Editor’s note: This was originally published in The Watershed, a Lions Bay community news blog.
After the provincial election with the two major parties committed to Woodfibre LNG, I thought this piece I recently wrote about living in Howe Sound for 52 years might be of interest.
“It’s the smell of money,” the skipper said as we tied three chip scows up to the buoys at Woodfibre 57 years ago. All around us were large yellow bubbles floating on the surface of the deep brown water. A noxious smell filled the air, which became familiar to me at the other pulp mills up and down the coast.
As we left with empty scows in tow, we could see the deep brown water coming into the Sound from the creek flowing out of Britannia Mine (once the largest copper mine in the British empire).
In those days, Howe Sound was so polluted there was little marine life at the northern end. This was added to by the pulp mill at Port Mellon, and if you purchased one of the new townhouses at Furry Creek in 1993, you had a view of two pulp mills belching out their smoke into the air.
When we moved to Lions Bay in 1972, on a November evening with overcast skies and rain, the stench of the pulp mills filled the car as we came around the corner at Horseshoe Bay. As we rushed from the carport to the house, it smelt as though the pulp mill was in the village.
When Britannia Mine closed in 1974, the sound remained polluted for decades to come until a massive cleanup of Britannia Creek finally achieved results. After the closure of Woodfibre in 2006, the sound slowly started to recover.
After 2010 protective cladding was installed on pilings around Squamish, and the herring population started to rebound. This resulted in the return of dolphins, porpoises, sea lions, humpback and killer whales after a nearly 100-year absence.
Whale-watching tours now operate from Sewell’s Marina in Horseshoe Bay, and it has become a common sight to see whales in the sound off Lions Bay.
The big question is, will the “smell of money” and the opening of an LNG facility at Woodfibre LNG result in the whales and other larger marine life abandoning the sound again?
It’s hard to believe that our two major political parties are in favour of an LNG facility in this incredible wilderness half an hour’s drive from Vancouver.
John Dudley
Lions Bay
