FOSBA Bulletin September 2025
- Friends of Stiillwater Bluffs
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
A well supported Fantasy
IT’S OFFICIAL THE STILLWATER BLUFFS IS FINALLY A REGIONAL PARK
It’s April 10th, 2032, exactly 20 years to the day following David Moore’s clear and passionate plea to the PRRD to “please inform Island Timberlands (owner of Stillwater Bluffs) that the RD is considering DL3040 for a park.” (see FOSBA bulletin July 2024). The Regional District’s Chief Administrative Officer at the time, Mac Fraser, wrote a letter to Island Timberlands and the company backed off on their logging/development plans. And now, 20 years later, Mosaic Forest Products, the management company formed to oversee the operations of Island Timberlands and Timber West, holders of the majority of Private Managed Forest Land (PMFL) in B.C., has finally decided to sell lot 3040 to the qRD for a fair and affordable price in the interests of garnering public support for their selective logging operations in the qathet area.
The past management practice of clear-cutting blocks of forest had been mostly abandoned by the year 2030. While foresters early on were convinced that Douglas Fir seedlings would have excellent growth in the barren landscape of mineralized soils and full-on sunshine after the clear cut, they failed to realize the fire trap they were creating in the process, especially with the advent of summer droughts due to global warming. With the massive surface area of their millions of needles, monocrop plantations of Douglas fir and other coniferous seedlings were highly efficient at capturing sunlight and turning it into wood. That same amazing efficiency, however, could turn those tiny needles into a firebomb when exposed to fire on a hot, dry, windy summer day. As the closely planted seedlings grew till their branches touched, and the landscape became parched with summer drought, fire once struck could spread as fast as the wind could blow. Frightening for firefighters was how the fire created its own wind. Three seasons of smokey summers, evacuation mandates, losses of homes and businesses together with rapidly increasing insurance rates left the timber companies reeling, not only from the wildfires taking out their plantations but more so from lawsuits as it became apparent that just as with the tobacco industry, the knowledge of the potential disaster was well understood long before the fires began. Read here the excellent article by Dave Broadland in Focus Magazine, Aug.11,2021
On July 29th, 2025 a landmark legal opinion appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail Commissioned by the Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative (CCLI) and authored by Canadian law firm Resilient LLP (https://ccli.ubc.ca/landmark-legal-opinion-finds-that-canadian-directors-risk-lawsuits-over-climate-and-nature-inaction/). Within it reads the following: “Canadian company directors who fail to address climate and nature risks, such as biodiversity loss, freshwater stress, or ecosystem degradation, could face legal action”.
The opinion confirmed that nature risks fall squarely within directors’ legal duties under Canadian law. Under the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) and similar provincial statutes, directors have a duty to act with care, diligence and loyalty in the best interests of the corporation. This includes a legal obligation to identify and manage foreseeable material risks
According to the opinion, nature risks are no longer optional issues and are considered foreseeable and financially material by courts. Directors have a duty to assess and respond to these risks accordingly. Boards that do not act on nature risks may be subject to negligence claims, shareholder lawsuits, greenwashing investigations, and other liability risks.
Industry spokespeople were quick to point out that this was not law, but only a legal opinion. However, it was soon clear that although advisory opinions might not be legally binding, the rules they identified were, and this advisory opinion would consequently be relied on by the courts as a highly authoritative statement about the law.
July and August of 2025 were significant in another respect. The Mount Underwood fire just south of Port Alberni, in what was perceived as our wet coastal forest, virtually exploded into our consciousness as it grew in size from a large puff of smoke upon discovery on a quiet Monday evening to span over 20 square kilometers in just two days as a Rank 5 fire. Two days later, an ominous pyro cumulus cloud could be seen towering over the fire site, and thick smoke began blanketing the city of Port Alberni. A clean air centre was opened at the Alberni Valley Multiplex, and the First Nations Health Authority and nations in the region began issuing masks and air purifiers to people who needed them. Eventually the fire would grow to 3,671 hectares (36 square km), larger in area than the city of Powell River – a mammoth fire by Vancouver Island standards. On the sixth day, 33mm of rain fell, knocking the fire down from a Rank 5 to a Rank 1 or Rank 2 (smouldering ground fires or small open fires), and residents breathed a huge sigh of relief as their homes and businesses were spared.
