The tree was perfect. A near record-breaker. It was close to Port Renfrew, a town humming with activity around big-tree tourism after Avatar Grove. And it was alone. It was a site that could be visited by tourists, whose photographs wouldn't even need a caption. The tree summarized the entirety of the AFA's old-growth forest conservation issue in a single staggering blink. The Ancient Forest Alliance gave it a name: Big Lonely Doug.
For an icon that apparently stands at the confluence of forestry, activism, spirituality, and ecotourism, I must admit that I had never heard of this famous tree before the book Big Lonely Doug caught my eye. Yet, I'm so happy to have decided to read this one – the five stars don't mean, “OMG, this is the best book I've read all year”, but as a historical, contextual, fair and nuanced overview of all perspectives on the logging of British Columbia's old-growth forests, I don't think that author Harley Rustad could have done a more balanced job of presenting everyone's positions. I found this read to be fascinating, informative, and nonpartisan; I couldn't have asked for more.
For thousands of years the residents of Vancouver Island have hunted big timber. It began with the coastal First Nations, who sought out large cedars deep in the forests, carefully selecting ideal specimens of western red cedar from which to carve their canoes. Then, Scottish botanists headed into uncharted bush with notebook and pencil to track down, document, and collect samples of some of the biggest trees in the world. Next, as the forest became a commercial resource, settlers delved deeper into the island's heart to locate the highest-value stands and brilliantly engineered how to extract the mammoth trees. And when environmental activists of the 1980s and '90s began to realize the scope of what was being logged – and of what remained – they found immense groves, like those in Carmanah and Clayoquot, and singular specimens to be at the centre of their campaigns. Now, tourists are going off the well-trodden paths to find the latest record-breaking tree.Rustad covers the entire history of logging on Vancouver Island – which began with the First Nations, so the idea of “virgin forests” existing before the European settlers came was always a misnomer (and I was intrigued by the notion of “Culturally Modified Trees”; those old cedars and pines that show signs of manipulation by Natives over the centuries and which are now preserved as part of their heritage). I loved that the samples sent back to England by the first botanists had gold flakes in their roots, but none of the early scientists cared about riches beyond new taxonomy (and am fascinated by the fact that the tallest tree in the UK is a Douglas fir that was planted in the 1880s in Scotland; if that doesn't give some perspective on just how old some of our giants are, I don't know what would). Rustad gives just enough history – through the years of clear-cutting, to the rise of activism, to the efforts of the present day to balance logging with preservation and ecotourism as a replacement industry – that I leave this book feeling informed, without feeling overwhelmed or lectured to.
It isn't until halfway through this book that Rustad introduces Big Lonely Doug – through the story of the forestry engineer who, despite having selected millions of trees for cutting (including many that were bigger than this particular Douglas fir) over the course of his career, saw something special in this tree and marked it for preservation. (When asked later why he decided to spare this tree, Dennis Cronin replied, “Because I liked it.”) We then get the perspective of the activists who were mortified that only this one tree was left solitary in an apocalypse of clear-cutting, witness the rise of Big Lonely Doug as a flashpoint for fundraising and tourism (local town Port Renfrew now hosts the Tall Tree Music Festival; one cottage rental company saw revenue in 2016 that was ten times what it was in 2012), and while the activists are surprised to learn that the local First Nations community has opened a sawmill (employing 10% of their community year round) to harvest the trees that they've been given stewardship over, the First Nations reply that the activists have opened a Pandora's Box in the protected areas, with hikers going offtrail, relieving themselves in the woods, and going back on their promises to the B.C. Government to hire local First Nations guides to give historical information about the site. Honestly, every perspective is given in this book, and the future is hopeful: there wouldn't be preservation without the activists, and the ecosystem isn't as irredeemable as the more pessimistic doomsayers might believe.
Among the black bears and towering trees, the ferns and fungi, a new ecosystem has emerged from the forests of Vancouver Island. There are forces strong and weak, cataclysmic movements and hidden repercussions. There are threads that form connections that could be severed in an instant, or gradually eroded over the near-imperceptible passing of time. This ecosystem includes the rights of Indigenous peoples to monitor and manage their lands and resources. It includes timber workers concerned with getting their jobs done, providing for their families, and keeping their communities afloat. It includes activists and environmentalists who fight to protect rapidly dwindling habitats and species, and who seek a compromise with an industry that has enjoyed an unchecked reign for nearly all of its existence. This new ecosystem also includes businesses looking to the forests for new sources of revenue; tourism companies using the icon of the tree to promote resilience, determination, and strength; and towns rebranding, transforming themselves from places that value their trees cut and horizontal to places that value forests left intact and standing. At the heart of this ecosystem stands Big Lonely Doug.This was an interesting book to read so soon after Richard Powers' Booker-nominated The Overstory: Rustad makes reference to many of the same events that Powers fictionalised in his history of tree-related activism, but what I found to be overlong and preachy from Powers, I found to be interesting and informative from Rustad. And as Rustad seems to give equal time to every perspective on this issue, I found his conclusions (and his optimism) the more persuasive. I hope this book finds its audience, because it deserves to be widely read.
Emily Carr
Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky, 1931
oil on canvas
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust
Even a hundred years ago, people like Emily Carr were unsettled by the sight of that one lonely tree unharvested by a logging company; those too full of rot or burls or whatnot to make it worth their while to cut down. It was interesting to read that while the activists were concerned for the stability of Big Lonely Doug now that the surrounding forest was removed - after all, won't it now be subject to fiercer wind and storm? - that's not actually the case; and that was information that the forestry engineer, Dennis Cronin, had when he made his decision. When you look at the stumps of those trees that were removed, you'll see that the thousand year old Douglas fir (!) was surrounded by a few trees that were five hundred years old, and many that were only around for the last century. Which means that five hundred years ago, Big Lonely Doug was the only tree that survived some cataclysmic windstorm, and a hundred years ago, it was one of only a few to survive another (this storm was helpfully recorded in one early timber surveyor's diary, but otherwise forgotten to history). This apparently means that BLD is a survivor - more capable than most trees of hanging on in the wind - and hopefully, that means that clearcutting around it won't have done it any more harm than happened naturally in the first two events. It's this sort of multiple perspectives that make me trust in Rustad's narrative: it is easy to use the sight of the lonely tree to say, "This is bad", but just like the sawmill owned by a Native band that has a four hundred year conservation plan, there is often another side to every story.