Life North of the 54th

Transcript

Opening Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff]

Garett:
Welcome back to Life North of the 54th. I'm Garett Brown.

Preston:
And I'm Preston Brown. We're happy to have you join us today on our podcast.

Garett:
This episode, we wanted to share with you something that we found interesting. Last year, we talked about Dr. Mary Percy Jackson, and there are lots of interesting things in the Peace Country, and they affect people in so many different ways. And this time, we were interested in talking about the W.A.C. Bennett Dam.

Preston:
Yes, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam is named after the politician, Bennett, who was a politician in British Columbia in the 1960s.

Garett:
Yeah, it's a massive hydroelectric dam built on the Peace River in Northern British Columbia. It is built a little bit upstream from Hudson's Hope and is one of the largest earth filled dams in the world.

Preston:
Yes, the dam is so large that it stands 186 meters tall or 610 feet high from the valley floor. And the dam itself has created the largest lake in the province of British Columbia.

Garett:
And the third largest artificial lake in North America.

Preston:
Yeah, to give a perspective, the lake runs North and South 250 km and 150 km East to West.

Garett:
It covers a total area of 680 square miles and easily seen from satellite imagery from space.

Preston:
Yeah, so if you wanna find it, just go on the maps and you'll see this huge lake that in the shape of a "T" in North Eastern British Columbia.

Garett:
The "T" is because we have the Finley and Parsnip Rivers combining to form the Peace River. So as it comes from the North and the South, they combine into the Peace River as it goes East out of the Rockies and down towards the plains. The dam makes Williston Lake, which is this massive lake that we're talking about. And the lake fills the Rocky Mountain Trench area. So the Rocky Mountain Trench, also known as the Valley of a Thousand Peaks, extends practically a thousand miles from the Flathead Lake Montana area to the Watson Lake Yukon area. And in the Rocky Mountain Trench are four major river basins, the Columbia, the Fraser, the Peace, and the Liard. So very big stretch of mountains and often used for visual navigation from airplanes because the valley is so distinct as it divides the Rocky Mountains.

Preston:
Yes. I have seen all those rivers, the Columbia, Fraser, Peace, and Liard, and they are all grand rivers. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah, they're all pretty big.

Preston:
Yeah. And so the dam was between 1960 and 1967 was when the government of BC decided to construct the dam and chose the location specifically up towards Hudson Hope.

Garett:
The dam was part of a two rivers policy by Premier Bennett who had the idea to put hydroelectric dams on the Peace River and the Columbia River as part of a grand injection of jobs and industry for British Columbia. Part of this idea, even though the Columbia River, known mostly to go through the Northwest United States and out by Portland, its headwaters are in British Columbia. So the idea was to put a dam on the British Columbia side and to generate electricity there. Of course, the United States would not necessarily be happy in taking all of that power away. So Bennett wanted to sell electricity to the Americans.

Preston:
Yeah, but the problem was the provincial government wanted to sell electricity to the American federal government, but they had to go through the Canadian federal government to sell that electricity.

Garett:
And the Canadian feds were not happy about that. The project was a little bit rough going, but the dam on the Peace River did end up happening and it was built in the early 1960s.

Preston:
Yes. I think that's interesting because our grandfather on our mom's side was from the United States and he went up with a relative to work on the Peace River Dam, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam back in the early days. And I think that's one of the things that influenced him to return to the United States and then return again to the Peace region to settle with his family. And even his parents came with him. That's one of the reasons in our heritage why we are from the Peace Country.

Garett:
Yep, that's right. For some it was work and then for others like our father's dad, it was agricultural opportunity and the rich lands of a Peace Country. The construction itself used a coffer dam, which is a temporary dam used to drain a portion of the waterway for construction purposes, because it's a really intense engineering project to put such a massive earth filled dam. So you have to basically reroute the river while you build a dam in the river. They managed to do it. It took a lot of work, but they actually managed to do it ahead of schedule and on budget, which for a government project is rather astonishing.

