Let’s pause for a moment of gratitude. June 26 will be a kind of armistice day — the old growth battlegrounds of the “War in the Woods” in Clayoquot Sound will receive permanent protection. The Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations have landed an agreement with the province of B.C. to protect about 760 square kilometres of the world’s most stupendous ancient forest and other unique biomes, creating 10 new conservancies to protect the old growth. In the process, the nations forced a local revamp of B.C.’s heinous “Tree Farm Licence” system — the “TFLs” that reign across the province’s “crown lands,” effectively privatizing the living world into corporate satrapies. The armistice has been a long time coming. The Tla-o-qui-aht Nation declared Meares Island a tribal park in the early 1980s — long before such inconveniences were taken seriously by provincial governments or Ottawa.