a river flows through you

Me and Mom along the Columbia River

I was born in Trail B.C. and spent the first 18 months of my life in view of the Columbia River, just a few kilometers from where the river crosses into the United States.

For the next 60 years, I lived in northern Canada. I lived near a creek. I lived on Great Slave Lake. I lived next to Lesser Slave Lake. Summers on the Red Willow River and later, Gregg Lake. I love the water. It brings peace to my soul.

In all those years, I didn't hear the Columbia calling me. Maybe I wasn't listening. But it drew me to it anyway. 

Today, my husband and I live just a few kilometers from the marshy source of the Columbia. Every day we look down at this beautiful valley, watching the river flow beneath the blue Purcells. We see it ebb and flow, waters at first trickling and then bursting into the wetlands with the spring freshet and the summer snow melt, gradually diminishing as summer turns into autumn and then winter. We watch the river valley green up in spring, turn golden in fall, and then turn white with snow. We hear the coyotes howl down in the river bottom. We listen to the chatter of the waterfowl, we see the ospreys and bald eagles soar above, and observe bears make their slow stroll from the mountain ridges to the valley below. 

Prairie Crocus on Old Coach Trail

View from our daily walk along the Tukats Trail in Fairmont

View from Mount Sabine

Autumn view from Old Coach Trail

Bald Eagle on the ice

We have floated down it, kayaked it, skated on it, skied on it and beside it, hiked along it and above it, and dragged our friends and family on walks to see it. We have canoed it, swum in it, and pulled our grandson over it on his sled. My husband has fatbiked it. We have read about it and driven along it.We have explored its source in the marshes of Canal Flats and walked along the sands of its delta as it exits the land and gently flows into the Pacific at Astoria, Oregon. 

If conditions are just right, it's just us and the dogs gliding along the river under the clear blue sky with only the eagles as company. On days like those, it's hard not to feel "peace like a river" in your soul, as the old hymn says.

Columbia Lake near the source of the river

Delta of the river near Astoria, Oregon 

The Columbia River is the lifeblood of our valley.  

It's a place where people work hard to preserve the natural environment. Wildlife conservation areas abound. It's a place where volunteers build hiking and cycling trails and walking paths. Where they count bats to monitor white-nose syndrome and pick fruit to protect the bears and lobby the government to build wildlife overpasses to protect the mountain sheep. Where Ktunaxa Elders and local school children gather to re-introduce salmon fry to the waters. Where people erect platforms for ospreys to nest on and ice fishermen feed their catch to the bald eagles. Where the biggest events are wildlife festivals and environmental film shows. The river has created an environment people will fight to preserve as many people embody the First Nations proverb, 

Only when the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted, you will realize that you can’t eat money. 

Fairmont Float

Green view from Fairmont Ridge, July

Our daughter and her dog kayaking in the wetlands

Skating with the dogs

Skiing next to the river 

Hiking along Columbia Lake

Standup paddleboarding 

Our grandson and our dog, Columbia River in the background

The Columbia River starts in the Rocky Mountain Trench, in a boggy wetland that flows into Columbia Lake. The lake drains into the Columbia River near Fairmont Hot Springs, then meanders north to Lake Windermere, through the Athelmer wetlands, and continues north past Radium Hot Springs and onward through the Columbia Valley between the towering Purcell and Rocky Mountains. This first segment of the river - the one with which I am most familiar-is the largest intact wetlands in North America and part of the Pacific flyway, a safe haven for more than 160 species of migratory birds.  When the river reaches Golden, it joins the Kicking Horse River, then the Blaeberry, the Illecillewaet and other glacier-fed rivers and streams, before it reaches Revelstoke. There, it turns abruptly south. From that point, it It is joined by dozens of other streams rivers and becomes a broad and mighty force by the time it crosses the border into the U.S.

The Columbia near Trail, B.C.

The Columbia is 2000 kilometers long-the largest river in the Pacific Northwest with a drainage area the size of France.

David Thompson's map

Donald Trump speculates that borders are just arbitrary lines on a map. But that map could have been drawn differently.  David Thompson -arguably Canada's most prominent map-maker- explored the Kootenay region and paddled the Columbia for years, accompanied by his wife Charlotte Small, and assisted by indigenous guides and paddlers. While working for the North West Company, he was tasked with finding the mouth of the river and building a fort. He reached the mouth of the river in July of 1811, Historians speculate that if Thompson had arrived just two months earlier, he would have reached his destination before Captain Astoria of the U.S. He would have built his fort and the territory along its banks through what is now Oregon and Washington would be part of Canada today.

If that had happened, imagine that map. Imagine how different things might have been.

There would have been no need for the Columbia River Treaty (see note below). Perhaps the Columbia and its tributaries would not have been dammed in dozens of locations, interrupting the waterflow and preventing the Chinook salmon-  at one time numbering in the millions - from spawning in its waters. Perhaps the river would still flow, clean and clear, instead of being polluted with the radioactive waste generated by the building of nuclear weapons. (See note below about the Hanford site).

Map of the Columbia River. Drainage area in green. Wikimedia Commons

But I digress. What worries me right now is what is happening south of the border. 

Right now, the Columbia is being threatened.

You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps and Canada, and all pouring down and they have essentially a very large faucet. You turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it, and it’s massive, it’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. You turn that, and all of that water aimlessly goes into the Pacific , and if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles. (Donald Trump, September 2024)

 

President Trump has pulled out of talks regarding the modernization of the Columbia River Treaty. 

He is threatening our sovereignty, our economy, and our water.  

This river, the river that brings peace and joy to Canadians, is at risk.

That makes me angry. 

And I am ready to fight.

Me and Finny on the river

NOTES

*The Columbia Valley Treaty.  In the 1950s, flooding in the U.S. led to Canada and US. signing the Columbia Valley Treaty. The agreement, signed in 1961 by the US and ratified by Canada in 1964, saw the province of BC build three dams (the Mica on Kinbasket Lake, the Revelstoke and the Keenlyside on the Arrow Lakes) to prevent flooding downstream. and to provide water for hydroelectric power to our southern neighbours. In exchange, the U.S. agreed to pay B.C. a portion of the hydroelectric power generated by the dozens of dams south of the border. Thousands of acres of farmland and sacred indigenous sites were flooded by these dams. Irreparable damage was done to ecosystems, including the decimation of the salmon population. Today, B.C. is required to release water into the U.S. even when it means erratic water levels along the Arrow Lake reservoir, impacting farms and ranches in the area.

The treaty, according to experts, needed to be modernized. First Nations, never consulted in the original agreement, were involved. A move to make environmental changes to support the reintegration of the salmon, was initiated. For ten years, changes were discussed and an Agreement in Principal was reached in 2024. It has not been ratified and negotiations are currently on hold.

*The Hanford Site, part of the Manhattan Project. This 600 square mile nuclear processing plant at one time contained 9 nuclear reactors. The site was selected due the to cold waters of the Columbia needed to cool the nuclear reactors, and the abundant hydroelectric power produced by dams along the river. Plutonium produced there was used in the first nuclear bomb and in the the "Fat Boy" bomb used on Nagasaki as well as thousands of other nuclear weapons. It released radioactive material into the river that caused elevated cancer rates in the area. It is now the site of the largest environmental cleanup in the US, currently employing 10,000 people. Some say the site, containing contaminated water that leached from underground storage tanks, will never be fully cleaned up.

Hanford Site, 1945. US Signal Corps