The next morning, it was still raining. Today was to be my first day at Pacific Rim. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I had a bit of an idea with what I’d be doing. My supervisor came and picked me up at 8:15 … 8:45, and we drove up the highway from Ucluelet towards Tofino. The rain was beating rhythmically on the windshield, and I was trying desperately not to fall asleep. My supervisor told me about what to expect today: we had a group of university students from Langara, and today was to be as much an introduction to “restoration” for me as it was for them…
We arrived at the beach and Mike, my supervisor, lead the introduction, saying something like “Wickaninnish Beach is one of the last remaining sites of sand dune ecosystems on Vancouver Island — and it’s also the biggest. But it’s threatened by invasive grasses”. So the group put on ill-fitting red vests that labelled them as “volunteer” or “dune restoration crew” and we wandered out onto the beach of drizzle. The wet coast was as I remembered it: wet. Even in spite of my rain gear, you still get some wet, and if you stand still, the cold of the wind and drizzle grips your bones and shakes you. We wandered, though, up the beach. We came across the first sand dune area, with a large fore-dune covered in grass. “We need to remove European and American beachgrass to preserve the ecological integrity of this site” was the general understanding…
But I couldn’t help feeling this was a very evil operation. Who are we to play God over this or that species of life? Since I’ve been in BC, I’ve seen how the government plays these vile games of euphimized-eugenics on the natural world: “restoration”… A genocide by any other name…. A few months previously, the BC government spent thousands of tax dollars on the ‘wolf cull’. Apparently the local caribou population is dwindling. The almighty government feels this is due to the wolves. So, they hired a guy with a high-powered rifle and sat him in a helicopter, flying out over the cariboo lands and shooting wolves indiscriminately. All this in the name of “restoration”. Man will answer for the sins of his machine. This wasn’t any different, in my opinion, from the spirit of eugenics which spawned the holocaust, or the Rwandan genocide, or the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities in Cambodia. Might not be human, or animal, but it’s still the systematic destruction of a race or species. Here was the government, again, suggesting that this species did not have the right to live.
So I didn’t participate, and I’m going to try my damndest not to participate over the next three weeks. I took pictures, and documented what I saw. What a terrible position to be in: the fate of my entire investment towards becoming an educator — literally thousands upon thousands of dollars and working hours — all resting on this unethical volunteer work which I MUST complete in order to pass this program. Evil work, life often is; the machine of society and progress at constant work. This is going to be a great challenge, for me. So far, I’ve added parts to the “lesson” I’ll be creating and giving which has students critically evaluate Parks Canada’s actions towards these invasive grasses. We’ll see to what extent I can keep my own sense of morality…. or my placement.