Preston:
Yeah. The work involved over 20 unions and they were bound by a 10 year contract. A 10 year construction contract for myself, having worked in the construction industry, would be rather intimidating and skeptical of a contract of that length. [chuckles]

Garett:
Yeah, especially considering many of the people who worked on the project were not hired before the project started, but they were hired during the project and probably left before the end of the contract.

Preston:
It is considered to be a successful project, considering how remote the location is and how far it was from civilization. Though we grew up not far from it. By world standards, it is far from a metro area.

Garett:
Even though the dam was built pretty far away from civilization, there were people living in the area. The Tsek'ehne people were living in the Rocky Mountain Trench. Their ancestors had used the 190 mile natural route, which they called the Trail of the Ancient Ones, along the Finley and Parsnip Rivers. But as Daniel Sims, a member of the Tsek'ehne First Nation, said in his PhD thesis titled, "Dam Bennett: The impact of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam and Williston Lake Reservoir on the Tsek'ehne of Northern British Columbia." He said, "Prior to 1961, neither level of government made much effort to ensure the Tsek'ehne truly understood anything about the project. Apart from some brief interactions by inquisitive newspaper reporters, nobody even spoke to the Tsek'ehne about the project. After 1961, Indian Affairs more or less handled the entire matter for them. This was highly detrimental for the Tsek'ehne since the federal government proved unwilling to seriously challenge the province regarding the proposed dam. While at the same time, Indian Affairs failed to properly inform the Tsek'ehne what was happening. As a result, once the dam was constructed, the Tsek'ehne not only witnessed the drowning of their homeland, but also were suddenly made aware of the fact that the state did not recognize their title to their homeland." In researching this episode, it seemed one of the things that was motivating to Premier Bennett was this idea of generating so much electricity for people as population grew and demand for energy grew. Such a massive dam on the Peace River would provide an incredible amount of electricity, not only for the region, the Peace region, but also a lot of electricity for those living farther south. And the Tsek'ehne were small in number compared to the size of the population farther south. And so they weren't consulted, and Bennett assumed that disrupting the way of life of fewer than a hundred people was worth it to him to inject industry and growth into the economy.

Preston:
I do think it's interesting that the government at the time wasn't interested in hearing the opinion of the locals. I'm sure that there really just needs to be an understanding of the government's opinions and ideas, of the locals' opinions, ideas, to have the best outcome for both. The strength of the dam for power and energy to provide for the needs of many people, but also the consultation of the locals, being their land, I think just there was some major miscommunication and neglect.

Garett:
Yeah, I think you're right, Preston. It's a difference of perspective too. Bennett believes that any natural resource that was not used was wasted. So he pushed for the development of ways to harness the enormous unrealized hydroelectric energy power potential of the Peace River. And Cole Harris from his 2002 book titled "Making Native Space" wrote that "the idea of progress was also an attitude towards land, because progress was seen to be manifest in the growing European ability to dominate nature. In this light, people whose marks on the land were slight and whose lives were tuned to the rhythms of nature were obviously unprogressive and backward." Close quote from Cole Harris. Not necessarily that's exactly what Bennett believes, but it's a much different perspective to have a European idea of progress and civilization to see such massive rivers and such potential for hydroelectric power compared to the way of life of fewer people who in a lot of ways don't seem to be using the land because the land seems unchanged by their interaction with it. You know, it's just a different way of life that yes, it's really frustrating from both sides. Yeah, I don't know.

Preston:
[chuckles] There's no good answer, Garett, right? But understanding all sides from all parties is really where the best decisions can be made.

