their own territory.

To the W̱SÁNEĆ people, of which Tsartlip are a part, SELE₭TEȽ is one of their oldest fishing villages, arguably protected by a treaty put to paper 174 years ago which clearly states they retain the rights to their village sites and to hunt and fish on those lands as they always have.

It’s one of 14 treaties negotiated in the 1850s by James Douglas, then-Governor of Vancouver Island, with the local First Nations. For many, the existence of these treaties may come as a surprise, as it’s well known that most of the province’s land mass was never ceded by its original inhabitants. 

Known collectively as the Douglas Treaties, multiple court cases since the 1960s have re-affirmed these treaty-protected rights, for both the W̱SÁNEĆ and the other Vancouver Island nations who signed them in the 1850s.

This fight to hold colonial governments to their word is what has kept Olsen out on the highway for three years.

‘It rightfully belongs to us’

On its website, the B.C. government states Goldstream Park was “given to the people of British Columbia by the Greater Victoria Water Board in 1958.” 

But the actual history is far more complicated.

“It rightfully belongs to us,” stated Jean Baptiste Paul, Tsartlip First Nation member and son of then-chief Thomas Paul, in an article published in the Daily Colonist on March 27, 1956. “We have never given it up, and never been offered anything for our fishing and hunting grounds there.”

Jean Baptiste recalled how he had hunted and fished at Goldstream as a child. He told the Daily Colonist that all of the Saanich Inlet, from Cherry Point to the hills south of Goldstream was Indigenous territory, and had been identified as such by his grandfather, former Tsartlip Chief Ben Paul.

Tsartlip and Malahat members had built fish-smoking shacks near the river and his grandfather had also constructed a log cabin in the area. But one day when no one was there, all the buildings were burned down, Paul told the paper.

At the time, Paul’s resistance was reported as little more than a passing curiosity with headlines such as, “Prospect of city giving park to B.C. has West Saanich Indians on warpath.” On June 26, 1958 B.C. went ahead and designated the area a park in celebration of British Columbia’s centennial.

Goldstream became a tourist attraction. Even though it was not yet officially open, the campground was quickly packed with vacationers. Newspaper columnists sung the praises of Goldstream’s beauty and touted its quick accessibility from Victoria. In the fall of 1960, thousands of onlookers crowded into Goldstream to watch the salmon run, a practice that continues to this day. 

However, these thousands of new visitors brought with them a host of new problems, says Eric Pelkey WEC’KINEM, hereditary chief of the Tsawout First Nation. Sometimes when nation members are down at the river harvesting fish, visitors to the park will confront them.

“They start cussing us up and down, saying that we’re destroying the fishery. We tell them, we have the right. We have the right to do this, to carry on our fishery and to just leave us alone. But there’s still a lot of racism that comes out at that time. People think we’re torturing the fish,” Pelkey says. 

The W̱SÁNEĆ carry on regardless. More recently, people have also been coming out there to support them, he adds.

Pelkey sits at a picnic table in the park, the gentle rush of the Goldstream River behind him. Barrel-chested, his voice a deep, gentle baritone, he wears a ball cap-style hat woven from cedar bark and a wool and feather headband. A cream-coloured traditional knitted blanket is wrapped around his shoulders.

These accusations are especially misplaced because, he explains, it’s the W̱SÁNEĆ who constantly steward the area and conduct their own assessments to monitor the health of the fish. 

For example, in 2023 the numbers of chum in the Goldstream were so low that nation members just went down to the river to observe. “Nobody took a fish,” according to Olsen, a long time volunteer at the Goldstream Hatchery.

Most of the environmental problems in the area are due to settler activity in the first place, Pelkey points out. Commercial fishing boats that come down the Johnstone Strait along the coast of Vancouver Island and into the Strait of Georgia take most of the salmon before they can even reach the Goldstream River, he says. In 2011 a fuel tanker truck crashed in the area, leaking tens of thousands of litres of gasoline and diesel into the river caused further stress on the salmon.

Members from all W̱SÁNEĆ nations harvest chum, Chinook and coho salmon from the Goldstream River as a winter food supply, and have for generations. When it’s smoked, the chum can last all winter, Pelkey says.

“I remember growing up, and we always had that smell in our house, because my parents would have sacks of smoked chum on top of our cupboards, burlap sacks,” he says.

A village displaced

In 1877, the Indian Reserve Commission parcelled out a fishing reserve along the south end of Finlayson Arm, an extension of the Saanich Inlet where the Goldstream River feeds into the ocean. However Goldstream Reserve no. 13, as it’s called, sits at the base of Mount Finlayson instead of in the area of the river where the community still harvests fish. 

“They carried out the survey of the old fishing village, but the surveyor is the one that took it from here and put it over there, off on the side of the mountain, instead of surveying where our village was,” says Pelkey. “This whole area here used to be filled with longhouses all along the river. Right over there, where that overhang is there, is actually where our family’s longhouse used to be.” 

He turns and points over his shoulder, to a structure not far from Goldstream Park’s gravel parking lot. 

“I was not aware of that until maybe I was in my 30s, when my grandfather asked me to bring him out here. We parked over there, walked down. And he said, ‘Oh, what is this building?’ ”

He told his grandfather, Marshall Pelkey, that it housed the washrooms and that this was now a public park. He became upset, Pelkey recalls.

Known as the “saltwater people,” the ocean is entwined within everything the W̱SÁNEĆ do, Pelkey says.

The W̱SÁNEĆ have maintained a wide and complex network of traditional reef net fishing sites throughout their territory, which encompasses what are currently known as the San Juan Islands, Boundary Bay, the Saanich Inlet and Saanich Peninsula. These reef net sites are not just places to harvest food, but are part of a wider spiritual and community practice. 

In and around Goldstream Park, community members also use streams that feed into the area for ritual bathing, and host a first salmon ceremony each fall to greet their returning salmon relatives. This is in an area right beside the province’s proposed road work site.

“Our people always fished here, no matter where the reserve was. Every winter, our people came here to fish. Conservation officers always tried to stop us, but we always just kept on and dared them to take us to court,” Pelkey says.

That’s exactly what happened one evening 30 years ago, when Olsen and another Tsartlip member, Ivan Morris, were caught hunting by conservation officers on their territory and arrested. 

To hunt and fish as formerly: what the Douglas Treaties really meant

Though it was early evening, it was already getting dark on Nov. 28, 1996, when two men, driving in the woods near Youbou, spotted what appeared to be the glow of deer eyes through the trees. 

They were showing two boys — eight and twelve years old — how to hunt at night with the help of a light. It was something their families had safely done for generations, but was previously done with burning pitch and bows and arrows. 

Morris pulled the vehicle over. Olsen took aim and fired a few shots. He then passed the rifle across the two boys to Morris, who got out of the vehicle and squeezed off two more.

They soon got a nasty surprise. The deer they shot at was, in fact, a decoy, complete with reflective eyes, set up by provincial conservation officers to trap illegal hunters. The vehicle was quickly swarmed by officers and the two men were arrested, Olsen recalls.

“There were probably a dozen or more conservation that surrounded us and even manhandled the kids that were there, threw them up against the hood of the car to search them,” he said.

The two were charged with hunting with a firearm during prohibited hours and hunting with an illuminating device, under provincial wildlife legislation. The subsequent trial revolved around the Crown’s argument that yes, Morris and Olsen had a right to hunt, but that did not include the right to hunt in a way that was “inherently unsafe,” as the trial judge put it.

At trial, the men’s lawyers countered with a vigourous legal defense. Not only were they using safe practices, they argued, their right as Tsartlip members to hunt as they always had was protected under the North Saanich Treaty of 1852, negotiated between nation members and Douglas.

The case dragged on for 10 years. Initially both men were convicted and it was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal. However, when it got to the Supreme Court of Canada, the convictions were overturned in a 4-3 vote.

Under consideration was the relevant text of the North Saanich Treaty, which guaranteed that village sites and enclosed fields were to be kept for the W̱SÁNEĆ and their children’s use, though the land itself was to become the “property of the white people for ever.” However it also clearly stated that its signatories were at liberty to hunt and carry on their fisheries “as formerly.”

But there are essentially two versions of what happened with the signing of the treaties — the written settler version backed by Douglas and others’ accounts, and the Indigenous oral version told through history by W̱SÁNEĆ members.

It’s generally understood that on Feb. 7 of 1852, Douglas met with 10 W̱SÁNEĆ members to agree on what became the South Saanich Treaty. He then requested W̱SÁNEĆ chiefs come to another meeting on February 11 during which he negotiated with 118 “men with beards,” as he later described them, in what ended up as the North Saanich Treaty.

Historians have different theories on why these two agreements were negotiated separately, but it’s important to understand the context in which they were negotiated. For a prior treaty with the Songhees Nation, Douglas said he asked the chiefs to sign marks at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper, later adding details above it that resulted in the acquisition of the area’s South Island. Experts believe it’s possible Douglas did the same thing as with the W̱SÁNEĆ as he did with the Songhees, and got them to sign blank paper.

Adding to the complications, the X marks on the North Saanich Treaty that represented signatures “were forged” in that they were supposedly signed by W̱SÁNEĆ members “but were in fact made by the clerk of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” declared Justice Douglas Lambert, in Olsen’s B.C. Court of Appeal case.

There is no evidence that the First Nations signatories saw the agreements after the fact, were given a copy, or knew what text was later added.

To this day, the text of the Saanich Treaties does not match W̱SÁNEĆ’s own oral version, which asserts that the treaties were likely agreements to share the land, not surrender it.

On this point, the court also came to a stunning conclusion in its final ruling, in Olsen’s favour: “The Douglas Treaties were the reflections of oral agreements reduced to writing by agents of the Crown” and that those oral promises made when the treaty was agreed to “are as much a part of the treaty as the written words.”

As the people who wrote the Douglas Treaties down were not the Indigenous people, the court “had to take into account what was the evidence of Indigenous people about what they thought the treaty meant,” says lawyer Louise Mandell, Olsen and Morris’s representative and one of the founding partners of Mandell Pinder, a law firm that specializes in Aboriginal and treaty rights law.

This was important for the legal cases that were to follow, she adds.

There are other reasons that the W̱SÁNEĆ think the treaties were likely land sharing agreements meant to stave off tensions that had arisen at that time for a variety of reasons, including a dispute over timber being harvested by settlers in Cordova Bay. 

Given that the Indigenous population on Vancouver Island at this time was approximately 11,700 people, compared with a settler population of about 700, there wouldn’t be any motivation for the W̱SÁNEĆ to sell off all their land, says Joni Olsen, the policy and negotiations manager for the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council and Carl Olsen’s daughter.

