When I was a young boy my family took a road trip from our home in Union Bay, B.C. down the coast to Portland, Oregon. I have fuzzy memories of the trip, I remember passing through the Peace Arch border crossing, hotelling and dining in Seattle, the Space Needle. I vaguely remember some of the small towns and the pool at the Super 8 in Portland. Other than that my memories of the trip are long gone except for one thing. I remember seeing alot of swag at the border crossings with the Maple Leaf and the Star Spangled Banner adorning the same garment, or pin or poster. I remember asking myself why these borders are even there? What good is it to screen every person, randomly search vehicles and prohibit the purchase and possession of certain goods? It seemed like a whole bunch of bullshit to me. I wondered how one side of a river could be ours and the other side theirs. The fish and other wild animals could come and go as they pleased in their own environment, why was it so different to us?
Fast forward 26 years and I find myself asking the same questions. The difference is for most of those 26 years I believed Canada was the greatest country in the world, we had the best government, the best social programs and the best environmental protection in the world. I was a patriot through and through. How times have changed. I must admit, Canada is still a pretty darn great country...but it seems we are stagnating. We are headed down the slippery slope of corperatism and that scares the shit out of me. We are losing our rights and freedoms to excess rules and regulations. The environment is under attack, and it has no defense but a few "radical fundamentalists" that are being pegged as terrorists by a majority government that was voted in by a minority of the votes cast. The so called democractic voting system is rigged to keep those in power in power and the rest of us confused and apathetic. I see no progress. Not one bit. So I am done.
My homeland is Cascadia. The borders of Cascadia are defined by Earth and Water, not by the stroke of a pen. The range extends from Northern California in the south up to Southern Alaska in the north and from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Crest of the Rocky Mountain Range in the east. It is a land of rugged beauty, untamed and as free as the wind. The interconnections between land and sea are palpable, the returning salmon nourishing the grand cedars and firs that bound the rich loam soils to their rocky substrate. The spring freshets of snow melt, carrying minerals and mulch from high in the alpine to the deltas and estuaries, giving fertility and oxygen to the newly hatched alevins. The mycelium of the forest floor, the internet of the natural world, perhaps more complex than we will ever understand.
Nearly 16 million human beings share this land with its flaura and fauna, a number that it growing at a steady pace, largely due to immigration from Asia and a growing interest in non renewable resource extraction and export. As a permaculturist I find this slightly troubling as many of the principles and ethics are constantly being ignored in the name of the almighty fiat dollar. Indeed we are passing on a legacy of degraded land and increased inputs with little to no yield. What will our children's children be left with? This is a question many Cascadians ask on a regular basis. For we believe that todays decisions will be born unto the seventh generation.
If this land is to be preserved and allowed to provide for its human inhabitants for the next seven generations we need to act now. We need to break the chains of Ottawa and evict the White House. Their irresponsible actions are no longer welcome here. A land this wild, this complex need not be governed, for only the inhabitants at the community level truly understand the ebb and flow of the tides, the ultimate power of the sea and the true economy of the natural world. Only the children of this land can learn the ways of the salmon, the cedar and the chanterelle, and observe the power of the waterfall. This land was born wild and free, and so it shall return.
