The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed

by John Vaillant

  This is the future of the world’s “working” forests: a predictable supplier of genetically modified fibre. Increasingly, houses, furniture—the things that form our personal landscapes—are being made not from wood, exactly, but from wood “products”: trees that have been ground into chips and sawdust and reconstituted by various means into boards, sheeting, and architectural features. These products have such names as Finger-joined lumber (smaller pieces of wood fitted together into boards); MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard); OSB (Oriented Strand Board); WB (Wafer Board); Com-Ply (veneer backed with strand board); cementitious wood fibre (shredded wood that is bonded with cement and formed into boards); Homosote (construction-grade cardboard); Celotex (a variation); Hardboard (a.k.a. Masonite, a denser, thinner version of Homosote); particleboard; and, of course, plywood, which has been around for nearly a century now. The upside is that these products are light, cheap, easy to work with, and make certain kinds of waste a thing of the past, though another kind of waste has been rampant. Millions upon millions of board feet of old-growth Douglas fir have ended up getting peeled for plywood and similarly large quantities of Sitka spruce have been pulped for newspapers and telephone books. This is hard to imagine when one considers that, today, a two-by-ten-inch plank of clear (knot-free) fir or spruce is a luxury item, which perhaps is what it should have been all along. We are slowly being forced to come to grips with the true value of wood, and it’s expensive stuff.*12

  If you were to ask a logger today, What is the true value of wood? he would probably answer, “About a hundred and fifty bucks a cubic metre.” But a Vancouver building contractor named Duncan Schell penetrated to the heart of the question by responding with an oxymoron. “Wood is priceless,” he explained, “but only because it’s so cheap.” It may sound funny, but this is how our species has collectively evaluated this extraordinary substance that has been central to our survival and success ever since we first picked up a stick. However, Schell’s wisdom—so true for so long—is now being put to the test. Fifty years ago, magnificent trees were hauled out of the forest for a pittance, or simply cut and left to rot for the most whimsical of reasons. Today, logging companies are harvesting far lesser specimens with helicopters that cost $10,000 an hour to operate. Fallers can now be seen donning climbing harnesses and rappelling down cliff faces in order to get at previously inaccessible old-growth trees.

  According to the Washington Contract Loggers’ Association, the average North American uses the equivalent of a log thirty metres long by forty-six centimetres across (approximately 6.5 cubic metres) each year. Meanwhile, the amount of wood required to produce an edition of the Sunday New York Times would fill the Haida Brave more than one and a half times (almost twenty-five thousand cubic metres of wood).*13 But even though our appetite for wood is enormous, it has been outstripped by even more rapacious forces. As the planet warms, twin plagues of fire and beetle infestation are laying waste to northwestern forests faster than loggers ever could. By the end of June 2004—early, as far as northwest fire seasons go—a thousand forest fires had been reported in British Columbia alone. These, combined with hundreds of other fires burning between Idaho and Alaska, generated a smoke plume that was visible from the Bering Sea to New York City. Meanwhile, the mountain pine beetle has been surviving recent winters in unprecedented numbers and is multiplying at exponential rates to become the most destructive beetle infestation in recorded history, in North America. As of 2005, 100,000 square kilometres of British Columbia’s interior forest were infested (an area roughly the size of Newfoundland), and that number could double by the end of 2006. An infested tree is generally dead within a year; if it is not logged within a few years, it loses its value as a source of lumber. After that it can be salvaged only for pulp, if anything. Left standing, it becomes fuel for more fires, which—in the absence of cold winters—are nature’s most effective means of controlling beetle infestations. As a result of these mass forest deaths, “fire sales” of bug-killed and fire-damaged timber are being held throughout the interior Northwest, increasing annual allowable cuts while reducing to “salvage rates” the province’s stumpage fees (the per-stump premium paid to the government, which is a key source of income for timber-producing states and provinces). It is a boon to forestry workers, if not to the actual market price of wood, which generally decreases in the face of gluts.

