Cortes at Fairy Creek: Part One - What inspired them?

De Clarke/ Cortes Currents - Most people are probably aware of the protest and blockade at Fairy Creek on Vancouver island. For over a year, forest defenders have blocked a logging road to prevent logging company Teale Jones from cutting intact old growth areas. For this special feature. I did a little oral history with seven local people who went to Fairy Creek to join that blockade.

After a public appeal for interviewees, I managed to schedule recording dates with Margaret, Aaryn, Caitlin, Maya, and Dani from Bluejay lake farm, and Cec and Christine from Whaletown. Their voices have been woven together to create a narrative from multiple points of view, which will be broadcast as a series of half-hour episodes in November and December.

I’d like to thank our interviewees sincerely for taking the time to tell their stories. I hope that this series will convey something of how it felt to be there on the ground at Fairy Creek; and I hope our listeners will find these firsthand accounts as fascinating — and as revealing — as I did during interview.

In the first episode (which aired Sat Nov 13, I ask our friends and neighbors, What inspired you to make that journey to ferry Creek? Why did you go? And what did you find when you got there?

Image credit: A picture of this massive Sitka spruce went viral earlier this year - photo courtesy of Lorna Beecroft