I have taught a Fire Ecology course at Nicola Valley Institute of Technology for a few years now, and I was recently persuaded to teach a compressed, two-week version of the course to a group of Indigenous Rangers from the Chilcotin region. The course was to be held in the town of Williams Lake.
My trip from Summerland was uneventful, other than seeing, for the first time, the vast regional disaster that is the Highland Valley Copper Mine and its tailings lake. (Not a pond, but a vast, dead lake). I will certainly think twice now about buying anything containing copper.
My motel room, on the outskirts of Williams Lake, was quite satisfactory, but spending two weeks in it took some mental adjustment. My students were mostly in their thirties, they all knew each other, and whenever they went on break the jokes and sarcasm started up immediately.
Knowing virtually nothing about this region, I was a steep learning curve, starting with the basic understanding that the Cariboo region is to the east of the Fraser, and the Chilcotin to the west. The terrain and vegetation of the Chilcotin plateau is quite variable. Dense Douglas-fir forests are the norm, but there are grasslands in the valleys and south slopes, and some large ranches scattered here and there. The fabled Nemiah country, off to far west (a place I hope to visit sometime) is subalpine forest.
Mid-course we took a field trip west on Highway 20, where we saw vestiges of the 2017 Alexis Creek wildfire, which caused massive evacuations. It is interesting how 2017 was designated as a “Record Fire Year,” but that label has been transferred several times since then.
Turning south off of the Highway, we proceeded down to Farwell Canyon, on the Chilcotin River. This is sandy, dry sagebrush and bunchgrass country, similar to the ecosystems I know in the South Okanagan. Given the height of the very flammable sagebrush there, It was obvious the area had not burned for decades. The Chilcotin was running muddy brown in June, as a result of a dam collapse somewhere upstream. Unstable river slopes were everywhere. This Canyon was a previous Indigenous settlement area, and we did get to pay homage at a small pictograph site.
In advance of my arrival I had been warned about the homeless/drug problem in downtown Williams Lake. The mayor, Surinderpal Rathor, had even considered declaring a town state of emergency. After class in the afternoons, I drove around town carefully, getting to know it. Williams Lake is at the west end of the lake itself, named after Chief William. WL is a real milltown, with several lumber mills hard by. It is also a crossroads; highways go north to Quesnel, east to Horsefly, south to Cache Creek and west to Bella Coola, with any number of side roads heading to places like Meldrum, Springhouse and Dog Creek. The town is also a magnet for fishermen and hunters, and of course the testosterone muscle trucks abound here, as they do everywhere.
On one of my afternoon forays I discovered the Scout Island Nature Preserve, a fascinating wetland area at the west end of the Lake. Even though it is surrounded by highways, gas stations, big box stores, railyards and sawmills, the variety of birds and vegetation are quite delightful. Narrow trails and boardwalks wind through marshes and dense cottonwood forests. I encountered a Western Painted Turtle, one of the largest I have ever seen, dozing on one of the trails. And a pair of starch-white pelicans were camped on a floating log. There is a beach and a small grassy lawn for picnickers. I thought Wascana Park in Regina held the world’s record for the amount of Canada Goose poop, but the Scout Island lawn is definitely a contender. The little beach is mostly for suntanning, but I did lean on my Norwegian genes and swam once in the very cold, very green water.
One evening I brought a takeout supper to a park bench at Scout Island, and had quite an animated and up-close conversation with a young raven. His main topic of interest was my hamburger.
Like the town of Merritt, Williams Lake is kind of an epicenter for the offices of nearby Nations and Bands. And again, like Merritt, it has a significant East Indian population. And the maids in my hotel are all Asian. Just one more example of the quiet but profound multiculturalism we have in Canada.
Out of boredom one evening, and against my better judgment, I left the motel and went to see the movie Mission Impossible. I was quite thrilled to find that the menacing, evil monster of the movie was: AI. Leaving the theater, I tried to unlock our new-to-us white Nissan Rogue. I clicked the fob button several times, but the door wouldn’t open. So I pulled the embedded key out of the fob and was struggling to get it in to the door lock when I heard a woman’s voice behind me say: “can I help you?” That voice triggered several sudden realizations: this was not my car, mine was parked just ahead, they were identical in color and shape, and the lady was being awfully nice to this random old man trying to break into her car. After my profuse apologies, we had a nice chat about the movie, and both of us agreed that Simon Pegg, not Tom Cruise, was the real star of the show.
Another encounter: during a lunch break I was walking through one of WL’s downtown alleys, and I passed a gentleman who was struggling to load a spare tire into the back of his older vehicle. I offered to help, and he showed me an array of tools, none of which, he claimed, was the right one for the job. I was puzzled for a few minutes, until I realized the spare tire fit underneath the car, and there was an ingenious cable-and-winch system to get it in place and hold it there. The problem was we didn’t have the right tool to operate the manual crank by which you raised and lowered the spare. I started improvising with the tools at hand and was eventually able to lower the cable, attach the retainer to the spare tire rim, and then slowly crank the whole assembly back up into its appointed place. The gentleman was very appreciative, and I learned about a spare tire attachment system. Looking back, I began to wonder; are WL folks particularly friendly to strangers? Are these just two random happenstances? Does my age and appearance make me particularly non-threatening? Or do I have a look that says I am desperate for company? Who knows.
In class, we spent a lot of time discussing the contemporary paradox of “not enough fire/too much fire.” I was fortunate to have some fire-scarred tree cookies from the Chilcotin, which showed the classic pattern of frequent small cultural burns prior to European contact, followed by an abrupt cessation, followed by the vast contemporary megafires. Our dry forests, including those of the Chilcotin, went from roughly 15-20 seasons of fuel accumulation between fire events, to a century or more. I had the students wrestle with an assignment I call “Sharing the Torch:” how do we reintroduce Indigenous cultural burning, ramp up western scientific prescribed burning and, where appropriate, combine the two. I am still digesting some of the fascinating ideas that came out of that assignment.
Williams Lake doesn’t make any of the “top 100 luxury vacation site” lists, but it certainly treated me well. And it reinforced my Canadian pride.
