This Blog Is Going Smash

It was a strange morning. After falling in with the herbicide sprayers, and running out into the block through a lingering mist of VisionMax to film the helicopter in action, a Canfor silviculture employee was at our doorstep to discuss a nearby block they said they weren’t going to spray but were. We invited him in and chatted for an hour about the whole thing.

He was going on about how it was all a necessary part of our forest industry. “If we didn’t spray to knock back the aspen and birch, the pine and spruce would get choked out. It’s an obligation we take very seriously.” I was throwing everything I had back at him. I brought up the research that showed forests are healthier when we leave the aspen and birch, and mentioned its toxicity to amphibians. “I don’t have any regrets about what we’re doing,” he responded. “I don’t have any problems sleeping at night.”

I wondered if he had ever been sprayed. After a week of trying to catch the spraying crews at work I finally caught up with them. I grabbed my camera and tripod and leapt out into the cutblock, racing for the treeline and the block beyond where the helicopter was laying down its blanket of glyphosate-based VisionMax.

Lingering amidst the pockets of spindly aspen, blueberry bushes and grasses of the young forest, the toxic vapour was noticeable immediately. Within seconds I could feel a smoky, acrid sensation in my nose, mouth, and throat that hung there like syrup. The mist pervaded everything, and no creature, big or small, could escape it. It smelled faintly of burnt plastic, rubber, and pepper. It was a completely unique smell that I could only describe as chemical.

Making my way out of the aspen thicket and into a clear spot in the middle of the block I set up my tripod and began filming. The helicopter banked and swerved over the block. It came in low with its nozzles flaring, the mist coming down in sheets. At one point he made a run straight at me, the spray coming down within a dozen metres of me. The biting, ammonia-like sting was noticeable again.

Whether or not this was safe at this point became a big question mark. Up to then, I kind of assumed it was largely non-toxic to humans, an oft-repeated message I was willing to believe. Getting sprayed changed all that. This chem-burn affected me immediately, and bothered my respiratory tract for four days. Even now, a week and a half afterwards, it still lingers. Of all the chemicals I’ve ingested, inadvertently or not, this cocktail was the harshest. I have no doubt repeated exposure is not healthy. Anything that burns like that in such low quantities can’t be.

And what of the birds, frogs and bugs? What must they think? Well, they’re much more sensitive than my whiskey and smoke-seared throat, old knife that I am. It probably kills them, as extensive research says it probably does. The things we do to this planet and its creatures, I thought. Maybe the Canfor guy was right. No sense losing sleep over it.

For more information on James’ research into herbicide spraying visit StoptheSprayBC.com.

It was a week of cat and mouse that culminated in the forestry guys putting me on a wild goose chase. They’ll be spraying down the 1400 Road tonight, a nighttime spray, he said over the phone. Kilometer 28. So I loaded up my camera gear in my backpack and hopped on my Honda 100, a little trail bike that barely ran, and with its motor gasping away I tore off down the road.

I scanned the expanse of young forest to see what they were going to spray. There was one section with a lush stand of aspen, the “pest” that the spraying was supposed to deal with. Maybe this was the spot? So I decided I’d better wait. And I waited. I had a magnificent view of the Telegraph Range, a low-slung stretch of volcanic ridges that rose up out of the sandy expanse of pine-grass range land I stood in the middle of. I laid myself out, did some drawing, took some time lapse pictures. I waited until the sun sank behind the mountains and still no helicopter.

For more information on James’ research into herbicide spraying visit StoptheSprayBC.com.

I’ve never missed a greyhound before. Usually, you just walk down to the station, hop on. But the girl in front of me, there just 10 seconds before, took the last seat. I went up to the counter, pleaded with the man. “I’ve got to get to Prince George by tomorrow morning,” I said. He shucked his hands, his greyhound uniform sweat-stained in the August heat. Nothing I can do, he said. “The manager isn’t on duty tonight to come downstairs and make the call, there’s no extra driver, and not another bus to be found anywhere in the city.” I was shut down.

No chance they’d put another bus on the road, even though it was supposed to get worse in Kamloops. A hot night on a crowded bus flashed before my eyes, weaving around BC stopping in every center along the way.  I looked around the depot, mildly relieved but my mind racing.  The next morning I had a meeting with a news station in Prince George scheduled.  A video journalist there had spotted a sign I had put up on the roads around Prince George.  I had made them with my dad, a three-toned stencil sign that read “keep our forests herbicide free.”  I put them on old posts and dead trees on the highways leading into town not expecting anything to come of them. Now he wanted to talk with me about them.

I had put him off for weeks, life passed on, and the summer was coming to a close. The time to get a story out of it had come. Missing our appointment wasn’t in the cards. I left the depot after watching a girl drag a cafe stool half way across the station to the phone booth. She sat down, picked up the receiver, and started talking. It was going to be a long night.

The delay wasn’t all that bad. Back home, I realized the things I’d forgotten. No boots. Nor did I have another battery for my camera. I had planned on taking a time-lapse of the forests that they would herbicide spray. I wanted a movie of the passage of days immediately prior to and after the application of the chemical. Within two days the leaves would die and fall. I wanted a visual image of this. After a quick trip to the London Drugs, I found a plane ticket the following morning. I would get to do this interview afterall.