The forest industry would never be the same. First came the questions percolating in the minds of the frightened residents. Why did this happen, and could it happen again? How vulnerable were they? Are these new enormous fires entirely due to global warming or are there other causes at play? What could be done to prevent or at least slow down the fires? Who is responsible for damages if clear cuts are left strewn with dead, dry, flammable debris? Did the plantations of monocrop coniferous trees tightly spaced and all the same height provide a fire the structure it needed to incinerate the landscape? Was the situation foreseeable? When was it foreseeable?
Long before that fire of 2025, flood victims in Grand Forks B.C. had given future plaintiffs excellent direction in launching class-action lawsuits accusing the province and logging companies of faulty practices causing massive flooding in their community in 2018. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/class-action-grand-forks-flooding-1.5725692). The “proposed class” in the Grand Forks case were “all persons” living within 15 kilometres of the community whose homes, businesses, health or livelihoods were “lost or destroyed” in the extensive flooding.
As the annual “smoke season” arrived in subsequent years in coastal BC there were substantial losses of large areas of natural forest. As well, frightening evacuation orders, loss of homes and businesses and in some cases lives. Several class action lawsuits were started with the Grand Forks example quoted above becoming a kind of template. As well, Insurance companies launched their own lawsuits to recover losses while environmental organizations and affected First Nations brought forward wave after wave of litigation as they saw the fires and resultant ecosystem damage as a direct result of poor forestry practice and oversight. The main defendants were logging companies, owners of Privately Managed Forest Lands, and the B.C. Government.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers didn’t just go after the companies, they went after the decision-making directors within those companies. Share values in forestry companies once seen as “green investments” withered precipitously. Large public service unions began to question their investments in forestry companies where share prices were taking an enormous hit. Companies and governments had been dangerously prioritizing profit over environment far too long. Unfavourable judgements began to seriously affect bottom lines as the Canadian courts consistently followed the science when rendering decisions. And the same questions were being asked repeatedly: “Was the situation foreseeable? When was it foreseeable?”
The system of clear-cut logging had to end. Its main reason for existing in the first place was that it was the cheapest way to get logs to market. The unfortunate reality was that both government and industry had come face to face in an unwinnable battle with an angry fire-wielding mother nature. The choice was obvious. Either make radical changes to the forestry sector or watch the forestry sector make radical changes to our planet.
Local citizens enduring the smoke, the fears, and the losses became increasingly angry. Forestry companies and governments were both found guilty in the public mind. Powerful new regulations were established along with serious government oversight – in sharp contrast to previously depending the goodwill of corporations to do the right thing.
In the process everyone learned how to manage the forest in a far better manner. Many strategies were incorporated such as fire breaks of deciduous trees, planted to slow a determined fire. The end results were a much healthier and safer forest not to mention a forest fire fighting cost to taxpayers greatly diminished.
As a means to appease and bring people on board, a newly transformed forestry company agreed to sell the coveted Stillwater Bluffs to the qRD at a very fair price and in order to help the company through a difficult financial crisis the citizens of the qRD agreed to help pay for it. To that end we are hosting a gigantic dine and dance event at the Dwight Hall on June 10th, 2032 to raise funds for help in the purchase.
See all of you there!
Our fantasy is based upon some real facts. Be sure to open the links above and read for yourselves.
Please remember to inform your new friends about FOSBA and encourage them to give us their support. We are at https://www.fosba.org
Thanks for reading,
Lauritz
Pres. FOSBA
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