British Columbia's North Coast Research Articles

Marching to the Beat of a Newer Drum: Cultural Continuity and Revival in Nisg̲a'a Church Armies, 1894–1970

The emergence of evangelical revivalist organizations in the late nineteenth century, such as the Church of England's Church Army—and the more widely known Salvation Army—is typically understood by historians to be intertwined with the development of the working class in an industrializing capitalist society. Yet the rapid growth of Church Army branches among aboriginal peoples of British Columbia's north coast under different conditions in these same years challenges the often-assumed universality of categories of analysis such as class. This article explores the movement from a perspective that draws upon contemporary Nisg̲a'a memories of their Church Army and places these memories within the context of the challenges the Nisg̲a'a faced as a result of Euro-Canadian efforts to colonize them. It reveals the limits of such categories and the value of rethinking the history of aboriginal participation in larger, globalizing movements from indigenous perspectives. For the Nisg̲a'a, the attraction of the Church Army and its novel forms lay in the possibilities it offered for continuity during a difficult period of their history marked by cultural repression.

The Impacts of Wind Speed Trends and 30-Year Variability in Relation to Hydroelectric Reservoir Inflows on Wind Power in the Pacific Northwest.

In hydroelectric dominated systems, the value and benefits of energy are higher during extended dry periods and lower during extended or extreme wet periods. By accounting for regional and temporal differences in the relationship between wind speed and reservoir inflow behavior during wind farm site selection, the benefits of energy diversification can be maximized. The goal of this work was to help maximize the value of wind power by quantifying the long-term (30-year) relationships between wind speed and streamflow behavior, using British Columbia (BC) and the Pacific Northwest (PNW) as a case study. Clean energy and self-sufficiency policies in British BC make the benefits of increased generation during low streamflow periods particularly large. Wind density (WD) estimates from a height of 10m (North American Regional Reanalysis, NARR) were correlated with cumulative usable inflows (CUI) for BC (collected from BC Hydro) for 1979–2010. The strongest WD-CUI correlations were found along the US coast (r ~0.55), whereas generally weaker correlations were found in northern regions, with negative correlations (r ~ -0.25) along BC’s North Coast. Furthermore, during the lowest inflow years, WD anomalies increased by up to 40% above average values for the North Coast. Seasonally, high flows during the spring freshet were coincident with widespread negative WD anomalies, with a similar but opposite pattern for low inflow winter months. These poorly or negatively correlated sites could have a moderating influence on climate related variability in provincial electricity supply, by producing greater than average generation in low inflow years and reduced generation in wet years. Wind speed and WD trends were also analyzed for all NARR grid locations, which showed statistically significant positive trends for most of the PNW and the largest increases along the Pacific Coast.

Assessment of Ground-Motion Models for Use in the British Columbia North Coast Region, Canada

Abstract The 28 October 2012 M w 7.8 Haida Gwaii earthquake was the second largest earthquake instrumentally recorded in Canada’s territory and was strongly felt across the British Columbia north coast (BCNC) region. Data from the Haida Gwaii sequence and other events in the region are compiled for 56 earthquakes between moment magnitude M w 4.6 and 7.8 that occurred between 1996 and 2014. Pseudospectral accelerations (PSA) at 5% damping are calculated and compared against several modern ground‐motion models (GMMs) using different binning criteria (e.g., distance, magnitude, mechanism, source‐to‐site azimuth, and event chronology). Overall, no single model is found to be appropriate for the BCNC region, with GMMs generally overestimating recorded near‐source (i.e., Earthquake motions recorded prior to and including the 2012 M w 7.8 earthquake were generally more comparable with some GMMs at longer spectral periods but still possessed significant biases based on residual analyses. Additionally, earthquakes with normal mechanisms gave less short‐to‐mid‐period shaking relative to strike‐ and reverse‐slip events. Online Materials: Summary of the candidate ground‐motion prediction equations, indicating their distance metrics and conditions of use.

Richard A Rajala. Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870–2005. Victoria, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2006. viii + 294 pp. ISBN 0-7726-5460-3, $49.95 (cloth).

