THE CANADIAN RIVER HERITAGE CONFERENCE: A RETROSPECTIVE
By Don Gayton, M.Sc, P.Ag.

The Fifth River Heritage Conference was a seamless and magical event. As a terrestrial ecologist, I found it to be a wonderful freshet of ideas, data, history and interesting people. Of course I learned much about rivers, but the Conference also made me aware of how much rivers are already a part of me, of us, and of Canada.

I had the challenging but delightful task of attending as many Conference sessions as I could, and winnowing out the consistent themes and conclusions. In this task I was ably assisted by a merry band of rapporteurs, who briefed me on the sessions I could not attend. So, fuelled by good strong coffee and frequent cookies, I shuttled between meeting rooms and simultaneous sessions, sheaf of notes in hand, trying not to be distracted by the classic architecture of the Hotel Fort Garry.

A conference is like a person; everyone sees a slightly different side. So I humbly tender my own personal view of the River Heritage Conference themes and conclusions, together with some random observations, to hopefully further the reach of this outstanding event.

Canada’s rivers have gone from discovery routes to transportation corridors to industrial developments to forgotten objects, but a river renaissance has begun. People are re-discovering rivers through adventure and history and eco-tourism. One participant who went on the Conference’s Seine River canoe outing, said to me: “I live in Winnipeg and I had no idea that we have such a magical river right in our City!” I think this is typical of the tourism re-discovery process, where a competent guide can get us to see everyday objects in new and compelling ways.

While there are always tradeoffs, there is no doubt that river adventure, river history and river ecotourism can help build broader constituencies for river conservation. Looking even further into the future, there may even be a niche for river restoration tourism, for those who want to go beyond mere paddling and viewing.

River-based tourism also holds the promise of modest economic development and diversification. However, river tourism advocates need to avoid the quick-buck, “smash and grab” style of business development which has marred some previous river ventures. River tourism in Canada’s North can be an engine of economic growth, and may even present an occasional alternative to hydro development. However, in Northern river tourism to date, it appears that most of the job and revenue benefits have not flowed to the local communities.

The evening celebration at the Forks, designating the Red as a Canadian Heritage River, provided a delightful kaleidoscope of cultures and histories. Warm and fuzzy, it was planned but unplanned, spontaneous and formal. There was pageantry of Red River and Canadian history, and somehow it resembled Canadian history: confused and confusing, fragile, contradictory, ongoing, colorful. John Ralston Saul has quite rightly described Canada as a process: we are working things out as we go along.

River administration and river planning are slowly, inexorably moving toward multijurisdictional control, with voluntary authorities patiently stitching together local and senior governments, First Nations, agricultural interests, NGOs and a host of others, to strike those dauntingly difficult balances between river needs and human needs. Case studies have shown that the prerequisites for successful multijurisdictional administration entities are common goals, clear decision-making processes, continuity of personnel and adequate resources.

One of my mentors, the ecologist Dr. Stan Rowe, wrote a paper called The Biological Fallacy: Life Equals Organisms. In the paper he attacked our circumscribed view of life consisting solely of those entities that metabolize, and contain DNA. True life, Stan said, is organisms plus the water, land, air and the myriad abiotic elements that sustain them. Our rivers are perhaps the ultimate embodiment of Dr. Rowe’s message; rivers are living things. They embrace not only the biotic and abiotic, but the cultural, the personal and the historical. As Peter Newman noted, Canada’s history is written in river water.

The trans-boundary administration of rivers adds another layer of complication, arising from differing local, regional and national priorities, policies and legislation. These arrangements require huge amounts of “face time” in meetings, and my hat goes off to the committed individuals who are working to make multijurisdictional and international river administration happen.

A key element of river administration, and river management, is real, respectful and honest public engagement. Too often “public engagement” is simply an afterthought, a token effort designed to make the public comfortable with a decision that has already been made. True public engagement requires the assembling and distilling of relevant facts, data and histories; development of possible project options/strategies; preliminary contact with local community leaders; extensive, convenient and well-planned open house meetings; effective summarization of public input and finally, the effective use of that input to select an option, modify an option or create a totally new project approach.

I am reminded of the recent book, The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. The author presented case after case where average citizens, given the right conditions of free access to information, were able to make decisions and choose options that were nearly as good as those made by experts. Public engagement is not an abdication of leadership, but rather informed, flexible leadership. Sometimes governments can lead best by following.