“The concept of selling land at that point in history was not a thing for W̱SÁNEĆ people,” she says, especially in the context of B.C. being the last place in Canada that settlers came. “Maybe on the east coast, where they had been settled hundreds of years before, there were probably those concepts there already, but that didn’t happen here.”

Furthermore, the idea that the W̱SÁNEĆ would sell land in exchange for a “payment” of blankets doesn’t make sense culturally, and represents a fundamental lack of understanding around what gifting means to their people, Joni says.

“I mean, historically, to access land you would have married somebody’s daughter or something like that. There would have been an exchange. And it could have been through Potlatch, where you had an exchange of things like blankets. But it wasn’t to own. It was to share. It was to have access to.”

Last February, Joni helped negotiate a joint statement with the provincial and federal governments to acknowledge W̱SÁNEĆ’s oral version of the treaties. It states that “though Canada and British Columbia have long considered these agreements to be land purchase agreements, W̱SÁNEĆ oral histories hold that they were agreements to settle disputes and establish peaceful relations between the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation and the European settlers.”

But these peaceful relations remain a challenge when it comes to negotiations over the future of Goldstream Park.

Moving Indigenous court victories into the real world

Olsen stands on an outcropping of stone known as “The Rock.” It’s a scenic spot along Mill Bay Road in the Cowichan Valley that looks out across the waters of the Saanich Inlet, which is fed by the Goldstream River. In the distance are the western shores of the Saanich Peninsula; beyond that, a scattering of islands.

The sun is bright, and he cups a hand over his forehead as he looks across the water.

“When I was a kid, this bay was full of salmon. You could see it,” he says. “You really could see it.” These waters and lands were his garden and food source growing up.

“It’s where we harvested food plants, medicine plants, and berries. And when you come to the ocean like this, we harvested our food from the ocean. In fact, I was in my early teens before I even had a store-bought meal. It was like fish, ducks, deer, clams, oysters, seal meat. That was my diet before, up until maybe the mid ’60s,” he says.   

Though he was raised as a hunter and a fisherman, his father taught him those skills in private, under a cloud of fear.

“Most parents in our communities suffered from fear. Fear of losing their kids because of how the residential school would just take you away if there was a problem. They actually lived with that fear right up till the end, and so they never taught us on land here. My dad always taught me when we were out fishing on the boat, when there was nobody around. Nobody to come and take us away,” he says, overcome with emotion. “That’s how it affected the treaty as well. They had to go outside or to the islands to teach us our ways.”

That fear has continued to affect the exercising of their Douglas Treaty rights because those rights are still disrespected and uncertain, he adds.

“It only verifies the rights that I have, that’s what the Douglas Treaty does. Because that’s what we did before, hunting and fishing, being taught with hands-on teaching,” he says. “That fear is still there, because of the inability of the government to come and sit down with you to implement that court ruling.”

Of the five historical court cases that involved Douglas Treaty rights — including Olsen’s — each one resulted in victory. And every case presented its own legal challenge.

“It wasn’t as if we sat around, thinking about what all we have to do to win whatever,” says Mandell, the lawyer who represented Olsen and Morris. “In every case, we nuanced what the arguments were going to be, and we built the law — gradually.” 

In the 1980s Mandell worked on the 1987 Saanichton Marina case, around a development company’s intention to dredge and develop a commercial marina in Saanichton Bay that was home to eel grass beds, crabs, salmon and trout. 

The legal team wondered how they could assert the treaty “not as a shield but as a sword,” Mandell says. Rather than defend themselves from persecution, they would now assert their rights proactively, to protect the crab fishery and the Tsawout Nation’s traditional fishing grounds.

Essentially, Saanichton Marina Ltd.’s argument was that the “right to fish as formerly,” as stated in the treaties, meant the company could simply pick up and move the eel grass habitat elsewhere. The fish would still be there to harvest, so what was the problem?

The court agreed with Tsawout’s lawyers that found that a fishery is actually the place where fish are harvested, and the right includes the nation’s capacity and the capacity of a nation to care for it, so they’re not deprived of that right.  

“It’s both the incidental aspect and also the place itself. It’s not the right to put your fish net in the water and pull out a fish. It’s the right to continue to protect and harvest and steward and be reciprocal, inside the place that the fishing is happening,” Mandell says. 

This was a crucial and far-reaching finding, and directly relevant to the fight at Goldstream Park — the concept that nation members not only had the right to fish as formerly, but to protect their harvest. 

It’s been a rallying cry for Olsen ever since.

“My relatives fought for that. And the decision that came out of there was that they not only had the right to hunt and fish as formerly, they have the right to protect what they hunted and fished as formerly,” says Olsen. “That’s why I’m here. I’m protecting what belongs to us, our relatives that come up the stream that feed us.”

However, Mandell says there is a huge difference between winning a case and translating that legal victory into political action.

“I can’t tell you how many times we came home from the Supreme Court of Canada thinking we had died and gone to legal heaven, only to find out nothing much changed on the ground. I think that’s the difference between winning a legal point and actually having the capacity to move that victory into shifting the political landscape,” Mandell says.

Olsen, standing on the side of the Malahat protesting for the protection of Goldstream, embodies that distinction.

Despite decades of court cases and historical agreements which upheld the W̱SÁNEĆ people’s rights not only to their village site but also to their fishing grounds at SELE₭TEȽ, despite three years of weekly protests to highlight these rights, it appeared the government’s $162-million highway improvement plan was poised to go ahead.

That is, until Olsen received a phone call in February this year from some members of the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council to tell him they had received some news.

‘Do what you can’

The province had an announcement to make about the Malahat highway. The widening project was being paused. The leadership council members congratulated him.

In a February news release, the province said additional work was required “to address environmental considerations in this sensitive area of Goldstream Park” and understand the project’s impacts.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s great,’” Olsen says. But he also doubts whether the government will keep its word.

“In the past we’ve had meetings with businesses and government offices and in our longhouses here and come to agreements with them. Then not even a couple of days later, they break those agreements,” he says.

“This could be one of those issues. You know they said they were pausing it, and in their statement, they talk about how they need to better understand the environment and do more research on the environment there, which tells me we were right in thinking that they didn’t really have an environmental plan.”

From the beginning, the province wanted W̱SÁNEĆ members to accept their environmental assessment without question, Olsen says. But he always felt that there was something odd about being asked to accept something without fully agreeing to it. From what nation members could see, the environmental risks were obvious — even from the government’s own assessment report.

The purpose of the environmental assessment was to identify issues, and “some of these considerations were brought to light through that process,” Ministry of Transit and Transportation spokesperson Murray Sinclair stated in an email.

“This does not mean the report was incomplete. The purpose of an environmental assessment is to identify issues, and some of these considerations were brought to light through that process,” Sinclair stated. Given the complexity of the site and the sensitivity of the habitat, addressing those issues will take time, he added.

The ministry is currently conducting a review of crash data in the area as part of an update to its 2012 study of the Highway 1 Malahat corridor.

What about Olsen’s concern that the project is merely on pause, and not actually cancelled?

“It’s possible the project could be revisited in the future. However, there is no timeline or estimate for when that might occur,” stated Sinclair.

This is why, for now, Olsen has decided to keep up his weekly protests.

“We want better decisions made about Goldstream and protecting the watershed especially. It’s about protecting the whole area,” he says. “It’s really important that we recognize where we stand in the whole thing. I’m not going to leave. I think they expected me to leave. We’re still there.”

On-the-ground reporting for this story is made possible with support from Carleton University’s Peter Stursberg Award in Conflict Journalism and Media Studies. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

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Peter Cressey has been visiting the Carmanah and Walbran valleys for decades. Nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the sprawling spider-web of cutblocks and logging roads that mark the island’s interior, these two valleys form one of southern Vancouver Island’s largest remaining intact old-growth ecosystems. They’re home to centuries-old spruce trees, gnarled cedars and plants and animals that live in few other places.

“It’s not just the trees,” Cressey, who volunteers with Friends of Carmanah Walbran, says. “There’s a whole bunch of threatened species, the marbled murrelet, the screech owl, the specklebelly lichen and the dromedary jumping slug. There’s a whole list of very unique species that are facing some serious threats.”In the early 1990s, Cressey was arrested at a logging blockade in the region, part of a campaign that convinced the province to expand what was then called Carmanah Pacific Provincial Park to include parts of the Walbran in 1995.Today, the park is known as Carmanah Walbran. BC Parks describes it as “a luxuriously forested sanctuary that is without a doubt one of the most remarkable wild places on Vancouver Island.” But right now, they also say it’s “inaccessible by vehicle” and that “the day-use areas, campground, and trails are currently unmaintained.”

That’s because it’s blocked by landslides on one side and locked metal gates on the other. BC Parks didn’t provide a timeline for restoring park access. Instead, they directed questions to Tsawak-qin Forestry, the company responsible for both the metal gates and, they say, for clearing the landslides. 

In an emailed statement, Tsawak-qin told The Narwhal that they are “working with government and others to open access to the western, public access point of the park,” but didn’t offer a timeline. They promised to “provide more information when it becomes available.” 

Carmanah Walbran is one of many outdoor recreation areas in B.C. accessed by resource roads. Cressey and others say its ongoing closure raises questions about public access to public lands, and the province’s management of thousands of kilometres of resource roads that connect British Columbians to some of the province’s most spectacular back country regions.

Ministry approves gates to close park to recreational users, citing ‘safety concerns’

When Cressey talks about the logging protests of the 1990s, a period sometimes called the War in the Woods when activists and First Nations fought old-growth logging in Clayoquot Sound and up into the Carmanah Walbran region, there’s a hint of pride in his voice. But he’s also learned a lot since then, and though his passion for protecting old-growth forests remains, his tactics have changed.

Today, Cressey’s with the Friends of Carmanah Walbran, which is focused on protecting ancient forests through education and community building. Much of their work centres on the central Walbran Valley, a stand of old-growth forest just outside the southeastern edge of Carmanah Walbran Park. On a map, it looks like someone took an ice cream scoop to the park boundary. Torrance Coste, associate director of the Wilderness Committee, calls it “the bite.” 

That bite is not part of the park itself. According to Coste, activists remember it was left out at the request of logging companies. But decades of activism have kept the saws at bay, and the area is currently covered by a provincial old-growth deferral. Within it lies a network of trails and campsites built and maintained by Cressey and the Friends of Carmanah Walbran. Some of these trails, like the Anderson Lake and Marble Canyon trails, cross into the provincial park, while others sit outside the boundary entirely. All of them are maintained by volunteers.

For years, Friends of Carmanah Walbran have used trail maintenance trips and educational gatherings to bring people into the region to advocate for protecting the old-growth forests that still lie outside the park boundary. But this spring, something changed. 

In March, Cressey learned that the province approved Tsawak-qin Forestry’s request to put locked gates on roads east of Carmanah Walbran Park. These gates blocked access to both the bite and the trails from it that cross into the park. 

