The Rocky Mountain Trench

I wrote a play many years ago called A Height of Land. I got the idea travelling through the flat boggy country north of Prince George around Summit Lake, the area where the Pacific and Arctic watersheds divide, where the water can’t quite make up its mind which way to go.

My play opens with an old woman talking about squatting to pee in the bush, watching her water trickle off into different directions, shifting her feet to keep them clear, all the while creating a mini-watershed, rivulets creating their own passages, dividing and spreading.

This play was about Smithers – and never mentioned Summit Lake or points north. And folks around here don’t think about the beleaguered Peace River watershed much – twice dammed, tar sands, oil wells further north, we don’t think about rivers without salmon. Salmon are central to our lives. Salmon are what bring the conservation attention and dollars to the Morice, Bulkley and Skeena rivers and the north coast.

But I have always been fascinated with the Parsnip and Finlay, rushing toward each other from the north and south, careening down the Rocky Mountain Trench only to crash at the forks and turn abruptly east to pass through the Rockies into the northeastern prairie lands, into the Athabasca and the Mackenzie, passing through some of the richest and most diverse wetlands on the planet and finally into the Arctic Ocean. I’m describing this because this incredible watershed doesn’t register in the west. Not linked by water or by fish, we live separate lives even when we live in the same province and the same country.

But there is, now, something that could, quite literally link us - in ways that could diminish us all. This pipeline. Summit Lake is the spot on Highway 97 where the water shifts north and east: Crooked River, the Parsnip River, the Ingenika, the Omenica, the Nation, Blackwater, Manson, and the creeks – Ekland, Mischinsinlika, Gataiga, Buth, Lignite, Scovil, Diache, Tsedeka, Dastaiga, Morfee, Mugaha, Tutu, Tony, Patsuk, Kimta, Latla, Inati – they flow into the remains of the Parsnip/Finlay/Peace watershed, through the devastation of the Williston Reservoir into the huge inland delta of the Athabasca and beyond to the Mackenzie and the Arctic Ocean. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline proposes to go under the Parsnip, just upstream of the Hominka River and will travel for quite a few miles along the north side of the Missinka. Names I’d like to hear about from people who have travelled there.