  OUT IN HAIDA GWAII, the rain keeps most fires at bay and coastal timber is far less susceptible to the bug infestations that are devastating the interior. It is humans and the things they carry with them that remain the greatest threat to the islands. A terrible irony is that, philosophically, Hadwin was in sync with much of the local population: in December of 2000 an interracial group of islanders staged a protest—essentially, a no-confidence vote—against the Ministry of Forests’ handling of logging in the islands. There hadn’t been a demonstration of that kind in a decade, and this one was the biggest ever: 20 percent of the islands’ adult population participated. Since then there have been some striking changes, not just in the way logging is practised but in the status of the islands themselves.

  Neither the Haida nor any other tribes on the west coast of Canada signed comprehensive treaties with the British or Canadian governments when their lands were first colonized.*14 A number of tribes are currently negotiating land claim settlements with the Canadian government, and they are headachingly complex agreements which may ultimately resemble one-time payments of cash, land, and/or percentages of local resource revenues. In 2003, the provincial government made the Haida an offer of 20 percent of the islands and their revenues, but the Haida rejected the proposal out of hand. The tribe has made it clear that it will settle for nothing less than Haida Gwaii in its entirety, including fishing and mineral rights to the surrounding waters. This isn’t new; after formally withdrawing from Ottawa’s comprehensive land claims process in 1989, the Haida threatened to issue their own passports. “We have absolutely no intention of ever selling Haida title to Haida Gwaii,” said former council president Miles Richardson to a journalist at the time. “We are not, as a nation, going to go cap in hand to any people.”

  As far as this goes, little has changed in two hundred years. The only difference is that ever since the Haida (along with most other North American tribes) lost control of their historic lands, food sources, and personal destiny, they have been subsidized by the federal government. While subsistence hunting and fishing still play a major role in the lives of the Haida, unemployment—in the European sense of the word—hovers around 80 percent (about the same as in the Gaza Strip). In spite of this, few tribes have the media savvy and charismatic appeal that the Haida do.*15 As grim as some of their demographic statistics are, the Haida are a potent political and social force. This is an amazing accomplishment, particularly when one considers that the Haida are resurrecting themselves much the way botanists have attempted to resurrect the golden spruce. On a regular basis they perform large, inclusive ceremonies whose grandeur, complexity and sheer spiritual voltage is simply stunning. The healing and bonding power of these events is deeply felt—even by off-island visitors.

  In 2002, the Haida won a landmark case which required Weyerhaeuser to consult with the tribal council before logging particular areas.†16One result of this is that the annual allowable cut for the islands has been reduced by roughly half, but rather than alienating local Anglo loggers, the Haida have been forming alliances with them. The Anglo residents of Haida Gwaii have spent generations on the front lines of the timber and fishing industries, and they have few illusions about the stated good intentions of powerful entities from off-island. Unlike many loggers, who fly into remote forests and then move on when the trees are gone, most of the residents of these distant, close-knit islands are in it for the long haul; they have nowhere else to go. In 2004, the Anglo residents of New Masset and Port Clements threw in their lot with the Haida, signing an accord that says, essentially, that they trust the stewardship of the local Haida more than t
hat of Weyerhaeuser and the provincial government. Like the logging consultation clause, this is unprecedented in the history of North America. One of the signatories is Dale Lore, the current mayor of Port Clements; a logging road builder by trade, he, like many others, had a revelation in the woods. “I started out as a redneck logger,” he told a journalist shortly after signing the protocol affirming the Haida’s title to the islands in March 2004. “You know how to beat that picture of a clear-cut in your head? You talk about jobs, that it’ll grow back….” But the same questions that tormented Hadwin kept intruding: “What are we getting out of it, what are we doing for the future?” he wondered. “I can beat the picture; I can’t beat the epilogue.” There is some strong local opposition to Haida title, particularly in Queen Charlotte City, the government hub of the islands. “It’s not easy,” sympathizes Lore; “the unknown is scary.” But then he concludes with what sounds like a page from Hadwin’s book: “This is happening because the status quo is obviously fatal to us. People do not change willingly.”*17