Cressey reached out to Tsawak-qin to request permission to pass through the gates for a birding event in early July. Initially, he says, the company seemed open to letting the birders through. He even offered to give them the names of everyone participating — a group of birders, artists and scientists. But eventually, Tsawak-qin told him they couldn’t allow the group through the gates. Cressey says they told him it was due to “public and worker safety issues.”Tsawak-qin didn’t directly address questions about the birders, but noted in an emailed statement to The Narwhal that the gates were put in place due to “several incidents [that] have occurred recently in the Walbran area that endangered people and caused damage to property,” citing a burnt bridge deck, damaged bridge cables and blocked drainage structures.

This “created unsafe road conditions,” Tsawak-qin Forestry said. “In addition, there is evidence of members of the public entering active work sites,” it added, though they did not give specific examples. 

There was a blockade in the Walbran between August and December 2025, which led to 13 arrests. The company didn’t reference this blockade directly, but Cressey thinks that it, and the continued presence of a nearby protest encampment, contributed to the company wanting to shut down access. 

On July 16, social media accounts from this camp posted a video of two people locked to one of the Tsawak-qin gates. In the video, one masked figure explained the action as a response to the company cutting off public access to “public land.”

British Columbia’s Forest and Range Practices Act allows resource companies to request permission to install and lock gates to prevent public access on back country resource roads. According to the province, these approvals are granted when “use of the road would likely endanger property, public health or public safety.” 

In the case of the eastern Carmanah Walbran gates, Coste says it’s unclear what the justification is, or what threat a birding event might pose to property or safety.

He worries that approvals for these kinds of gates have been increasing since the Fairy Creek blockades where more than 1,100 people were arrested opposing old-growth logging in the Fairy Creek watershed near Port Renfrew in 2020 and 2021.

When asked whether this was true, the Ministry of Forests declined to comment, explaining that finding the answer was “a complex ask during the middle of field season when resources for data gathering are limited.”

Coste thinks logging companies could be trying to solve that problem by “closing access to vast swaths of the island [and] the province to any and all other user groups.” Tsawak-qin did not comment when asked about any direct connections between logging protests and their request to gate these roads. 

“If logging companies have a problem with blockaders, that’s a political issue that they should take to the province, not deal with it with gates out on the back roads,” Coste says. “If companies can’t log without fear of people getting in the way of their operations, they have a social licence problem.”

Why aren’t public land access groups talking about the Carmanah Walbran?

For Cressey, part of the problem is that BC Parks isn’t clear about what qualifies as access points to Carmanah Walbran. The park’s website lists directions to access the park’s western side and the Ministry of Environment and Parks says that “there are no developed BC Parks facilities or designated BC Parks trails within the [eastern] portion of the park.” But the Ministry of Forests recommended park access routes on both the eastern and western sides of the park, adding that the public could still pass the eastern gates on foot.

For Cressey, using the western side of the park might have been the easiest solution to his locked gate problem. But the road on that side, called Rosander Main, was also blocked, not by gates, but by landslides that had come down in the fall of 2025. 

Neither BC Parks nor the Ministry of Forests have plans to clear the landslides. The responsibility for clearing that road, they say, lies with the logging companies that use it. 

Coste says that’s a problem, calling it “anti-democratic” that a private company can control public access to the park. “It’s a huge concern that access to an iconic provincial park like Carmanah depends on whether or not a private company is logging next to the park.”

As short-term closures at Joffre Lakes Park near Pemberton and Botanical Beach, a popular section of Juan de Fuca Park on Vancouver Island, both of which have instated reconnection periods for rights-holding First Nations members, have prompted an outcry, Coste says it’s notable the ongoing access issues at Carmanah Walbran Park haven’t gotten more attention.

“[Carmanah Walbran] has been closed for 10 times longer than Joffre Lakes will be closed this year,” Coste says. “And not a peep from the folks that are up in arms about the Joffre closure.” 

Among the groups concerned about the Joffre Lakes closures is the Public Land Use Society, an organization whose directors have close ties to the mining and mineral exploration industries, which was founded in 2025 to advocate for public land access. Its former director Caroline Elliott, who joined the society in May 2025 and left in January to run as a leadership candidate for the BC Conservative Party, has been a leading voice in opposing British Columbia’s decision to work with the Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua Nations on annual, short-term closures at Joffre Lakes, calling them an “ancestry-based park closure.” 

When The Narwhal reached out to the Public Land Use Society, its executive director, Warren Mirko, wasn’t aware that Carmanah Walbran Park was closed. 

“[The Public Land Use Society] has not yet heard from the public regarding this site and was unaware of the access issues,” Mirko wrote in an email. But while he agreed it was a concern, he differentiated it from Joffre Lakes, describing the latter as “a deliberate government-supported closure of a popular provincial park.”For Coste, the lack of attention to the Carmanah Walbran issue “underscores that it’s not really about access to the land and access to provincial protected areas” for groups like Mirko’s, but about opposing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which was passed with unanimous consent in B.C. in 2019 but has since become a locus of controversy. In his emailed statement, Mirko wrote that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and “other issues surrounding government’s reconciliation initiatives and agreements are central matters in respect of public access and provincial governance over Crown land.”

Access to parks is a province-wide problem in B.C.

While Mirko and Coste don’t agree on much when it comes to reconciliation and parks, both have concerns about how British Columbia manages resource roads. While Coste is worried about the road leading to Carmanah Walbran, Mirko is focused on an access road to the Incomappleux Valley near Revelstoke in the B.C. Interior. In June, his organization joined the Quad Riders Association of British Columbia in questioning the province’s decision to decommission the Incomappleux Forest Service Road. 

According to the province, the deactivation is due to road damage and plans to establish a conservancy, a type of park in which human access and natural resource development is limited to preserve ecological, recreational or cultural values, in the upper valley. But Mirko and the Quad Riders argue this closure would unfairly cut off property and trail access, questioning the province’s “authority to proceed” in a press release.The province outlined its authority in a document released in April 2025, citing the Forest and Range Practices Act — the same rationale used to approve the gates east of Carmanah Walbran Park. 

Issues with resource roads are nothing new for Louise Pedersen, executive director of the Outdoor Recreation Council of British Columbia.

“Outdoor recreation in British Columbia has co-evolved with forestry and other types of resource extraction,” Pedersen says. “So a lot of our access uses resource roads.” 

But those roads, Pedersen explains, aren’t managed for recreation. When the logging or mining operations pull out, they decommission the roads and leave them unmaintained, often cutting off access to recreation areas in Crown lands. And with an estimated more than 600,000 kilometres of resource roads criss-crossing the province, it’s a big deal — one that Pedersen says is getting worse. 

“In the last decades, things really have been accelerating,” she says. “With these big climate and weather events that we’ve been having, we are seeing a lot more kinds of disastrous outcomes like flooding and wildfires closing down these resource roads.” On top of that, Pedersen says, there are increasing numbers of “logging companies getting out of areas where they’ve been operating for a long time,” leaving roads unmaintained. In some places this is simply the result of logging operations finishing. In others, it’s being blamed on downturns in the forestry sector and sawmill closures. But whatever the reason, when the companies pull out, the roads revert to the care of the province. 

“When not being actively used for industrial purpose[s] the roads are classified as a ‘wilderness road’ and only maintained to address environmental concerns,” a statement from the Ministry of Forests explained. 

The problem, Pedersen explains, is “the province is not required to facilitate access or maintain these resource roads to support outdoor recreation.” So when you get a case like Carmanah Walbran, where the road was blocked by landslides, and no logging companies are working beyond them, no one is obligated to clear them.

It’s something she hopes British Columbia’s new outdoor recreation strategy will change. Launched in May, the province plans to create “a modernized framework for high-value recreation access and resource roads.”Pedersen isn’t sure yet what that means. But while she’s waiting, the Outdoor Recreation Council has launched a survey to gather information about priority roads where access to trailheads, campsites and parks is currently cut-off or at risk. 

“I’m sure we’ll find that there are going to be many thousands of kilometres that are of very limited interest, but there are some that will just kind of float to the top as priority resource roads,” she says. 

In the meantime, the Carmanah and Walbran valleys remain nearly inaccessible to the public. Coste worries about the long-term implications of cutting off public access to parks, especially ones with threatened ecosystems.  

“When people can’t visit these forests, can’t walk through them and see what’s at stake for themselves, it becomes much easier for old-growth logging to continue out of public view,” Coste says. “Access is a critical part of building public understanding and support for protecting what little remains.”

Updated on July 29, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the connections between the directors of the Public Land Use Society and the mining and mineral exploration industries. Additionally, Caroline Elliott was previously referred to as a “first slate” director of the society, but joined nearly three months after its incorporation in March 2025.

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Summary

• Temperatures in Vancouver could climb as high as 29 C this weekend, the first heat wave of the year.
• Water restrictions are in effect, only three of the city’s five outdoor pools are open and outdoor water sampling at many popular beaches has been suspended due to strikes.
• This summer is projected to be one of the hottest on record, raising questions about the readiness of Vancouver to protect its citizens from extreme heat.

This weekend, Vancouverites will swelter under the first heat wave of the year, with a sunny forecast of up to 29 C on Saturday and Sunday. (Listen up, the rest of Canada: it’s not a dry heat!) It’s ideal weather for swimming outdoors or taking your kids to a wading pool — or it would be, if that were an option.

Only three of the city’s five outdoor pools — Second Beach, Hillcrest and New Brighton — will be open. The city’s 11 wading pools, meanwhile, are suspended all summer due to Stage 3 water restrictions across the city, which are expected to last until October. Perhaps you think this is no big deal — after all, the Pacific is right there. But those looking to cool down in the ocean will be taking their chances, as water quality tests at many of the city’s most popular beaches have been suspended due to job action, and those that have been tested lately are showing higher-than-expected E. coli counts. 

It’s a bleak start to the summer, which is expected to be one of the hottest on record, according to Environment Canada.

Complaints about Vancouver’s lack of outdoor pools aren’t new: a decade ago, the Vancouver Sun pointed out the city has fewer pools than any other major city in Canada. (On their city websites, Montreal lists 62; Toronto has 58.) We’re on par with Saskatoon — which operates far more wading pools and splash pads, despite being a much smaller city. But most people frame this as a recreation problem, not a public health issue. 

A recent study in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management found in New York City, more people visit outdoor pools on hot days. No surprise. But the association was strongest in low-income neighbourhoods where many residents have few other options for cooling down. What’s more, the authors found, public pool availability during extreme summer temperatures can reduce heat-related emergency calls by 15 to 29 per cent. 

Five years ago, a heat dome caused 619 deaths in B.C., the deadliest weather event in Canadian history. June 2021 was a wake-up call about the risks posed by climate change, and the urgent need for cities to adapt to extreme heat events. But looking for a place to get wet in Vancouver reveals an alarming reality: we’re not ready for the summer ahead — and we’re definitely not prepared for the future. 