The management of rivers is transitioning from the intrusive and concrete-dominated engineering of my father’s era, when complete control of rivers was seen as the ideal. River management is now entering an exciting period of re-invention, and re-imagination. Floodways, natural drop structures, setback dykes and re-meanders are just a few examples of innovations, which attempt to work with the river and its life, rather than against it. Several speakers pointed out that a river itself is the tip of an iceberg, and management should embrace not only the river, but the terrestrial watershed that feeds it, and the floodplain that surrounds it. Many water quality, quantity and control issues are more effectively (and less expensively) dealt with in the watershed, before the water reaches the river, rather than after.

Some of the newer computer-based technologies of GIS, satellite imagery and modelling are giving us new tools by which to understand rivers, but there is no substitute for time on the river, sometimes slyly referred to as “management trips,” or “linear meetings.”

Floods, like forest fires, are natural disturbance events to which we have applied our greatest ingenuity to actively suppress. By doing so we have saved millions in property damage and perhaps hundreds of lives, but we are now beginning to see some of the ecological tradeoffs of that long-term suppression. One of the conundrums of ecology is that species and ecosystems not only adapt to, but actually depend on natural disturbance. A cottonwood times its seed release to maximum flood stage. A ponderosa pine forest relies on periodic fire to maintain appropriate stand density. Salmon rely on spring freshets to clean their spawning beds. And so on, and so on. Within the context of protection of property, natural resources and public safety, we need to develop controlled means of re-introducing (or re-allowing) key periodic disturbances, or find reasonable analogues to them.

Midway through the Confrerence, I was feeling humbled and overwhelmed by all the rivers that I don’t know, that I haven’t paddled or even seen. Perhaps I should retrace the steps of Hugh McLennan in Seven Rivers of Canada, to broaden my knowledge to Arctic, Hudson’s Bay and Atlantic-bound rivers.

River conservation often starts with a local hero, someone who, against all odds, advocates for a river or a reach, puts a name to it, and builds momentum for it. Many of our Southern rivers have been so circumscribed, polluted and forgotten, that it takes a grassroots individual to stand up and make us take notice. Environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) can also play a major role, in advocating, fundraising, motivating. Traditional approaches to land and river management are slowly catching up to the potential and opportunities presented by ENGOs.

River education was relegated to the smallest Conference room, but surely represents the biggest need. Well-crafted river curriculum packages are available for all grade levels, but school curricula are already full to overflowing, and nature education typically gets short shrift. Somehow we need to move beyond the afternoon school field trip, to develop longer, more intensive, interactions between young people and nature. In our approach to young people, as Justin Trudeau said, we need to approach them on their own terms, be honest, and walk our own talk.

I listened with interest to papers dealing with the emerging economics of ecosystem services. I was heartened to hear that the value of ecosystem services provided by the McKenzie River watershed far exceeds the oil and gas values that could be extracted from that same watershed. I was also intrigued to hear that the regional intensity of night illumination (from satellite photographs) is quite an accurate reflection of regional gross domestic product. In other words, the more energy we waste, the higher the GDP. Houston, I think we have a problem.

I came fully expecting to hear lively discussion of two river-related hot topics, the eutrophication of Lake Winnipeg, and the Devil’s Lake diversion. Surprisingly for me, these two issues were the unacknowledged “elephants in the room,” and studiously avoided. I think it is the job of people like us, and Conferences like this one, two walk right up to those invisible elephants, grab their trunks, and pull their tails. Another elephant that deserves tweaking, and one that lives in my home province of British Columbia, is the Fraser River. Designated a Heritage River in 1998, many of its salmon runs are in trouble, and some are on the verge of collapse.

Writers love metaphors, and as a writer of obscure books, I collected several, some of which were emblematic of the Conference itself. The voyageur canoe is an obvious one. The canoe has many cultures and jurisdictions on board. They have to communicate, coordinate, endure hardships together, and keep the enterprise afloat. The craft is made of natural materials, and fragile: the precious cargo is our collective river wisdom. The rapids and portages are difficult interjurisdictional situations, hundred-year floods, retrograde public attitudes, and lack of funding. As lonely river voyageurs, we need to make up our own myths to sustain ourselves, and maintain our commitment.

Another metaphor was river as Talmud, a great teacher imparting life lessons, if we have the patience and the willingness to listen.

But the metaphor that stunned me, the one that took my breath away, the one that overarched the great diversity that was the Canadian River Heritage Conference was this one: to care for a river, is to care for the human heart.

Don Gayton is an ecologist with FORREX, a non-profit natural resource extension society, based in British Columbia. He is the author of three books of non-fiction, with a fourth, Interwoven Wild, to be published this fall. His essay on the Columbia River is available at http://www.forrex.org/publications/jem/ISS14/vol1_no2_art7.pdf