Wade Davis - world renowned academic, global traveller, celebrated writer, acclaimed thinker - is the featured speaker at this year's Dr. Bob Ewert Memoral Dinner and Lecture tonight at the Civic Centre.
Davis has a rare title on his business card. His profession is Explorer-In-Residence for National Geographic. He tours the world meeting, and carefully studying, the most interesting cultures he can find in the most interesting locations on earth.
He will speak tonight about the place that interests him greatest; the one place he spends the most time in any given year, his home in Northern B.C.'s Sacred Headwaters region just south of Iskut where the Nass, Stikine and Skeena Rivers all get their start.
The bulk of his address will speak of the challenges faced by local residents there - many of them First Nations - to manage the industrial proposals trying to overlay the landscape. Some of them Davis vehemently opposes, both from his own knowledge of what the impacts would be and on behalf of a grassroots community of opponents who see the same net-negative results.
One massive issue has already come to a close. Shell Canada's attempts to push natural gas out of the landscape was hotly contested but came to an amicable conclusion. The opponents, Shell and the provincial government arrived at a solution to move Shell's exploration interests to another region where such activities have less impact on rare environments.
"There are no enemies in this business, only solutions," said Davis.
The latest obstacle to overcome is the proposed Red Chris Mine south of Dease Lake. It is in the heart of Tahltan Nation territory and in Davis's figurative back yard. Davis cautioned to not mistake his, or the Tahltan people's position. They are not against mining in that region, only certain kinds of mining practices. The Red Chris proposal is outside those bounds of acceptability, he said.
"I don't care what massive deposit of gold you discover underneath Stanley Park, it is not acceptable to build an open pit mine there. There are plenty of places in B.C. where open pit mines are much more acceptable."
He noted that in the same general region is the proposed Galore Creek mine project. He and the Tahltan take little issue with that big dig. The affected landscape is different and the mining practices are different.
"Mining is an absolute necessity," he said. "But bad mining practices are a luxury we can no longer afford. It is a matter of what mines, in which places, for which public benefits. I use the analogy of the Pope. The Pope drives a car, I'm sure he uses all sorts of products derived from oil, but he wouldn't authorize drilling for oil in the Sistine Chapel. That mountain is the Tahltan people's Sistine Chapel. That mountain literally hovers over the pristine headwaters of the Iskut River. The point is not 'it is such a pretty mountain,' it is whether or not it supports an extraordinary ecosystem. It is the epicentre of the wildlife and ecological factors of the entire region."
He added that he isn't concerned with blocking industry altogether from that same mountain. He has seen firsthand that "a lot of the world's tourist destinations are worn out" and the Sacred Headwaters would be a popular alternative.
"This mountain is, by any definition, a wildlife sanctuary in the sky. When the mine's project design calls for the storage of toxic tailings in a fish-bearing lake, that runs counter to all sense," he said. "This is where you would put the Banff Springs Hotel. The total combined capitalization of every mining company in the world is less than $1 trillion, yet the global travel industry is a $4.5 trillion industry. And the gold will still be there for the day the right mining techniques are available, but those are not reflected in this mine's plans."
Davis literally wrote the book on the area. Greystone Books published Sacred Headwaters in 2011, with text by Davis and a thick array of photos by him and many renowned photographers.
He also used this as the title of one of his TED Talks (he has done three).
Davis has written more than a dozen books, some of them known the world over. The Serpent And the Rainbow was his fictionalized portrayal of his Harvard doctoral thesis, examining the possibilities of drug connections to zombie reports out of secretive societies within Haitian culture. It was made into a popular movie starring Bill Pullman as the Davis character.
Perhaps Davis's most acclaimed book was Into The Silence, about Britain's many attempts (and their subtext) to climb Mount Everest in the years leading out of the First World War.
Also popular from Davis's library is Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures, and The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters In the Modern World for which he was given a podium for the famous 2009 Massey Lectures.
A year later, he was bestowed with an honorary degree from UNBC.
The Dr. Bob Ewert Memorial Lecture is a presentation of the university, its medical program and Northern Health. It is a fundraiser for the Northern Medical Program Trust.