How to cope with heat

Outdoor water recreation is not the only way to cope with heat waves, but it is an important one, especially for people who don’t live in spaces that can be easily cooled. The BC Coroners Service reported 98 per cent of deaths during the 2021 heat dome happened indoors, and most of those who died lacked air conditioning or fans. 

A 2023 report from the federal government noted that B.C. has the fewest number of households with air conditioning — just 32 per cent, compared to 61 per cent nationally. Among low-income households, that figure drops to 17 per cent. Until just a few days ago, landlords could still prohibit renters from installing portable air conditioners without penalty.

“The number of people vulnerable to an extreme heat event is expected to grow as census predictions show a steadily rising elderly population and an increasing share of one-person households,” the report noted. 

But earlier this year, the City of Vancouver discontinued its four-year-old cool kit program, which distributed water bottles, spray bottles, cooling gel packs and other useful things for those that needed them. Instead, the city has seemingly replaced this program with a list of tips for cooling down in the heat. Among the places they advise going to are the still-closed swimming and wading pools. 

As temperatures have risen in recent decades, Vancouver has lost pools: since 1993, four outdoor swimming pools have been decommissioned while adding just one, at Hillcrest Aquatic Centre. Kitsilano Pool, the city’s most popular outdoor pool, is nearing the end of its life and had its season shortened the last two summers due to repairs.

And last October, the city passed a budget cutting $120 million from various departments to spare homeowners a property tax increase. The Vancouver Park Board noted this would mean a $15 million cut to parks. It’s a cut that doesn’t bode well for the ability to improve water amenities in the summer.

Tightened budgets mean we also can’t extend pool operating hours or seasons, which also speak to an antiquated definition of summer that has yet to catch up with our new reality. Wading pools weren’t set to open for another few weeks — even before water restrictions put them on hold altogether. Three of the city’s five outdoor pools close on Labour Day. But high temperatures often persist well beyond that; last September was the hottest on record in Vancouver history. 

A representative for the city told The Narwhal that spray parks — which operate on demand — are more aligned with the city’s water conservation goals than wading pools, which must be filled and drained each day to comply with public health guidelines. A representative from the city told The Narwhal that one new spray park is being designed, while the renewal of another is scheduled to begin this fall. In addition, they wrote “funding is being sought for one or two new spray parks” in the forthcoming capital plan. Increases in spending on wading pools and spray parks since 2019, the city wrote, “reflects a shift toward more extensive repairs and renewals driven by the age and condition of existing infrastructure, as well as available funding.”

Of course, there are Vancouver’s many beaches. They’re free, numerous and open all year — but not always safe to enjoy. Last July, eight beaches were deemed unsafe due to E. coli levels. Even when they are open, they’re not accessible for everyone — like young children, those with mobility issues or anyone else who lives too far to drop by on a hot day — and a climate-resilient city should have cooling infrastructure in every neighbourhood, rather than expecting all its citizens to trek to the beach. 

Pools and outdoor water infrastructure aren’t things that are nice to have. They’re climate adaptations, even if “thermal respite,” or relief from extreme temperatures, is mentioned last among the reasons for pool use in Vancouver’s 2019 aquatic strategy. 

As in 2021, those most at risk from extreme heat this summer are the city’s most vulnerable: low-income and unhoused citizens, as well as the youngest and oldest among us. If only there were more places for them to escape the heat.

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Canada’s vast landscape, which boasts 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, a quarter of global wetlands and 28 per cent of its boreal forests, is critical to its economy. Natural resource industries — forests, farms, fisheries, mining and oil and gas — together make up approximately seven per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. 

Tension exists between expanding these industrialized sectors and protecting the ecosystems on which they depend. In Manitoba, some worry protecting the Seal River Watershed, which spans more than 50,000 square kilometres in the province’s north, will hinder opportunities in mineral resources and hydro; to the east, critical mineral mining ambitions in Ontario’s Ring of Fire clash with the protection of the Hudson and James Bay Lowlands, the second-largest carbon sink on earth; and in B.C., Coastal First Nations have protested that lifting the large tanker ban through their waters will endanger the protected Great Bear Rainforest.

These tensions make it easy to frame nature as the antithesis of economic activity, if it’s always put in opposition to projects that are described as growing Canada’s wealth, sovereignty and security. But a growing chorus of economic and policy leaders, alongside conservation groups, are making the case for nature to be seen as a critical financial asset — not a barrier, but another opportunity for economic growth. 

The federal government’s vision for conservation, laid out in its 2026 nature strategy, is of a nation that “protects, restores, and values nature as a foundation of our economy, sovereignty, and well-being.” 

One of the pillars to achieving that vision is “valuing nature and mobilizing capital,” according to the strategy. It estimated the value of “ecosystem services” — the direct and indirect contributions of nature to well-being and quality of life — to be $3.6 trillion, or “more than double our 2018 GDP.” In other words, the government is looking to spur more private sector investment in conservation by showing businesses how valuable nature is to their bottom lines.

The numbers show conservation is comparable with many of Canada’s major industries. While it may not produce the same scale of economic value as major resource extraction sectors like oil and gas — which does not approach the value of sectors like health care or education — it is a significant contributor to Canada’s economy. And the return on investment is high: a recent analysis by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) found every dollar spent on protected areas generated more than $3.50 in visitor spending, helping fuel local economies and generate government revenues. 

Like the oil and gas sector, Canada can choose to invest in the potential of conservation and champion it as a cornerstone of our country’s economic future. And as Canadians grapple with the increasingly severe impacts of the climate crisis, the role of intact ecosystems becomes even more valuable. 

These nine charts capture some of the value of Canada’s natural environments, and the economic potential of conservation.

Economic contributions from protected areas — by province

Gross domestic product (GDP) contributions of selected Canadian industries

How are the industries defined?+

Statistics Canada tracks economic activity indicators for a wide range of sectors using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), which assigns a code to specific activities and sectors. Industries and government agencies tally these statistics in different ways to determine overall sector impacts. 

This analysis uses Statistics Canada’s data, and defines each industry as follows:

Agriculture: Crop and animal production (farming), related support activities and food manufacturing, including mills, bakeries, meat and dairy production.

Fisheries: Aquaculture, fishing, hunting and trapping and seafood product preparation.

Forestry: Forestry and logging, related support activities, wood and paper product manufacturing. 

Mining: Mineral mining (ore, non-metals, potash) and quarrying activities, including related support. Also includes mineral product manufacturing and metal manufacturing. 

Oil and gas: Oil and gas extraction and related support activities, petroleum and coal product manufacturing, natural gas distribution and pipelines.

Transportation: Air, rail, water, truck and transit and ground transportation (including public transit and taxis). 

Utilities: Electric power generation, transmission and distribution and water and sewage systems.

Jobs and compensation

More than 150,000 people work in protected and conserved areas — not far behind the oil and gas and forestry sectors. As the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society points out, many of these jobs are in Indigenous, rural and remote communities, where unemployment rates are high compared to urban areas. In parts of Canada where other economic opportunities are scarce, protected and conserved areas offer the opportunity to create long-term stable employment. 

Conservation provides value, but how are conservation workers valued? Compensation for the approximately 150,000 Canadians who work in protected areas is low, compared to other sectors; on average, an oil and gas worker makes nearly four times as much annually. 

Tax revenues and subsidies

Governments collected more than $1.4 billion in tax revenues from parks and protected areas in 2024, most of which stemmed from visitor spending, according to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s analysis. That’s comparable to government tax revenues from the forestry industry, at $1.2 billion. Major resource industries like forestry and oil and gas also create government revenue through royalties and other fees. 

But for many of these industries, government revenues can be offset by tax breaks, grants and other subsidies.

Governments invested $2.3 billion in parks and protected spaces in 2024, generating $0.62 in revenue for every dollar invested. By comparison, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the federal government spent $3.17 billion USD (or $4.34 billion CAD) on fossil fuel subsidies — almost $1 billion USD more than the United States spent on subsidies, despite their industry’s far greater output. That number is likely an underestimate, as a lack of clear data and complex incentive structures make it difficult to track how much governments give out to industry. 

Environmental Defence, which releases an annual report tracking Canadian fossil fuel subsidies, estimates the government doled out more than $30 billion in subsidies and financing to fossil fuel companies in 2024. Most of that funding came in the form of a $20-billion loan for the Trans Mountain Expansion project. 

Carbon storage

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society estimated the carbon stocks stored in Canada’s existing protected areas by comparing protected area boundaries to data showing the carbon concentration in soil, vegetated areas and seabed sediments. 

It found a total 51.4 gigatons of carbon stored in the country’s protected forests, peatlands, wetlands, soil and seabeds. 

If this carbon was all emitted as carbon dioxide, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society estimates, it would equate to 188.4 gigatons of emissions. 

By protecting these regions from industrial disturbances like mining, logging or draining, that carbon stays in the ground. If released, that carbon comes at a cost. 

Canada’s industrial carbon price, which charges businesses for emissions that exceed a predetermined limit, is $110 per tonne as of 2026. A carbon credit — doled out for activities that remove or avoid carbon emissions — is worth the same.

At that price, the carbon stored in Canada’s protected areas is worth $20.7 trillion. 

That’s about 10 times the value of Canada’s global mining assets ($352.6 billion), global energy assets ($827 billion) and domestic farm sector assets ($992.4 billion) combined.

Annual carbon capture

Protected and conserved areas remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, a process known as “carbon capture.” Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park, for example, removed an average of 108,328 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere between 1990 and 2020. This is significantly less than Shell’s Quest carbon capture and storage project, but it’s also just one of hundreds of parks and protected areas across Canada.

Most parks, like the ones included in this chart, are sequestering carbon each year. However, when parks or protected areas are hit by wildfires, they can become carbon emitters.

– With files from Michelle Cyca

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The Ontario government is moving ahead with plans to transfer management of 60 per cent of Wasaga Beach from the province to the town, despite receiving feedback from thousands of Ontarians decrying the proposal as potentially endangering sensitive piping plover habitat and affecting beach access. 

The Doug Ford government received 14,233 comments over a 30-day period last summer, about 98 per cent of which were in opposition to the proposal. Many expressed concerns that erasing provincial protection could mean the loss of sand dunes in favour of hotels, condos and other beachfront development.

“We did not consider any changes to the proposal based on the feedback received, given the Town of Wasaga Beach’s commitments to keeping the beach public, not building on the beach and protecting environmentally sensitive dunes,” the government said in its decision.

Under Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights, the government is required to post moves with environmental or energy implications to the publicly accessible Environmental Registry of Ontario to allow for widespread feedback from industry, experts and residents. (The Ford government has, though, exempted several projects and types of notices from the registry, such as the Ontario Place redevelopment and permits to harm at-risk species, under Bill 5.)