Garett:
From what I understand, the neglect of the Tsek'ehne people was devastating to them and their way of life. And while there is more that can be done for reconciliation with them, BC Hydro has tried in some ways to bring more light to their actions from the past. In a renovation to the Hudson's Hope Visitor Center, BC Hydro says that, "Standing next to this huge symbol of power, the dam itself, it's hard for people to realize that up that canyon and across the mountains are people who lived and thrived and were part of the land. And that valley was flooded, taken away from them, with many of them not really understanding what was happening." Close quote. Yeah, it's difficult. It's difficult to wrestle with the things that have happened that have affected people when it is both devastating and beneficial.

Preston:
Yes, and I think that's one of the important things about learning history in general is to be able to understand what has happened so that when it is current times turn to make decisions, that they will be better informed, make better educated decisions to help benefit all those involved when a decision such as hydroelectric dam is to be put in place.

Garett:
Yeah, Preston and I are not trying here to solve issues created by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, and we're also not claiming to have a solution for reconciliation. We wanted to do this episode because when you look at the Peace Country and you see the W.A.C. Bennet Dam, it stands very prominently as a very large and interesting feature in the Peace Region. And that's what drew our attention to it. And as we sought to understand more about the dam itself and about its size and facts about it, that's when we came across more about the story that I had not heard before, coming from European descendant that I had not learned before about the Tsek'ehne people and the devastation that was caused to their way of life by the dam. So I have complicated feelings, but we wanted to talk about the dam, we wanted to talk about the story, and we wanted to share our experience of it and what we have learned from it.

Preston:
Yeah, there really is no solution for past events that can be corrected for past events very well. So we feel the need to present the information and the history itself, because we find it interesting and we find that we can learn from this event and experience from what we've learned.

Garett:
There is a fantastic Canadian documentary directed by Luke Gleeson that was released in 2021 titled "The Scattering of Man." You can watch it on CBC Gem. So if you're not in Canada, you might need a VPN or something to watch it, but I highly recommend it. It was about 75 minutes long and they go through documenting a lot. They have a lot of historical footage to see as well. Very grainy. You know, it was the 1960s.

Preston:
Cameras were in color. [chuckles]

Garett:
Cameras were in color, that's true, but they were not high definition. But there are some very beautiful shots of the Rocky Mountain Trench and Luke Gleason tells the story of the Tsek'ehne people. And I was deeply moved by it. It was really devastating to see the trauma that the people went through, of the displacement, death, and the destruction that these people experienced, that these people are paying with their lives for power for this electricity by BC Hydro. We'll put a link to the video in the show notes if you're interested in going to watch it. I do recommend it.

Preston:
Yes, there's a popular saying that hindsight's 20/20. If we do all the things that would happen on a project like this, would the project have been done differently? But that's what we learned from history, is how to do things differently to make improvements in our own lives and our own society.

Garett:
Yeah. There's a lot we can learn. And I think that there's also a lot that we can take for ourselves. It's unlikely that Preston and I will be part of a massive engineering project that would scape the landscape of so many hundreds of square miles. But I think I can let the things that I've learned change me and my perspective on the way that I see the world and how I view history. I can let it affect me.

Preston:
Yeah. We're grateful that you could join us on our podcast. We hope that you found the W.A.C. Bennett Dam and its history as interesting as we found it.

Garett:
Yeah. Links to where we found this information will be in our show notes, as well as a link to archival photos of the dam. Put a link to the archive, the BC archives site, and it should just load up with a bunch of images that you can peruse and see. Under construction photos and before photos and after photos, it's quite interesting to look around.

Preston:
Yes.

Garett:
And as a podcast, we cannot transmit images to your ears. [chuckles]

Preston:
I was gonna wonder how you're gonna show images on audio program.

Garett:
Yeah. So you'll have to go look at that yourself if you wanna see those images. But yeah, thank you so much for listening. If you have feedback for us about things that we've talked about, you can email us at lifenorthofthe54th@gmail.com, or you can go to peacecountrylife.ca/feedback and let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

Preston:
Yes. Thank you for listening. And we hope to see you on our next episode.

Garett:
Take care.

Ending Theme Music:
[bass guitar riff with drumbeat]