  THE FATE OF HAIDA GWAII represents the fate of the Northwest Coast in microcosm, and one of the most extraordinary things about these islands—and much of the North American mainland, for that matter—is how forgiving it is in the face of abuse. Unlike the desertified tracts of the Middle East, this continent—so far—possesses a tremendous capacity for regeneration. In New England, the cradle of the North American logging industry, remarkable changes have occurred as many farmers’ fields, which were abandoned after World War II, have reverted back to a forested state for the first time in centuries. In much of the region, the local fauna had long since been reduced to a suburban menagerie of squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, and raccoons; thirty years ago, even deer and fox were a novelty. Over the past few decades, however, all that has changed; with the resurgence of the forests coupled with a parallel decrease in hunting, long-banished species have cautiously returned. Coyote, beaver, and wild turkey are commonplace now; the bald eagle is back, too, along with a well-documented explosion in the deer population (which poses a threat to native plant species). If this trend is allowed to continue, it is only a matter of time before the black bear, bobcat, mountain lion, and wolf reclaim their rightful places in New England’s long-altered ecosystem. The rivers of the Northeast are another matter: the Atlantic salmon population, in its wild form, has fallen by nearly 75 percent in the past twenty years. Today, the species exists primarily as a farm-raised caricature of itself whose flesh must be dyed pink in order to make it look “real.”

  Five thousand six hundred kilometres away, at the far end of the logging continuum, Haida Gwaii faces a much more complex recovery scenario. While the Anglo population has decreased by more than 10 percent in the past decade due to lost fishery and forestry jobs, the native population is resurging. Meanwhile, plans to reintroduce the sea otter are stymied continually by fishermen and abalone hunters who resent the potential competition, despite the fact that it is humans who have devastated the islands’ once-abundant abalone. Further complicating matters is a recent proposal to lift a thirty-year-old moratorium on oil exploration around the islands. Ashore there is another major quandary: shortly after the last Dawson’s caribou was killed in 1908, Sitka black-tail deer were introduced to the islands; with no natural predators, their population has grown exponentially and they now number in the tens of thousands. No one anticipated that two of their favourite foods would be staples of the understorey: red cedar seedlings and salal. Compared to a century ago, many of these islands now have a parklike feel: there is no brush; you can see dozens of metres ahead of you. It’s beautiful, but the dearth of young cedar is alarming. Cedar has housed, clothed, and defined the Haida for millennia; now carvers are wondering where the next generation of poles is going to be found. The Sitka spruce is doing somewhat better; in the Yakoun Valley, clear-cuts replanted in the 1960s have already grown into forests of thirty-metre trees. However, some islands and mountainsides still look as if they have been skinned alive due to the severe erosion that followed the clear-cuts. It remains to be seen whether this new generation of planned forests will ever achieve the elegant and massive complexity of their wild forebears, or if the people who ultimately control them will have the patience and desire to find out.

  EPILOGUE

  Revival

  How like something dreamed it is.

  How long will it stand there now?

  —W. S. Merwin,” Un-chopping a Tree”