Last June, the Ford government posted its decision to amend the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, the legislation which created more than 340 parks across Ontario. The amendment would permit the transfer of 60 hectares, or three per cent, of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, which protects the world’s longest freshwater beach and surrounding natural areas, to the town’s management to help boost tourism and the local economy. 

The transfer includes more than half, or 60 per cent, of the beachfront, which contains all the sand dunes and vegetation that serve as nesting area for the piping plover.

Among the roughly two per cent of respondents that supported the move for the sake of economic development and revitalization, there was also a push for “continued environmental management and continued public access.”

Most of the comments on the registry posting highlighted the consequences of losing this beach environment, or even threatening it with increased development. 

“Once this precedent is set, we risk irreversible environmental degradation, reduced public access and the commercialization of what should remain a protected, public space for generations to come,” one local resident wrote. “Tourism and environmental stewardship are not mutually exclusive, and development must not come at the cost of conservation.” 

“Public land — especially waterfront property as ecologically and recreationally important as Wasaga Beach — should remain in public hands and under provincial protection,” another wrote.  

None of this swayed the province. The amendments to enable the transfer were passed in Ontario’s 2025 budget, released last fall. With the recent decision, the government will now advance the transfer to the town.

This is not the first time the Ford government has disregarded feedback through the Environmental Registry of Ontario. The Auditor General of Ontario has repeatedly called out this government for failing to adhere to its own laws — at times “deliberately” — that require it to meaningfully consult the public through the registry.

In late 2022, for example, the government received more than 30,000 comments about its plans to remove 7,400 acres of land from the protected Greenbelt. In spite of this, “no changes were made to the proposal as a result of public consultation,” the government’s posting on the registry read.

In choosing not to consider any changes based on public feedback, the government’s decision said the lands removed from provincial protection in Wasaga Beach “will continue to be subject to Ontario’s species protection and environmental laws.”

However, shortly before announcing this transfer, the Ford government weakened species protections through its controversial Bill 5, as well as exempting certain postings from the environmental registry. The provincial parks legislation was the last law standing to protect plover habitat in Wasaga Beach.

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Canadian outdoor guides, whose lives are dedicated to getting people out in nature, feel the impacts of climate change acutely. It makes sense: Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average — three times in the North. 

Melting ice, unpredictable weather, wildfires and more make it challenging for guides to keep people safe, whether they’re taking clients rock climbing, skiing, scaling frozen waterfalls or performing search and rescue operations.

The changing environment can also create an emotional tug-of-war for people who have built their lives around the mountains. 

“As guides, it’s an interesting position. We experience the full spectrum of [climate change], from the consequences to the cause, in a really intense way,” mountain guide Dylan Cunningham told The Narwhal. 

“I have almost died from hazards that are largely because of how climate change has affected the mountains. On the other hand, I experience the joy of doing things dramatically bad for our climate on a different level than [most].” 

“People heli-ski for a week, or once in a lifetime. I do it all winter. It’s an amazing job — but there’s an intense conflict with that. Some heli-ski guides are getting to the point where they’re going, ‘This feels hard to justify.’ ”

The Narwhal spoke to mountain, ski and alpine guides in British Columbia and Alberta, like Cunningham, about how climate change has altered their reality. Here’s what they said. 

Mike Adolph, Nordegg, Alta. 

Mike Adolph has been guiding professionally since 1995. He’s a certified mountain guide through the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations and technical director for the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, the organization that trains and certifies guides while upholding professional standards. In that time, he’s seen first hand the impacts of climate change. 

“It’s one of those things where it seems to be kind of slapping us in the face. And we adapt, and we’re changing, but what action are we taking? 

I think there’s been more of a conscientious effort amongst guides to look at ways to reduce our footprint. We all look at the mountains and go, ‘Things are changing. We need to do something about this.’ But I think everybody feels like, ‘What can I do about it?’ 

We might not be able to change the course where things are going, but we can slow it down. 

It needs to be part of a bigger movement that everybody’s participating in. We’re not slowing it down to the point where things are ever going to be as they were.

But if everybody does a little bit to reduce our footprint, that’s all steps in the right direction. And I think that’s the best that we can hope for.”

Ian Welsted, Golden, B.C.

Alpine guide Ian Welsted started guiding professionally six years ago after an accomplished career climbing peaks around the world. As an alpine guide, a certification specific to climbing year-round in the mountains, Welsted specializes in trips up prominent peaks, like Mount Robson, the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. 

“Climbing had a big impact on my life. I grew up in a conservative farming town in Manitoba, and wasn’t happy there. [When] I discovered climbing, it made me come out of my shell.

That’s partly why I got into guiding. I wanted to show other people how climbing can bring something constructive to your life. 

If people live in the city and have no tie to the natural world, then when they’re sold this weird lie that [climate change doesn’t matter] — if you’ve literally never experienced the natural world, then you probably don’t have any basis to make any kind of value judgment. 

It’s not a magic pill. I’m going to take someone ice climbing and they’re suddenly going to buy an electric car, or lobby against opening the [Arctic] National Wildlife Refuge. But marginally — you never know.”

Jordy Shepherd, Canmore, Alta.

Jordy Shepherd has been guiding and performing search and rescue in Western Canada for more than 25 years. Shepherd became an internationally certified mountain guide in 2000. Among many other hats, Shepherd guides professionally, hosts a podcast about mountain safety and volunteers with Columbia Valley Search and Rescue.  

“These glaciers are our freshwater reserves. We’re using our reserves. You can’t just spend, spend, spend your savings. You’ve got to make back the buffer or you run out.

Time is of the essence, and anyone who has expertise and experience to pass on needs to.

As ice recedes, there are all these unstable boulder fields — dirt and sand that haven’t seen the light of day in 10,000 years. Support is being taken away.

I’m finding I have to be more open to making the obvious decision, which is the tougher decision, to not go certain places. Just carve it off the menu.

I think about [the impact on the next generation of guides] all the time. 

People raring to go, looking to make their mark. With the way things are changing, it’s hard to predict how that is going to go for them when trade routes [commonly guided trips] are not accessible.

There’s certain stuff that you want to have in your repertoire for the ability to take people to. If you can’t take them there, it’s a big loss.”

Christian Schlumpf, Golden, B.C.

Christian Schlumpf began guiding in 2016 and became an internationally certified mountain guide in 2024. Before guiding, Schlumpf pursued engineering physics and worked on solar installations in Switzerland, where he fell in love with the mountains. During the winter, Schlumpf’s work is a mix of backcountry ski guiding, around Golden and internationally, and in the summer he guides rock climbing out of Squamish, B.C.

“For someone who’s a bit younger, like myself, [climate change] has always been a thing. 

I didn’t really think too much about [it]. I just wanted to be in the mountains. I wanted to do this as a profession. 

I don’t feel too nervous about it at this point. It’s just something to manage.

The important part of guiding is how you communicate that. Just getting to a summit is not necessarily the goal of a day in the mountains.  

If anything, I think it’s become more accepted to not put pressure on yourself. 

We’re more accepting of deciding to turn around for whatever reason it may be. Because I think we also realize that things are changing, and things are more unpredictable than they were in the past, and we don’t always have the answers that we think.”

Dylan Cunningham, Golden, B.C.

Dylan Cunningham started guiding in 2015 and became an internationally certified mountain guide in 2022. Cunningham splits his time between heli-ski guiding in B.C., where clients ski from remote locations accessed via helicopter, and guiding internationally and supporting Guardians of the Ice, a non-profit raising awareness of Western Canada’s melting glaciers.    

“[The mountains] hold a very special place to me in the way they add so much value to my and other people’s lives. 

That we’re having a profound impact on that space is moving for me. But it’s pretty hard to detach myself from thoughts of ‘what are the downstream effects of this?’

That cost is going to be disproportionately borne by people who are vulnerable, not by affluent people [with] social and geographic mobility. 

I try to think of it not as how is [climate change] going to impact my career. But how does this impact future generations?

Sometimes that can tap into something a little bit more powerful than, ‘How much convenience and opulence do you want for yourself?’ ”

Kevin Hjertaas, Banff, Alta.

Ski guide Kevin Hjertaas explored the Canadian Rockies on skis his whole life before he began guiding professionally 12 years ago. Formerly a competitive skier and avalanche controller, Hjertaas is based in Banff National Park and cohosts monthly snowpack discussions sharing ski and avalanche conditions across B.C. and Alberta. 

“It’s hard not to get depressed. You’re walking for hours up this glacier with your thoughts for most of the day. Your nearest partner is 15 metres away, there’s no conversation.

It’s really cool to bring your guests [to snow caves that form at the bottom of glaciers], a magical spot where there’s beautiful ice and you’re underneath it. 

You get there and realize that was only two years ago, but now the glacier is a full 60 metres back, and there is no cave. 

But if [they haven’t] been there before, they’re still awed by it. If you’ve seen it before, it’s so diminished. So if I can just drop my expectation, there are still magical places. 

It’s hard. I try to bite my tongue [when] I want to say, ‘It used to be like this,’ but it happens. I try to get off it quickly. You don’t want to diminish that experience. 

I grew up with the expectation glaciers were receding before we recognized global warming had such a human element to it. As a child, we thought it was part of the natural cycle. The fact it’s so accelerated now — I don’t know how you reconcile that.”

Jasmin Caton, Nelson, B.C.

Before becoming a ski, rock and apprentice alpine guide, Jasmin Caton studied hydrogeology and thought she might become an environmental scientist. 

The lead guide and owner of Valhalla Mountain Touring strives to operate her off-grid ski lodge in B.C.’s Selkirk Mountains with as little environmental impact as possible. But climate change may be plotting against her. 

Most remote ski lodges use helicopters to transport guests. To burn less fossil fuel, Caton offers catskiing, transporting guests by tracked land vehicles called snowcats. From wildfires to drought, Caton has experienced the impacts of climate change first hand. 

“I’m a happy, optimistic person. I guard myself against getting dragged down by this stuff. But it’s hard. It’s really sad. 

[When I hear news like] ‘carbon dioxide levels are higher than scientists were predicting,’ this heaviness sets in.

I think about taking my kids to glaciers, because what are glaciers going to look like when they’re my age? So many of the iconic glaciers in this area will not exist in decades. It’s heavy.

I think it’s just good to be able to say it, and also to find joy in life. Because otherwise, what’s the point? 

I’m flying to Greece to go rock climbing with my family. There are all the hypocritical things we do to keep going and find [joy in] life.

It’s the balance I’ve chosen to strike with my career. Owning a business where I take people into the mountains and they can feel more connected to nature, and using my business as a bit of a soapbox, or supporting environmental activities where I feel like I’m doing something meaningful.”

