July 2007
Dedicated
environmental activist Colleen McCrory, honored internationally for her
campaigns to save Canada's forests from logging, died Sunday from brain
cancer in the small southeastern British Columbia town where she was born.
Her sudden illness and death at age 57 was a shock to her family, friends
and colleagues.
"The whole environmental community is sad today," said friend and
colleague Sue Fox Gregory, communications director with the Western Canada
Wilderness Committee.
McCrory died at her home in New Denver where she founded the Valhalla
Wilderness Society in 1975 and ran it for more than three decades.
After eight years of intensive lobbying and campaigning, Valhalla
Wilderness Society succeeded in the establishment of the 49,600 hectare
Valhalla Provincial Park in 1983. The park lies across Slocan Lake from
New Denver and encompasses most of the Valhalla Range of the Selkirk
Mountains.
For her achievement, McCrory was honored with the 1983 Governor-General's
Conservation Award.
Despite being deeply in debt and exhausted by this effort, McCrory
continued her fight to save British Columbia's imperiled forests by
co-founding the National Save South Moresby Committee.
South Moresby Island, known as Gwaii Haanas in the Haida language, is part
of the Queen Charlotte Islands, also called Haida Gwaii, located 130
kilometers (80 miles) west of the rugged northern coast of British
Columbia. Known as the Canadian Galapagos due to the large number of
endemic species, these islands are the ancestral home of the Haida nation,
McCrory spent the next several years lobbying to save the forests of these
islands although a local pro-logging newspaper led a smear campaign
against her and the South Moresby supporters.
Her life was threatened repeatedly, and a two year boycott of her New
Denver clothing store finally forced her to sell it.
After years of struggle by the native people and environmental groups,
including McCrory, the region was protected from further logging in July
1987 when the British Columbia and Canadian governments designated it a
National Park Reserve.
In 1988, she was honored with the IUCN-World Conservation Union's Fred M.
Packard International Parks Merit Award.
After these victories, McCrory expanded her work across Canada.
As coordinator of the British Columbia Environmental Network from 1989 to
1990, she organized environmental activists working on issues such as
mining in provincial parks and forestry.
In 1990 she travelled across the country documenting the pulp and paper
industry's plans to double the amount of logging taking place in Canadian
forests.
In 1990, McCrory received the Equinox Citation Award for her achievements
in saving Canada's environment.
In 1991, after a cross-Canada trip documenting the crisis in Canada's
northern boreal forests, McCrory founded Canada's Future Forest Alliance,
a broad network of environmental, native, labor and community groups and
individuals interested in reform of forest policy and practice.
"Canada is the Brazil of the North," she would frequently say. "Brazil is
losing one acre of forest every nine seconds. We're losing one acre every
twelve seconds."
After 1992, McCrory took her Brazil of the North campaign to Brazil, Japan
and other countries. In the process, she helped to form the Taiga Rescue
Network, a coordinated international effort to protect the boreal forests
of the world.
In 1992, McCrory was recognized by the United Nations Environment
Programme, UNEP, by placement on the Global 500 Roll of Honor.
That year she also won the prestigious $60,000 Goldman Environmental Prize
given to outstanding grassroots activists.
In June 1998, she won the Vancouver Island Human Rights Coalition citation
for outstanding contributions to protection of the environment, which was
presented by British Columbia's Lieutenant-Governor.
In June 2000, McCrory took part in the Stockholm Environment Institute's
Global Dialogue, A Forum on Our Sustainable Future at Expo 2000 in
Hannover, Germany.
Speaking about British Colombia’s forest crisis, she warned that almost a
million hectares of forest per year were being harvested.
She stressed that true forest stewardship will bring about sustainability
and the potential for implementation of a community ecosystem-based plan.
McCrory ran for the Green Party in the 2001 provincial election, finishing
third in the riding of Nelson-Creston.
Continuing as head of the Valhalla Wilderness Society, McCrory was
frequently invited to be a guest speaker at environmental conferences in
Canada and abroad.
She succeeded in having the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, the Goat
Range Park, and the Spirit Bear Conservancy established in British
Columbia.
Fellow Canadian environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki told the
Canadian Press that McCory will be missed.
"I think that she’s one of the giants in the environmental movement,"
Suzuki said, "not just in British Columbia or Canada, but around the
world."
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