  PORT CLEMENTS HAS SUFFERED much; not only did the town lose its mascot (the golden spruce is the centrepiece for the town logo), but in November of the same year, its albino raven died in a blinding flash when it was electrocuted on a transformer in front of the Golden Spruce Motel. True albino ravens—as opposed to grey or mottled—are all but unheard of. To get an idea of just how rare these birds are, consider this: Alaska and British Columbia, together cover nearly two and a half million square kilometres and contain the continent’s largest populations of ravens, and yet never in the history of bird observation and collection has a true albino ever been reported in Alaska. The Port Clements specimen is the only one ever to have been observed in British Columbia (it has since been stuffed and is now on display in the town’s logging museum). The raven is the most powerful creature in the Haida pantheon; it was Raven who ushered the first humans into the world. According to one famous Haida story, he started out white, only turning black when he flew out of a bighouse smoke hole, having stolen back the light for a world that had been darkened by a powerful chief. In a strange example of mythical consistency, the white raven’s mode of death caused a blackout in Port Clements. Why two unique and luminescent creatures would occur simultaneously against fantastic odds, only to die in such bizarre ways on the same remote island within a few kilometres and months of each other, is anybody’s guess. Science and the mathematics of chance fall short here, so myth, faith, or simple wonder must fill the void.

  For most people in the islands, the golden spruce is a fond, sad memory; people who have lost someone dear to them often speak of a light going out in their lives, and so it was with the golden spruce, its loss felt all the more keenly because it had grown in a place where light is such a precious commodity. “It rains a lot here,” explained one longtime resident, “and it’s cloudy; the golden spruce always looked as if it had the sun on it.”

  Beneath the scar tissue of forgiveness and philosophical resignation, though, there lies a lingering bitterness that is as pointed as ever. During a meeting with some Tsiij git’anee elders in which they were speculating about the current whereabouts of Hadwin, it became clear that all of them think he is still alive. When one of them suggested that he might come back to the islands, the eldest of them all, a sweet, crocheting octogenarian named Dorothy Bell who is known as “the mother of everybody,” shook her head. “If he does,” she muttered in a baleful tone, “I hope they hang him by his damn neck.” This was five years after the tree had been cut down.

  During a similar discussion about Hadwin between a group of tugboat operators, one of them, who had unknowingly crossed Hadwin’s path in Prince Rupert Harbour, said, “I’d have run him over in my tug if I’d known it was him.” Nobody was laughing. The same sentiment was expressed by Dale Lore when a heavy-equipment mechanic named Don Bigg abducted a young Haida woman in December of 2000. After being apprehended and charged in the Masset courthouse, Bigg was put in handcuffs and flown to Prince Rupert in a seaplane along with several other passengers, including the judge who had just heard his case. Halfway across Hecate Strait, however, he decided to exit the aircraft with a 110-pound police escort clinging to his leg. In the end, Bigg went out alone, falling 1,500 metres into heavy seas. His body was never found, but within a week a short, dark joke was circulating: “Hope the bastard landed on Grant.”

  Relatively speaking, most people here feel about Hadwin the way people in the States feel about Timothy McVeigh: he’s an outsider who came into their place and killed something preci
ous. If they catch him, he will pay. As far as many Haida are concerned, Hadwin is one more white guy who came out to their islands in order to take something away, only to leave behind yet another imported illness: this time, a new strain of terrorism. Hadwin has paid dearly, though; whether he is alive or dead, he has, for all practical purposes, become what the Haida call a gagiid. The word gagiid (ga-GEET) translates, literally, to “one carried away,” and it refers to a human being who has been driven mad by the experience of capsizing and nearly drowning during the wintertime. Dance masks depicting this creature are notable for their wild, piercing eyes, and for their blue or green skin, indicating prolonged exposure to cold water. The cheeks are sometimes shown studded with sea urchin spines—a graphic demonstration of the lengths to which the gagiid will go to keep from starving to death as he caroms between worlds in a state of violent and solitary limbo. However, with the right equipment, and the proper observance of ritual, the gagiid can be captured and restored to his human state, much as Europeans might treat a traumatized or mentally ill person with love, therapy, or medication.*18

  Ian Lordon, the journalist who covered the golden spruce story for the Queen Charlotte Islands Observer, and whose reporting did the most to reveal its nuance and complexity, understood that history was being made on two levels. “We’re witnessing a new Haida story,” Lordon explained: “The Death of the Golden Spruce. In a way, we’re fortunate to witness an occurrence that was worthy of setting this process into motion.”