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Standing on the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Alta., the wind picks up with an icy bite. 

It will be a lot warmer down there, our guide tells me, pointing to a moulin, a hole in the glacier formed by meltwater.

Trusting my rope, I, like the others, lean back and descend 35 metres down until my spiked feet land inside a sculpture of perfect blue ice. 

Every spring and fall since 2022, photographers Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon, with mountain guide Dylan Cunningham, venture to the Columbia Icefield. Their mission is to capture the vast glacial expanse straddling the Alberta and British Columbia border before it’s gone.

“This is the beauty,” Elzinga says. “But this is what we’re potentially going to lose.”

Glaciers in Western Canada are melting faster than ever, and the last four years have been particularly devastating. From 2021 to 2024, glaciers receded twice as fast as in the last decade due to low snow, high temperatures and wildfires darkening glacial ice as ash and soot on the surface absorb heat, according to recent research published in Geophysical Research Letters. 

On our current trajectory, Environment and Climate Change Canada predicts glaciers in the Canadian Rockies are likely to all but vanish by 2100, according to a statement emailed to The Narwhal. The consequences are far-reaching, impacting everything from water security to infrastructure to ecosystems and contributing to sea level rise. 

But below the surface of the Athabasca Glacier, encapsulated in its water-sculpted walls, that’s easy to forget. The ethereal blue seems endless, engulfing our senses and filling our peripheral vision.

It’s inescapable — a feeling Elzinga and Vernon strive to replicate with their photography. 

Vernon made sure everyone touched the ice with their bare hands to experience the smooth texture. 

Capturing the beauty of the Columbia Icefield glaciers 

For three decades, Elzinga and Vernon were in the same social circles in the mountain community of Canmore, Alta. But it wasn’t until 2021, when Vernon got a call from Elzinga asking to collaborate on a glacier project, that the pair got to know each other. It was a natural pairing.

“When we came together there was such a common language,” Vernon says. 

Their goal too, was shared. In a world inundated with images, they want to take photos that grab people’s attention at a scale that’s difficult to ignore. 

“We wanted to have our images so big that if you stood back at this distance,” he says, holding his arm out wide, “it still smacked you in your face, commanded your presence.

That shared vision led to Meltdown — a photography project exhibited in large scale at galleries and museums capturing the beauty of the Columbia Icefield glaciers before they are gone. It’s part of a larger initiative by an educational non-profit called Guardians of the Ice which Elzinga cofounded. The group aims to raise awareness of the consequences of losing Western Canada’s glaciers by marrying art and science.

For Vernon, it’s a bit of a shift from his other life behind the camera on the big screen, where he has a long history as a cinematographer, including documentary films and Academy Award–winning movies. 

Elzinga, meanwhile, is an accomplished alpinist who has spent a lifetime guiding and exploring in the mountains at high altitudes. In 1986, he led an expedition when the first North American woman summitted Mount Everest.

While both Elzinga and Vernon have accomplished much in their careers, they brush it off when we talk. The current mission takes centre stage — they are living and breathing glaciers.

Vernon first became aware of the impact of glacier melt when volunteering with a Calgary-based non-profit focused on water security. His work there took him around the world, to Zambia, Ethiopia and Congo. When Elzinga approached him for Guardians of the Ice, Vernon saw an opportunity to have an impact on water security locally.

“Imagine 50 years from now when we don’t have our glaciers. … Those folks aren’t going to have the water,” Vernon says, pointing to downstream Alberta communities. “That’s our food production.”

Water from glaciers in the Columbia Icefield joins rivers, streams and eventually the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans. As glaciers retreat, declining meltwater supply may impact freshwater availability as early as 2050, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Elzinga, who studied photography in university, dreamt of photographing mountains since the 1980s but had to wait for technology to catch up with his vision. Elzinga and Vernon use a high-resolution camera capable of aerial mapping and space quality imagery to capture the detail and scale of their photography.

The team uses a Phase One camera, a high-resolution camera that allows Elzinga and Vernon to capture the scope of the mountains and glaciers without sacrificing fine details.

Elzinga and Vernon use a technique called photo stacking which combines multiple images to increase the quality of their photos. The technique has been useful for capturing moulins, in particular.

Witnessing glaciers disappear

Before everyone ventures into the moulin, Elzinga and Vernon stand to the side of the opening, looking at their phones. They wait for Cunningham, the mountain guide who supports their work, to text photos to the pair so they can preview the spot and make sure the imagery is what they’re looking for.

Together, Elzinga and Vernon have the mountaineering experience required for the project, but they’re now in their 70s, so they enlisted Cunningham to focus on safety and technical requirements while they focus on the art. 

“We get wrapped up in the minutia of what’s in our eyes,” Elzinga says.

Today we’re also joined by alpine guide and long-time climbing partner of Elzinga’s, Ian Welsted, who volunteered his time to facilitate bringing a reporting team on the shoot. While Elzinga and Vernon take photos, Welsted explores the darker reaches of the moulin.

Behind the camera, Elzinga and Vernon can work together almost wordlessly, an important skill when conditions get rough, they say, like the cold winds and snow when I visit. 

While finding the exact image is a know-it-when-you-see-it scenario, the areas photographed are very intentional. 

A few days after the photoshoot, at Vernon’s home base in Canmore, Alta., he unfolds a map with mountain peaks marked one through 12, the starting point four years ago, when the duo was planning where to photograph. 

The mountains flanking the icefields are known as the “guardians of the ice,” he says, the origin of the non-profit’s name.“Now all that glacier is gone,” Vernon says, pointing to different spots on the map. He points to another area — “gone.” And another, gone.

 Features the photographers planned to capture had vanished or receded remarkably year over year, like the Columbia Glacier, which they estimate to have receded 100 metres from one photograph to the next.

The art of changing people’s minds

While Cunningham has always felt a responsibility toward the environment, working with Elzinga has had a “profound” impact on his outlook, he says. 

When Cunningham gets cynical about climate change, Elzinga’s optimism has the power to pull him back.

“You can’t think that way,” Elzinga will tell him. “We can solve this, we’re making a difference, and we’re going to keep pushing.” 

Giving up isn’t an option for Elzinga.

“It’s really easy to look at this stuff and be overwhelmed by it,” he says. “My attitude is, well, at least you’ve got to try and do something.” 

The non-profit supplies Alberta Tomorrow, a free educational platform, with their materials from the icefields, and plans to expand to the university level as well as experiment with other mediums, like virtual reality. 

Elzinga hopes that awareness will then ripple through every aspect of people’s lives, including the ballot box. “It’s at government levels that you can get policy change,” he says. 

The climate crisis is like a virus, Elzinga says. Even if people are aware of it, they can’t really see it. And as the urgency increases rapidly, maybe art can help show people what’s at stake. 

Among the photographs displayed in the Columbia Icefield Glacier Discovery Centre, where Meltdown is exhibited across from the Athabasca Glacier from May to September until 2027, a wall titled “no action too small” encourages visitors to be mindful of their environmental impact through pledging to take small actions such as eating less meat or divesting from fossil fuel. 

Not everybody who sees the images will make choices for the planet, but some might, and for Vernon and Elzinga, that’s what counts. 

“Sometimes people say, ‘Well, what I do is not going to make a big difference,’ ” Elzinga says. His comeback is to flip the concept of a drop in the bucket on its head. 

“A lot of raindrops go into a rain barrel and then eventually that rain barrel is overflowing.”

As he sees it, if 75,000 people see the images at the gallery, not everybody will make a change — but the percentage of them that do, he says, will “go out and within their circle, they can make a difference.”

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We all eat and drink. And some time later, the excess must come out the other end. But where do you “go” in Toronto, especially if you’re in the city’s parks? 

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the lack of public washrooms in the city. Cafés and libraries were closed and so were their washrooms. More businesses put up door or window signs stating their washrooms are for customers only. When nature called the options for excreta depended on sex. For women it usually meant holding it. Men had it easier due to their plumbing — with a bush or the side of a building offering enough cover. 

“Clean washrooms make parks accessible and inviting for immigrants,” my colleague at University of Toronto, Ambika Tenneti, said. Her PhD research looked at strategies to engage newcomers in urban forests. In other words: how to increase the connections between people and nature for new Canadians. “In my focus groups the women said we need more washrooms for females. The lines are too long. In multi-generational families, the women often have to take the children or the elders to the washrooms. Men don’t have to do that. There is never a lineup for the men’s toilets. Clean washrooms also make the parks feel safe for immigrants.”

Public washrooms in the city’s parks are maintained by Toronto’s Parks and Recreation division. Some of the washrooms are seasonal, opening from spring to fall each year. Some of the washrooms are more than 50 years old, are not winterized and thus closed to prevent frost damage to pipes and wiring. Where are people supposed to “go” in the winter when the bladder or the belly needs relief?

The lack of public washrooms was emphasized in a report by Toronto Public Space Committee. This volunteer collective of people are “passionate about public space,” including public washrooms. In 2021 the group published “Gotta Go TO: A Public Washroom Strategy for Toronto.” The report called for the city to invest in public washrooms, not just for health and hygiene reasons but as a basic civic service. 

The same year the city launched the Park Washroom Enhancement Program, with the goal of upgrading or rebuilding 125 park washrooms over a decade. This work is now underway, but it can’t come soon enough — or in enough places. The new washrooms will be open year-round. What a relief it will be for park users. “Washrooms are one of the top five priorities when planning a hike,” said Laura Strachan, the board chair of Let’s Hike T.O., a “hiking community in Toronto open to everyone with a focus on people of colour, newcomers and young adults.” 

“We could do longer hikes and have more events in the parks all year if there were open washrooms,” Strachan said. “Now we have to limit our hikes to five kilometres. We could increase it to 12 kilometres or more if there were washrooms. You can tell where the good spots are for washrooms in the parks because you see the used toilet paper or Kleenex there. It’s gross.”

Public washrooms in Toronto have always been a delicate subject. Toronto the Good — an old moniker from when the city was stuffy, monochromatic and presumably godly — didn’t plan for where to expel the excreta. The first public washroom opened in the city in 1896. It was for men only. Women had to fight to get a public washroom. There was a brief interest in building more public washrooms but this ended in the 1920s, thanks to NIMBYism — or “not in my backyard” enthusiasts — from businesses and residents, and lack of interest from politicians. 

Park People, a non-profit agency that advocates for public parks in Canada, noted in its 2023 Canadian City Park Report that public washrooms were the top amenity its survey respondents said they would like to see more of in parks.

In Toronto, Park People partnered with the city to launch the InTO the Ravines program in 2020. This aims to get more under-served communities to know, enjoy and therefore protect the ravines — the wondrous necklace of green river valleys in the city. Whether it’s picnics for a birthday party, barbecues with friends or guided winter walks along the nature trails, it is easier for community groups to like and appreciate the ravines when the public washrooms are open, clean and safe.