Richard A Rajala. Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870–2005. Victoria, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2006. viii + 294 pp. ISBN 0-7726-5460-3, $49.95 (cloth). - Volume 9 Issue 2

Canada's Forests, a History. By Ken Drushka. Forest History Society Issuesseries. Illustrations, tables, maps, bibliography, index. Feds, Forests and Fire. A Century of Canadian Forestry Innovation. By Richard A. Rajala. Transformation series Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870–2005. By Richard A. Rajala. Illustrations, notes, maps, bibliography, index

<i>Canada's Forests, a History.</i> By Ken Drushka. Forest History Society Issuesseries. Illustrations, tables, maps, bibliography, index. <i>Feds, Forests and Fire. A Century of Canadian Forestry Innovation.</i> By Richard A. Rajala. Transformation series Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index <i>Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870–2005.</i> By Richard A. Rajala. Illustrations, notes, maps, bibliography, index

Review: Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870-2005 by Richard A. Rajala

Review: Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870-2005 By Richard A. Rajala Reviewed by Jan Kunnas European University Institute, Firenze, Italy Richard A. Rajala. Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia's North Coast, 1870-2005. Victoria, Canada: Royal BC Museum, 2006. 294 pp. Hardbound. ISBN: 0-7726-5460-3. $US49.95. [Richard A. Rajala. Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest: Production, Science, and Regulation. Vancouver: UBC Press, June 1998. 286 pp. Paperback. ISBN 0-7748-0591-9. $US 24.95] In Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest, Richard A. Rajala explored the roots of the deforestation crisis in the Douglas fir regions of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon between 1880 and 1965. In Up- Coast, the geographical scope is restricted to British Columbia's central and north coast from the Seymor inlet in the south to the Cassiar District in the North, and the Queen Charlotte Islands. The time scope, however, is prolonged from 1870 to early 2005. My original intent was to review only the most recently published of the books, but due to their complementary character, it seemed worthwhile to combine them for the sake of the review. The back cover of the new work promises that: Up-Coast presents the first comprehensive history of British Columbia's central-and-north-coast forest industry. This would, of course, be impossible for such a long time span (135 years) within less than 300 pages. Wisely, Rajala concentrates on one aspect, in this case wood procurement for the needs of the forest industry, starting from the first commercial sawmill on the north coast in operation by 1874, and ending with the needs of giant pulp-and-paper firms. For example, water pollution gets only a few lines of attention while the effects of forestry practices on salmon spawning grounds gets a bit more. Even so, every page of the book is fully packed with information, as Rajala takes us through several boom-and-bust cycles in the forest industry. We learn how the World Wars and, especially, how the need for airplane spruces affected the forest; we take a trip along the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and a boat trip with the International Woodworkers of America's Loggers' Navy. The book also works as a social history of the district, including both First Nations and other forest- or forestry-dependent local communities. I, and other readers not familiar with North American logging practices, would certainly need to read more about different logging and transporting methods presented in the book. Fortunately many of these are presented in detail in Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest. Now I know what a steam-donkey is, or how a cable logging system works. (I still, however, do not know how an A-frame works.) Up-Coast has a clear lesson for all resource-rich but capital-poor countries or regions. Providing cheap resources for companies to attract investments does not automatically generate welfare for the people and communities in the region, at least not in the long run. One of the reasons is that new labor-saving technology constantly eats up the employment benefits of increased production and logging. Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest concentrates on technology advances in logging operations, and how they transformed logging into an industrial operation. We also learn how flawed research supporting large- scale clear cutting survived as the results were convenient for short time industrial interests. Neither of the books are easy reads due to their massive amounts of detailed information, but both are well worth the effort. My only real reason for complaint is the use of endnotes instead of footnotes, which creates a lot of flipping back and forth. Luckily, in the endnotes for Clearcutting, each page heading clearly showed to which pages in the main text the notes referred, a nice feature which unfortunately was missing from the newer work.

Hydrometeorological thresholds for landslide initiation and forest operation shutdowns on the north coast of British Columbia

Debris flows and debris avalanches are the most widespread and hazardous types of landslides on the British Columbia north coast. Triggered by heavy rain, they pose risks to forestry workers in sparsely developed regions. The scarcity of long-term quality rain gauges and the lack of weather radar information create significant challenge in predicting the timing of landslides, which could be used to warn and, when necessary, evacuate forestry personnel. Traditional methods to relate rainfall antecedents and rainfall intensity to known landslide dates have proven to be unsatisfactory in this study due to extreme spatial variability of rainfall, enhanced by the orographic effect and the scarcity of rain gauges in a very large area. This has led to an integration of meteorological variables in a landslide advisory system that classifies three types of approaching storms by the 850-mbar wind speed and direction, the occurrence of subtropical moisture flow, and the existence of a warm layer characterized by high thickness values of the 500- to 1,000-mbar pressure levels. The storm classification was combined with a 4-week antecedent rainfall and the 24-h rainfall measured near or in the watershed where logging operations are taking place. This system, once implemented, is thought to reduce loss of life, injury, and economic losses associated with forestry works in the study area.