Sierra Quadra is bringing Robert Bringhurst’s poem ‘The Ridge‘ to  the Quadra Community Centre, at 7:30 PM on Saturday October 21st.

In an interview with Cortes Currents, Ray Grigg said he believes this is the 80 minute long poem’s world premiere.  

It is also the first of four performances Sierra Quadra is putting on this year. They also have two films lined up. On Dec 16, 2023, they will be showing ‘Once You Know’ and on Feb 3, 2024, ‘Keepers of the Land.’ A fourth event is still being planned.

Grigg explained, “There is a ridge on Quadra Island called the Heriot Ridge and Robert Bringhurst lives just below it. He hikes it often. It’s a rocky outcropping that separates the west from the east part of the island. It’s rich in history, botany, zoology and all sorts of things. Robert has written this long poem about it involving the geography, the history, the First Nations, the arrival of people. It’s a symbol of what’s happening on the island specifically and on the planet generally.”

“The ridge has fortunately stayed fairly pristine, but it’s a symbol of a larger concern. It’s a reminder that our time on this planet as humanity is pretty brief.  We’ve only been here as a species for 350,000 years approximately, maybe actually less, about 250,000. Civilization is barely 5,000 years old. The ridge has been here a  lot longer, and the trees have been here a lot longer. This is some of the feeling that I think that Robert is trying to give to us in this poem. We are an ephemeral species and our influence is ephemeral. We may just have to back away from  the immediate traumas we’re experiencing and place ourselves in the larger historical natural context to understand what is happening and how we deal with the climate crisis.”

The Poetry Foundation describes Bringhurst as ‘one of Canada’s most revered poets,’ who draws his inspiration from Native American myths and storytelling, the Bible and ancient Greek poets.

According to the Sierra Quadra press release, ‘Bringhurst is the winner of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, and a former Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. Trained initially in the sciences at MIT, Robert has made his career in the humanities. Widely celebrated for his work not only in poetry, but also in typography and Native American linguistics, he is an Officer of the Order of Canada … and the author of many books.’

RG: “Our film ‘Once You Know’ is  a little more confrontational. It’s a French based film about a young guy who finally confronts the reality of climate change. For him it’s an existential crisis and it should be for us too. Maybe it’s a  a sequel to The Inconvenient Truth. I think we’re starting to get to the place where we really have to confront the environmental situation, it’s going out of control.”

“On February 3rd, we have an opportunity to show a documentary on the  Klemtu people in the North Coast. It’s a documentary done by Tavish Campbell, who is the son of one of the executive members on the Sierra Quadra Committee. It’s being shown in a film festival in the US, and it seems to have been shortlisted for an award. It’ll be the local premiere of that film.” 

“Then to kind of round out this season on March 30, 2024, we have a program which isn’t firmed up yet. We’re talking about a community forum on environmental issues, maybe about four people, and then a dialogue of those four people with the community about how  people are coping with the environmental situation.”

“This last summer was a sobering summer.  We are at 1. 24 degrees and we’re getting weather anomalies that are pretty scary. Aside from heat domes, fires, floods and storms, I think we’re actually having to confront an existential crisis, not only locally, but internationally. There are questions of food security.  This summer’s forest fires in BC cost the British Columbian government a billion dollars. What could we do with a billion dollars for schools? for homelessness? We have so many things that need attention. Away goes not only a billion dollars fighting fires, not only that, but it’s added over 1.7 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. That’s pretty scary stuff.  Are we on the slide towards disaster? I think we’re starting to ask that question and we should be asking that question.” 

“How do we deal with climate issues?  Do we keep plodding forward with more information? We’re not perfectly clear what we’re going to do and what we should do. We’re losing climate stability. The predictability of crop production is going down. Sometimes we don’t quite know what’s going to happen for crop production.  This is becoming more and more common and is a big threat.” 

“Sierra Quadra is in this situation where we are processing all of this stuff, and we really don’t know what to do. We’re a few people on a little island on a big planet that is rapidly shrinking and we feel powerless.  I think lots of people feel powerless. One thing we might do is just explore what all of this means and how we can prepare ourselves.”

Top image credit: taken from poster fro the Ridge

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