“You have to strategize before you even go out to the park. Don’t drink a lot before you go. When organizing events, it becomes even more complex as the group of people literally have nowhere to ‘go,’ ” said Minaz Asani-Kanji, a co-founder of Good Futures Collective, a consulting group that specializes in environmental and community-led research.

In 2012, Canada signed a UN agreement that affirmed access to washrooms was a basic human right. The UN has since clarified that the right applies in public spaces including parks. The City of Toronto is doing a series of public consultations to review its Parkland Strategy — the long-term planning process for the city’s parks. The review includes community engagement sessions to gather feedback from various users of the parks. I went to one held by Black Environmental Initiative, a non-profit agency.

“I am not surprised that toilets came up in the conversations,” Muzamil Gadain, the project leader at Black Environmental Initiative, said. “It’s one of the most pressing issues that people have with the parks and their facilities.”

Washrooms need to be functional, but the design does not have to be Toronto’s usual brand — utilitarian and about as graceful as a pig on ice skates. Thankfully, the city seems to be coming around to this. Toronto Public Space Committee recently picked three top designs in its TO the Loo!: Toronto Toilet Design Challenge. The designs ranged from the elegant to pop-art inspired. Public washrooms in parks can be both useful and beautiful. Most importantly they must be open, year-round.

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Last week, a member of Ontario’s Doug Ford government touted the importance of access to nature to his colleagues. 

Andrew Dowie, MPP for Windsor-Tecumseh, is spearheading Bill 26, new legislation that would amend the provincial parks law to include two new classes of parks: urban and adventure. 

The primary purpose is to facilitate the creation of a new provincial park east of Toronto in Uxbridge by connecting Greenbelt lands with rehabilitated private quarries. The legislation will also aim to create other urban and adventure parks like it. 

The bill is currently being reviewed by a government committee, which heard from members of the public this week. 

Dowie, who serves as the parliamentary assistant to the minister of the environment, conservation and parks, told his colleagues the bill codifies the idea that a growing Ontario needs different kinds of natural spaces. 

“Urban parks make nature accessible where Ontarians now live in growing towns, expanding cities and suburban communities,” he told the committee on Nov. 17. “Urban parks don’t replace traditional provincial parks. They simply acknowledge that in a province of 15 million people, proximity matters.” 

And in truth, natural spaces are getting farther and farther away from urban centres, as those centres sprawl farther and farther out.

Adventure parks, he said, “bring people into nature in different ways,” by encouraging outdoor activities like cycling, paddling, climbing and backcountry trekking, along with newer ventures like pickleball and Pokémon GO. These kinds of parks “give communities new ways to connect people with natural spaces and truly build that appreciation for our biodiversity and for ecological protection,” he said. 

On paper, it makes sense. Over the last few decades, Ontario has rapidly grown, having doubled in population since 1971. That growth has increased the need for and stress on natural spaces, which offer respite for humans and wildlife in so many ways: preserving natural areas lowers stress levels for those who visit them, reduces pollution, protects biodiversity, mitigates flood risk and more. 

But the proposal also comes from a government that continues to expend waterfronts and natural spaces in favour of development and industry. There’s a laundry list of government actions that have put parks and conservation spaces under threat in recent years — everything from the Greenbelt scandal to a bevy of changes to conservation authorities that manage watersheds and public green spaces in Ontario.

The Ford government is removing land from parks to make room for development

Bill 26 is the Ford government’s second amendment to the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act in several days, picking away at the permanent protection of the lands it governs. In addition to now including two new kinds of parks, the act is also being changed to remove lands from three existing provincial parks to make room for tourism and a highway. 

The government is proposing to remove slivers of land from Grundy Lake and French River provincial parks in northern Ontario to facilitate the widening of Highway 69. It’s also planning to remove land from Wasaga Beach Provincial Park — more than 60 per cent of which is beachfront that also serves as nesting area for endangered piping plovers — and give it to the town to help boost the local economy with tourism-specific development. The bill carrying this change is being put to a final vote this week.

The Ford government insists these changes are specific in their scope and limited in their impact because, as Dowie said, the Progressive Conservatives value nature — at least, sometimes.

Around the same time Bill 26 was tabled, the Ford government also put forward a proposal to amalgamate 36 conservation authorities — agencies unique to Ontario that manage watersheds and reduce the risk of flooding — to seven, leaving unclear the state of the thousands of acres of land these unique agencies manage to minimize flood risk and boost access to nature. Though how this will all play out remains very unclear, there is a strong precedent for Ford meddling with the authorities’ power. In recent years, conservation authorities have been told to audit their lands to find surplus areas for potential development and told the environment minister can overrule their decisions to not allow development permits (or allow them, but that’s not really on brand. Remember minister’s zoning orders or MZOs?).  

Plus, the government has watered down the rules that protect wetlands and waterways in these natural spaces, and has exempted major projects, like the Ontario Place redevelopment on the Toronto waterfront, from environmental assessments.And then there was the Greenbelt scandal, an effort to forego the protection of parcels of farmland and natural spaces for development. 

‘Nature should be part of everyday life’ — but for how long?

Cumulatively, the Ford government’s approach to nature is both confusing and contradictory. It’s valuable, until it’s in the way. And it’s worth protecting as long as people’s place in it is clearly defined. Natural spaces for the sake of nature — not to mention carbon sequestration, flood mitigation and the many other ecosystem services it provides — isn’t a goal for this government. 

The proof is in the literal weeds: in the time that this government has been in office, the auditor general has found there is no clear strategy for expanding the province’s natural areas, not enough staff in place to properly protect them and very little funding allocated to enable either. 

And even when action makes sense, its execution doesn’t. On Friday, the government announced a $4.75-million investment to rebuild and upgrade Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park in Mattawa, Ont., and turn it into a “year-round destination.” The park was devastated by a June storm, trapping campers and clearing swaths of forest. 

“The storm was one of the most severe events Ontario Parks has ever faced,” Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said in his announcement. What he didn’t say was that scientists predict such intense storms will increase in frequency due to global warming fuelled by the burning of fossil fuels. Rebuilding the park is good, but rebuilding it by prioritizing tourism over the climate resilience of such natural areas means they won’t last.

Bill 26 may be designed with good intentions, and Dowie certainly said all the right things at committee. “It will help ensure that access to nature is not to be determined by persons, postal code or income, but by the shared belief that nature should be reachable, welcome and meaningful, in effect democratic,” he told his colleagues. “Nature should be part of everyday life, not an occasional privilege, not one controlled by private landowners all the time, but truly a regular experience.” 

No one would disagree — including beachgoers at what used to be Wasaga Beach Provincial Park. But even if the Ford government facilitates the creation of new urban and adventure parks and fixes up damaged ones, their success depends on the protections that are offered to every park in the province. And when it comes to using the power of the law to ensure nature’s protection, the Ford government has proved more adept at bulldozing through it. 

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On the border between the United States and Mexico, a black bear paces back and forth when confronted with the looming steel beams that form the border wall between the two countries. A pack of javelina wriggles through a tiny opening barely bigger than a piece of printer paper. 

But on the border between Canada and the U.S., the picture is very different.

In many places, moose, bear, wolves and other wildlife can simply walk between the two nations. There are barriers — roads, development and a lack of protected habitat on either side — but for more than a century, relatively relaxed border policy and a shared sense of purpose saw conservationists in both countries working together to overcome them.

Now, U.S. President Donald Trump has ratcheted up the challenges to cross-border conservation. Since his election, he has threatened Canadian sovereignty, sowed economic jeopardy on both sides of the border and cancelled, or proposed cancelling, many U.S. research grants for conservation work.

Many of Trump’s actions have explicit implications for cross-border conservation — in North America and globally. Early on in this term, Trump, along with Elon Musk, then at the helm of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, all but shut down USAID and its international conservation efforts. Canadian conservation organizations have reported losing co-funding as a result of Trump’s cuts to foreign aid. As his administration has stretched staffing thin and proposed deep budget cuts at the U.S. National Park Service, it ended funding many found crucial to habitat conservation work across the border.

Trump has also withdrawn from the Green Climate Fund and the Paris Agreement — both of which support co-operative global action on climate change — and has signalled he wants to cut the Multinational Species Conservation Fund. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, which monitors aquatic health on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border and is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has also been gutted.

Other impacts on Canadian conservation are more subtle. As stories of tightening border security spread online, many professionals fear crossing the border for business purposes, no matter how legitimate and lawful they may be. Not to mention the visceral chill in many Canadians’ perception of their closest neighbour.

Despite the challenges, Canadian organizations doing cross-border work are carrying on. “In some ways, nothing has changed for wildlife. Wildlife are still free to cross the boundaries,” said Jodi Hilty, the president and chief scientist of the landscape connectivity initiative Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), which aims to create an uninterrupted wildlife corridor through that region.  

But Trump has also cast a cloud of uncertainty over efforts to establish connected habitat across the two countries’ national boundaries, and conservation organizations are navigating uncharted waters.

An international science conference in the U.S. highlights declining Canadian participation

Cross-border collaborations rely on relationships. Putting private land into a conservation easement — a legal designation that can prevent development in perpetuity — or securing wildlife movement data comes down to individual relationships between scientists, conservationists and land owners. Yet, many people working in conservation have expressed anxieties that Trump’s attacks on Canadian sovereignty and increased concern about the perceived risks of crossing the border are stymying those critical connections. 

“We saw the biggest impact at our biannual science symposium,” Jessica Lax, the executive director of the Algonquin to Adirondacks Collaborative, said in an interview. The group aims to protect corridors for wildlife movement between the two eastern U.S. and Canadian parks, similar to Yellowstone to Yukon’s efforts to the west. The group hosts a conference every other year, alternating between nations. 

In 2025, the collaborative held its conference in upstate New York. Many Canadians couldn’t or wouldn’t attend — out of the 80 people in attendance, Lax said, only 10 to 15 were Canadian, less than half the expected representation. The event is just as much about sharing research and management strategies across the border as it is about building face-to-face connections with others in this line of work, Lax said.

She worries that because a smaller group of Canadians attended this year, some of those foundational connections were not made. “It’s a subtle thing that now runs through a lot of the work that will make things a little bit harder, because those relationships weren’t strengthened.”

Hilty cites Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana, which together form the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, as an example of the importance of maintaining relationships. There, every year, Canadian and American members of the global organization Rotary International shake hands and recite the “peace pledge.” 

“May the long-standing peace between our nations stimulate other peoples to follow this example.”

Hilty calls this type of effort “positive peace.”

“Positive peace is an active intent to work together,” she explained, one that extends across borders and barriers.

