Torrance Coste

Mark Worthing

Last March, we travelled to northern Vancouver Island and hosted four public meetings about logging in the span of five days. The topics? The loss of old-growth rainforests, raw-log exports, and how unsustainable forestry is affecting ecosystems and communities up and down the Island. The meetings were tense, emotional and exhausting. There was pushback against a lot of our message, and many conversations were raw and difficult. We learned a tonne. In a few weeks, we’re going back to do it again. The vast majority of Vancouver Island’s original forest has been logged. One way or another, the end of old-growth logging is coming. We have to talk about what this means. We have to talk about how communities adjust so that the trend of shuttered businesses and shrinking logging towns doesn’t continue to grow.