View of Carmanah Canyon as seen from the trail to Canada’s tallest tree.
Carmanah park fight chronicled
From 10,000 years BP - Following the retreat of the last ice age, the processes of forest evolution in the Carmanah Valley proceeded undisturbed by humans. Native Indians used the resources of the valley on a limited basis, but their activities left no significant impact on the natural landscape.
Early 1900s - For a few hundred dollars, the logging industry bought the trees growing on 30 percent of the land area in Carmanah, the first timber licenses in the valley.
1955 - The B.C. government grants MacMillan Bloedel a tree farm license that includes Carmanah Valley. In return, MB agrees to provide jobs and a mill and to log on a sustained yield basis.
1956 - MB timber cruisers inventory Carmanah Valley. One of them later recalls seeing world-record-sized Sitka spruce.
1984 - MB presents for public review its 1985 to 1989 management and working plan for TFL 44, showing no development in the Carmanah/Nitinat area. Other MB documents show no logging in Carmanah until 2003.
1985 - Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) publishes its Canadian Landmarks newspaper - the first public presentation of a proposal to preserve Carmanah.
1985 - MB shifts its harvest quota from other areas into the Carmanah/Nitinat area, revising its logging plans to include Carmanah without public knowledge or review.
1986 - MB obtains adjustment of Pacific Rim National Park boundary near Cheewat Lake to facilitate easy construction of an access road into the lower Carmanah watershed area.
April 1, 1988 - WCWC members Randy Stoltmann and Clinton Webb discover logging roads newly constructed to the edge of Carmanah and roadways surveyed into the heart of the valley's spruce stands. MB development plans show proposed logging throughout the middle and lower Carmanah Valley in 1989, including the best spruce groves.
Wanton waste and environmental degradation characterize MacMillan Bloedel logging near Carmanah. This industrial giant plans to do the same to all but two percent of the valley where Canada’s tallest trees grow.
May 2 - Vancouver Sun runs headline reading, "Tree hunter's claim of forest giants sparks preservation plea"; the first major media mention of Carmanah Valley.
May 13 - Heritage Forests Society and the Sierra Club present MB, government and media with a brief entitled A Proposal to Add the Carmanah Creek Drainage With Its Exceptional Sitka Spruce Forests to Pacific Rim National Park.
May 19 - MB voluntarily halts all road construction in Carmanah for one month to allow study of the valley.
May 30 - Four WCWC volunteers begin trail construction in Carmanah Valley in pouring rain.
June 1 - MB asks WCWC to halt trail construction. WCWC does not comply and continues building trail.
June 10 - MB engineers discover a 95-metre-tall spruce, the Carmanah Giant, growing near Pacific Rim National Park. It is the tallest known tree in Canada and the world's tallest recorded Sitka spruce.
June 29 - MB proposes two reserves, a nine ha area to protect the Carmanah Giant and 90 ha encompassing some of the largest Sitka spruces in the mid-valley.
July 1-3 - WCWC completes first phase of trail building in mid-valley and hosts the Carmanah Caravan, a Canada Day celebration for hikers and campers, which attracts over 150 people to the valley.
July 15 - In the House of Commons, Bon Wenman, MP for Fraser Valley West, proposes an amendment to the boundaries of Pacific Rim National Park to include the Carmanah Valley within the park. Amendment fails.
July 22 - MB seeks a B.C. Supreme Court injunction to halt WCWC trail building in Carmanah Valley.
July 26 - B.C. Supreme Court dismisses MB's request for an injunction.
July 26 - The B.C. Forest Service requests that MB prepare a revised logging plan for Carmanah Valley by the end of September 1988.
Aug. 28 - WCWC trail crew reaches the Carmanah Giant.
Sept. 10 - MP Bob Wenman and Nitinat Indian Chief Peter Knighton officially open the Carmanah Valley trail.
Oct. 6 - MB releases revised plans for Carmanah. It now plans to clearcut all but two percent of the valley. The area proposed for preservation is increased from 99 ha to 175 ha out of the Carmanah's total area of 6,730 ha.
Oct. 27 - WCWC publishes this newspaper.
November - B.C. Forest Service begins its review of MB's new plans, requesting public comment.
January, 1989 - MB hopes to resume road construction and logging in Carmanah. WCWC hopes that political pressure persuades government to conduct an independent assessment of the ecological significance of Carmanah and its potential value to all Canadians as fully protected parkland.
