This Was Our Valley

In their non-fiction book, This Was Our Valley (1989), Canadian authors Shirlee Smith Matheson and Earl K. Pollon examine the environmental and social impacts of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, a hydroelectric dam on the Peace River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. A 2003 reissue also details the impact of Peace Canyon, a second dam on the same river. The second reissue in 2019 concerns the debate over yet another dam, Site C, which as of the book's publication is in the early stages of development and has been a point of contention in British Columbia politics. For the original 1989 edition, the book won the Alberta Culture Nonfiction Prize.

From 1952 until 1972, W.A.C. Bennett was British Columbia's Premier, a position equivalent to a state governor in the United States. Bennett was known as a proponent of high modernism, which entails unflinching confidence in the potential of science and technology to reorder the natural world for the benefit of humanity. The idea for the W.A.C. Bennett hydroelectric dam grew out of this philosophy. Bennett wished to harness the power of the Peace and Columbia Rivers and redirect it so it would create energy and wealth for British Columbia, rather than the federal Canadian government. Despite this, Bennett convinced the Canadian government to allow him to sell electricity produced by the future dam to Americans for $275 million over the next thirty years. To finance the project, he nationalized British Columbia's electric utilities, later rolling it into BC Hydro, which would grow into the largest electricity provider in British Columbia.

Construction on the dam began in 1961 with the large-scale clearing of hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. In fact, when the dam was completed and the reservoir full, the trunks of all those trees rose to the surface of the lake. Meanwhile, 42 million cubic meters of rock and dirt were stripped out of a nearby glacial moraine in order to construct the dam itself. As for the workers, they belonged to more than twenty unions across multiple countries, including the United States and Japan. The construction of the dam often entailed extremely claustrophobic work, requiring workers to breathe toxic exhaust fumes in very tight spaces. Workers inside the dam were also subject to cave-ins, and sixteen people died during its construction. Meanwhile, the workers had little recourse to improve conditions as their contracts guaranteed that they could not take any strike or lockout actions against BC Hydro.



In 1967, the project was completed on schedule, and the dam first began producing power in 1968. Though deemed a success by business leaders, there were a great number of social and environmental impacts associated with the dam's construction. For example, the damming of the Peace River caused devastating effects for many members of the Tsay Keh Dene First Nations tribe who lived in the area. Much of the prey the tribe relied on for sustenance, including a number of species of fish, mountain caribou, and muskrats, either went extinct locally or left the area. As it became clear that the project would make the habitat around the area unlivable, the government of British Columbia paid $1.7 million to buy the land and relocate the people living there. Though new reservations were created for some of the people, their lives had been uprooted, and social assistance payments to First Nations individuals in British Columbia rose by 300 percent between 1965 and 1970. In addition, white homestead farmers pushed off their land to make room for the project were often bought out for tiny sums. BC Hydro offered one farmer just twenty-eight dollars for a thousand acres of farmland.

Meanwhile, the area upstream from the dam suffered enormous environmental impacts. The flooding resulting from the reservoir led to the drowning of a significant amount of wildlife. A number of fish species, including mountain whitefish, rainbow trout, and Arctic grayling, faced steep declines in their populations. In the fish that did remain, very high amounts of the toxic chemical mercury were detected.

In 1980, BC Hydro completed a second dam fourteen miles downstream from the W.A.C. Bennett Dam known as Peace Canyon. In addition, in April 2010, the company approved preliminary plans for yet another dam known as Site C. As BC Hydro continued to win the necessary approvals from regulatory agencies, the David Suzuki Foundation estimated that the Site C dam would threaten up to $8.6 billion in ecological values, just over the $8 billion estimated price tag of the dam's construction. The construction was also a point of heavy contention among First Nations peoples in the area. In addition to flooding culturally and historically significant sacred sites, the local watershed was home to a number of animals these tribes relied on for survival, particularly moose. They also worried that the levels of mercury introduced into the local fish species would make them too toxic to eat.



Nevertheless, in 2016, the Canadian federal government said it would "not revisit projects that have been reviewed and approved." Meanwhile, the Premier of British Columbia, John Horgan stated, "We've come to a conclusion that, although Site C is not the project we would have favored or would have started, it must be completed."

This Was Our Valley, a fascinating look at the social and environmental impacts of large-scale engineering projects, recommends a balance between economic and ecological interests.