Over 150 people joined a Canada Day march and rally from Grizzly Plaza to the Revelstoke Courthouse on Canada Day 2021 to protest old growth logging in B.C.
The event was hosted by a number of individuals and featured individual speakers and those representing groups.
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Speaker Virginia Thompson said she’d worked on old growth issues in the Revelstoke for the past 15 years, and that her activism went back to 1993, when she joined the protests over logging in Clayquot Sound, and again protested logging plans for a parking lot for Cathedral Grove in 2003. “And in 2021 Fairy Creek, and our beloved, beautiful Inland Temperate Rainforest where we live here. It is globally unique. It is the last of any size on the planet of an Inland Temperate Forest. And we are logging it. We are logging original forest,” Thompson said.
Watch: Watch speakers at the July 1 rally opposing old-growth logging at the Revelstoke Courthouse:
Jade Berrill, of Wildsight Revelstoke, said the focus now is on protecting old growth forests. “We’re not against forestry. We’re not against logging trees. There is an enormous amount of economic benefit and jobs for people, but there are particular trees we can look at as opposed to the old growth,” she said. “This is a completely unique ecological environment that has developed over millions of years, which is impossible to recreate.”
Rana Nelson, the federal Green Party of Canada candidate for the Kootenay-Columbia riding in the next election, said she joined the party and was running for change.
“Government needs to do things differently. We need the systems to change, and we need the way the government looks at our world and ourselves a change,” Nelson said. “We need to change from a lens of exploitation to a lens of collaboration, and we all need to work together on it.”
Over 150 people gathered for a rally, march and speeches opposing #OldGrowth logging at the Revelstoke Courthouse on July 1. Here, protesters march from Grizzly Plaza in downtown #Revelstoke to the courthouse, where protesters hung placards and gave speeches. pic.twitter.com/jwhWV20Ey8
— Revelstoke Mountaineer (@RevelstokeMTNR) July 1, 2021
Co-organizer Emma Atkinson read a list of demands that protesters were seeking.
She said they want more drastic policy changes now. “The ones that have been happening are not enough. They are PR fluff and more delay for talk and log,” she said.
Gallery: See photos from the July 1 rally and march here:
Atkinson said the government needed to implement all 14 recommendations from the Old-Growth Strategic Review panel.
She also asked local governments to “step up to the plate. Because with responsible local government comes responsible provincial government, and I think it’s very important to remember the power that local government and communities really do hold on a grand scale if enough people want the change.”
No Revelstoke local or regional government politicians attended, although with hats and sunglasses standard to protect against the heatwave, it’s possible we could have missed someone.
During the rally, Atkinson called Premier John Horgan’s office phone over the PA system, so everyone could hear. When prompted to leave a message, the crowd chanted slogans opposing old-growth logging.
The event lasted for just over two hours.
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