Today is Canada Parks Day

Thank You John Bergenske and Art Twomey

From Wildsight:

Emerald Basin
Yoho National Park
photo - Jenny Humphrey

This Saturday, July 19th, is Canada’s Parks Day. All across the country, Canadians will celebrate the important role parks play in maintaining healthy ecosystems, protecting habitat and contributing to human happiness. This year, however, many of our favourite BC parks are facing an uncertain future.

With the passing of the Park Amendment Act (Bill 4) this spring, consultation-free park boundary adjustments and industrial activities that were formerly prohibited in our parks are now permitted.

This Parks Day, we in the Kootenay region are also celebrating the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy. At 200,000 hectares, it is the largest protected wilderness in Southern BC, thanks in part to the efforts of a group of wilderness activists including Wildsight Executive Director John Bergenske and filmmaker Art Twomey. 

The group, alarmed at the pace and scale of the industrial activity around their homes in the upper St. Mary’s Valley, made movies and slideshows about the Purcells and began to tour around the province drumming up support for protection of their beloved mountains. John Bergenske remembers, “It came down to those old questions: if not now, when? If not us, who?”  In 1974, their efforts were rewarded with the creation of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy Provincial Park.

On Saturday, as we celebrate the importance of humans’ relationship with nature by honouring Canada’s parks, we need to remember that it’s up to us to protect these places for generations to come. To say yes to a future with wilderness and wild places.