Chronology
Upper Carmanah Valley canyon area. Upper valley forests stabilize the water flow and protect downstream spruce groves. The ancient forest is home to a wide variety of plants and animals. Photo taken 1989.
Creating a park
Before white contact till present day - Native Indians used the resources of the valley but their activities left no significant impact on the natural landscape.
1955 - The B.C. government grants MacMillan Bloedel a tree farm licence which includes Carmanah Valley.
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 publishes its Canadian Landmarks newspaper-the first public presentation of a proposal to preserve Carmanah.
April 1, 1988 - WCWC members 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 now show proposed logging throughout the middle and lower Carmanah Valley in 1989, including the best spruce groves.
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 a 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 hectare area to protect the Carmanah Giant and 90 hectares encompassing some of the largest Sitka spruces in the mid-valley.
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 volunteer crew finishes building the trail to the Carmanah Giant. The tallest know tree in Canada.
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 hectares to 175 hectares out of the Carmanah's total area of 6,730 hectares.
November - MB takes its revised Carmanah plan to the people. Hundreds attend the public meetings and the overwhelming majority stress the need to preserve the entire valley.
January 1989 - MB releases yet another revised plan for the Carmanah, this time calling for clearcutting all but 8 percent of the valley. The area slated for preservation is now a narrow 538 hectare strip along the lower part of Carmanah Creek. Environmentalists label the strip a (Italics) blow-down and wash-out zone (End Italics).
February - MB hands over its new plan to the B.C. Forest Service. In Victoria 200 people gather in front of the main forest service office for a demonstration calling for an independent federal study of proposed logging on the Carmanah Valley.
April 6 - Federal member of parliament, Bob Wenman, presents a study of MB's plan for the Carmanah to B.C. Forest Minister Dave Parker. The study, commissioned by Wenman and prepared by a forest ecologist from the research branch of the library of parliament, cautions against allowing any logging in the Carmanah for fear of destroying the spruce eco-system.
May 6 - WCWC organizes the first of several artist expeditions into the Carmanah.
May 25 - 1,500 IWA union woodworkers from Port Alberni travel to Victoria to demonstrate in favour of logging the Carmanah alley. The Pulp Paper and Woodworkers Union of Canada with 7,000 B.C. members, disagrees with the IWA union and sends a letter to Premier Vander Zalm calling for a halt to logging plans.
Trail system completed
Volunteer trail crew.
September 20, 1989...one last snip of the loppers, one last fallen salal bush pulled out of the
way and the WCWC's Carmanah trail passed from dream to reality!
Since May of 1988 hundreds of
volunteers had braved rain, floods, court injunctions, mosquitos, food shortages, 10 foot thick
fallen logs and lush rainforest undergrowth. Now, thanks to their efforts, hikers can make a
leisurely three-day journey through some of the most spectacular temperate rainforest in the world
along a trail that goes the entire length of Carmanah Valley.
June - A commission headed by B.C. government backbencher, Graham Bruce, endorses logging most of the Carmanah.
June 20 - MP Bob Wenman presents an 18,000-name petition in the House of Commons calling for the entire Carmanah Valley to be added to Pacific Rim National Park.
June 22 - 1,800 people demonstrate in front of the B.C. legislative buildings in favour of preserving all of Carmanah.
June - WCWC trail builders begin to extend the trail system into the upper Carmanah Valley.
July - WCWC begins work on a coffee table book entitled, Carmanah-Artistic Visions of an Ancient Rain Forest , to feature the works of 70 of the artists who had earlier travelled to the Carmanah Valley.
July 11 - Canadian Wildlife Service biologists discover a tiny sea bird called the marbled murrelet in the central Carmanah Valley. The bird is increasingly threatened as its ancient forest habitat is replaced by tree plantations.
August 5 - WCWC launches the first of a series of scientific expeditions into the Carmanah. Scientists call for Carmanah preservation.
September 20 - Volunteer trail builders finish the trail through the upper Carmanah and link up to the trails in the middle and lower valley.
October 17 - Environment Canada responds to the 18,000 name June 20th petition by requesting that the B.C. government not rely so heavily on MB's studies of Carmanah. Environment Canada offers to do joint federal provincial studies of Carmanah and says that the federal government stands ready to add Carmanah to the national park if asked to by the B.C. government.
October 18 - WCWC releases Carmanah, Artistic Visions of an Ancient Rainforest . The 168 page hard cover art book puts forward an impassioned argument for preserving the entire Carmanah Valley and features the work of 70 of Canada's best artists. WCWC continues to call on people to exercise their democratic right and express their opinion about Carmanah to the elected officials.