She sees Yellowstone to Yukon’s work in this light. The organization is technically two non-profits, one Canadian and one American, working in concert. That process demands constant interaction and proactive co-operation between two countries — not just internally, among board members and staff, but also with the community groups and landowners in the Yellowstone to Yukon region, Hilty says. 

“I think movements like [Yellowstone to Yukon], and these transboundary efforts are not just hugely important just for nature, but they are also really important for society,” Hilty said. “How do we lean in and maintain and build relationships during this time when governments are having all this tension? How do we keep it at the community level?”

Local governments, international movement

For Yellowstone to Yukon, keeping things at the community level — through connections with tribal governments and private landowners — has made progress despite the political climate. Nowhere has that been more apparent than their work with the Blackfoot Confederacy to bring free-ranging bison back to the West, through a project called the Iinnii Initiative. 

“There’s a lot around this idea of sharing bison and erasing this artificial line and restoring a free-ranging, or a semi-free-ranging, herd,” Hilty said.

Guardians in the Blackfeet Buffalo Program now tend to the small population of iinnii. The larger aim is to link tribal and public lands in a transborder corridor, where the bison can range freely — not as cattle, as most of the bison that do live on the landscape are categorized today — and restore balance to the grassland ecosystem that relies on their presence.

For now, Yellowstone to Yukon is supporting the ambitions of the Blackfoot Confederacy by focusing on granular details, like working on a state level to broaden the legal designation of bison beyond the narrow classification of livestock.

In the east, the Algonquin to Adirondacks Collaborative has also focused on the “nitty gritty,” in Lax’s words. Recently, the group’s focus has turned to the planned expansion of Ontario’s Highway 401, Canada’s busiest highway. They are pushing for the expansion to include the construction of wildlife crossings along the highway.

The Frontenac Arch and Thousand Island region, where the highway expansion falls, has become more and more important as a conservation pathway, Lax explained. As ice in the St. Lawrence River melts, wildlife have been funnelled into a pinch point for passage as they move from north to south. The highway, Lax explained, is a huge source of wildlife mortality in this increasingly delicate region. Though she sees the environmental harm an expansion can have, smart crossings, she suspects, could actually reduce the impact the highway currently has on wildlife trying to migrate across the corridor. Though the highway sits firmly on the Canadian side of the Algonquin to Adirondacks corridor, Lax said she has received an outpouring of interest and help from American partners. “This region influences the ecosystems on the U.S. side pretty significantly,” she said.

Wildlife cover a lot of ground, ‘much bigger geopolitical scale’

Though working on a smaller scale has proven crucial for achieving habitat protection, for widely migrating wildlife to truly benefit, conservationists say, it’s essential to link those efforts together on a broad, transnational scale. Few are more familiar with this than bird biologists. 

“Focusing on one country, one state, one political jurisdiction is clearly not dealing with the biodiversity crisis. We have to be thinking at a much bigger geographic scale, which means you’re looking at a much bigger geopolitical scale,” Jeff Wells, the National Audubon Society’s vice-president of boreal conservation, told The Narwhal.

Take the red knot: a small, tawny shorebird that breeds in the Arctic but spends its summers in South America. Delaware Bay, an estuary between Delaware and New Jersey, is a crucial halfway point on the birds’ journey, where they can stop to fuel up on horseshoe crab eggs. As interest in harvesting the horseshoe crabs for pharmaceutical use and bait has grown, so too has a fervent movement to protect the crabs, beach habitat and birds in Delaware Bay.

But none of that matters, Wells said, if the breeding grounds in Hudson Bay and the wintering grounds in South America are not equally protected. Audubon is now working with nine Ontario First Nations to build out a marine protected area in Hudson Bay.

Navigating the need for data and funding, without certainty of either

Data is key to identifying areas for protection, but cuts to U.S. research funding may have jeopardized its collection, and many government databases have simply been wiped.

Hilty particularly fears the loss of movement data collected by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, which includes the National Park Service, U.S. Geological Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service among its members.. For now, it remains accessible on the team’s website.

When it comes to grizzly bears, data that illustrates movement patterns is crucial in helping get the population of Yellowstone grizzlies connected with the genetic diversity of a larger Canadian population, Hilty explained. It allows Yellowstone to Yukon to identify priority habitat and work with ranchers and communities to ensure they are protected from development.

Losing it, she said, would mean losing access to “one of the biggest, longest-term large carnivore data sets in the world,” she said. 

She underscored that her team and other conservationists outside the organization are still unpacking the long-term impacts of not being able to use the full scope of information and data needed for these projects.

To the east, Algonquin to Adirondacks is already feeling the impact of cuts: this spring, Lax says, a National Park Service grant that would have gone towards completing a mapping project was frozen unexpectedly. The organization’s bi-national status allowed it to secure funding from Parks Canada to cover the gaps.

The work of re-orienting to the current political climate and cross-border tensions will take time, conservationists say, but so does the work of true connectivity. The timelines for a landscape and a species extend much further than the flashpoint-anxiety of any one presidential administration. 

“Any opportunities people have for collaboration, they should see it as even more important and meaningful than ever,” Wells said. “The work will go on. It’s essential to human life. So it doesn’t even make sense not to continue.”

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After 24 days of being forbidden from entering the forest, some Nova Scotians are returning to nature. The province lifted its wildfire-related ban in Halifax and counties farther northeast on Aug. 29, with Premier Tim Houston saying in a news release that conditions were “heading in the right direction in certain parts of the province.” 

Every Atlantic province had some form of fire or burning restriction at different points during the dry summer of 2025, but Nova Scotia invited fresh controversy when it banned all access to the woods provincewide on Aug. 5. The province set its fine for violating the woods ban at $25,000, the same amount it fines those that set illegal fires. According to CBC, more than $1 million in fines has been issued for illegal burning in the last two and a half years. 

New Brunswick followed Nova Scotia’s lead and restricted industrial and recreational activities on Crown land, a ban that was mostly lifted on Aug. 26. 

Nova Scotia’s problems aren’t over. Crews are still battling fires in Long Lake, along the province’s north shore in the Annapolis Valley region. Despite the continued risk and considerable damage — over 1,000 residents were evacuated because of the Long Lake fire and 20 homes were lost — not everyone agrees with the restriction on entering the woods, which remains in place in 11 of the province’s 18 counties. In mid-August, Jeff Evely of Westmount, N.S., recorded himself violating the ban.

“I want to challenge this in court,” Evely says to Department of Natural Resources officers in the video. “And the only way for me to do that is to get the fine. So, I’m not trying to make trouble for you guys, okay? I just want a piece of Tim Houston and I want to be as accommodating and as nice as I can be.”

Evely, a veteran who was a People’s Party of Canada candidate for Sydney-Glace Bay in last spring’s federal election, wasn’t alone. The social media response to the woods ban invoked COVID-inspired debates about safety and government overreach. 

Opinions were just as mixed last weekend in Halifax’s Point Pleasant Park and Shubie Park in Dartmouth, as families, dog-walkers and runners headed back into the woods. Some parkgoers said they were glad to follow the rules to help keep the province safe from fire, while others said at least some public spaces should have stayed open. 

Everyone said they were happy to be back.

Interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Point Pleasant Park — Halifax

James Byers, public servant

What he was doing in the park: walking his dog.

“It gets boring walking the same routes and I like feeling grounded, but I think the ban was a good preventative measure and I think that most people respected it. I had coworkers that lost their cottages and had to evacuate last year with the fires out in the Beechville, Hammonds Plains area.

We did our camping and our summer trips earlier in the season, so it didn’t impact our vacation plans. We had family who went camping and couldn’t light a fire but they still had a good time.”

Chris Webster, student, and Lauren Theriault, film and television costumer

What they were doing in the park: walking their dog.

Theriault: “We’ve had a sad dog. It was really hard because it was too hot during the day to walk her on pavement.”

Webster: “It’s been a long month and a half. I think the worst thing was trying to get the unhoused community in Halifax out of the woods. They have nowhere else to go and they’re already kicking them out of encampments. They go to the woods to get away from the city that they’re being kicked out of and then they’re being kicked out of the woods.”

Abdoulaye Barry, founder, Ten Toes Down run club

What he was doing in the park: leading a run.

“I’m the type of guy that loves the outside, and every member here loves Point Pleasant. We tried running at [a local track called] The Oval but a lot of people didn’t like it that much.

Honestly, Point Pleasant, there’s no better place to run. I think a place like this should always be open to the public, because everyone has reasons why they’re here. For the run club, it’s health benefits, right? Social benefit and psychological growth.

I live downtown in an apartment that has a gym and equipment. So, when it came to physical fitness, I had other [options], but I’m sure other people were affected.”

Jay Gaerlan, digital creator

What he was doing in the park: running with Ten Toes Down.

“This community really started in Point Pleasant Park. To have that taken away was really awful. It feels good to be back. A lot of people relieve stress by being in nature. It felt like something was missing.  

We almost had to evacuate when there was a fire in Bayer’s Lake. My house was like a kilometre away.”

Shubie Park — Dartmouth, N.S.

Jared MacPhee, comic artist

What he was doing in the park: walking his dog.

“I have a very high-maintenance dog and the ban prevented me from going to parks in the area, so he was going stir crazy in my house.

I thought it was reasonable. I understand the precautions. Obviously, I don’t want forest fires. Obviously, post-COVID you never like government lockdowns. A bit of a PTSD situation, but I go along with the rules, even if I don’t like them.

There’s a little trail in the woods that we walk every day. It’s just weird, having a little slice of your neighbourhood you’re not allowed to go into anymore.”

Roberto Guebara, chef

What he was doing in the park: showing a friend from Italy “one of the most beautiful parks we have in the city.”

“Feels great, bringing the kids back to breathing fresh air and enjoying the views, seeing this beautiful thing we have here. I’m not really completely in agreement with the ban but we had to follow the rules and respect the fires that were happening.”

Donna King, anesthesia assistant

What she was doing in the park: walking her dog.

“I think it was a little over the top. I wish they’d have kept those city parks open, because it wasn’t deep in the woods. There’s not many places to go in the city. It’s tough not being able to take [my dog] Dino to water.”

Cheryl Cort, retired, and Kimberlee McTaggart, film and television editor

What they were doing in the park: running with the Heart and Sole Running Club.

Cort: “If it had to be, it had to be. We don’t want fires. That’s what they thought was necessary.”

McTaggart: “I’m glad they left the path along Lake Banook open. I really wish they would have opened the waterfront trail, which is a paved path through a tiny bit of woods that people use as commuters.

I like to bikepack and I was hoping to get one more weekend in August. My usual is out to Dollar Lake. That was the only thing that affected me and I wasn’t that upset about it because we needed to do it.

We have a place in Porter’s Lake and there was a fire nearby, mostly in Lake Echo. It didn’t hit us but it hit Mineville Road and it felt like it was on the way.”

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