Tag Archives: Matt Simmons

Indigenous Nations, Industry

‘Heartbreaking’: an overhead view of Coastal GasLink sediment spills into Wet’suwet’en waters, wetlands

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By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Sleydo’ Molly Wickham was composed and quiet as she stared out the window of a helicopter flying over vast stretches of TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory (yintah). Below, a wide swath cut through forests and wetlands, crossing creeks and rivers. 

A wing chief of the Gidimt’en clan, Sleydo’ was part of a small group on a monitoring flight to document the contentious project’s impacts as soaring temperatures rapidly melted last winter’s heavy snowpack.

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Animals

The last 33 caribou: fighting for the survival of a Wet’suwet’en herd

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

There’s a serene pocket of mountainous habitat in northwest B.C. where 33 caribou live, drinking from glacial-fed creeks and grazing on alpine lichens. Though it’s peaceful, they have nowhere to go. They’re surrounded.

They’ve been cut off from where they gave birth to their young and the tracts of land that supported them through the long northern winters by highways, hydroelectric dams, rail lines, clearcuts and farmland. The herd’s range has been fragmented for more than a century and faces imminent threats.

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Energy

An invisible climate killer is lurking behind B.C.’s LNG boom

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Invisible to the naked eye, undetectable by smell and 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide for its  short-term warming impact on the climate, methane is explosive, toxic  and can make helicopters fall out of the sky. It’s like something out of a superhero movie — or a bad dream.

About half of Canada’s reported methane emissions  are produced by the oil and gas industry, both from regular operations  and leaks. But much of the climate damage caused by the sector’s methane  pollution goes undetected due to weak regulations.

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Energy, Environment, Indigenous Nations

‘We should avoid monitoring’: feds quietly backed off while Coastal GasLink pipeline work killed fish

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

On a dreary gray day in late October, passers by gawked at a scene outside a hotel in Smithers, B.C. The charred remnants of several trucks sat in the parking lot in the wake of what police described as a “targeted attack” in the pre-dawn hours of the morning. 

Among the blackened wreckage were four police cruisers — marked and unmarked vehicles with the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group, a special task force assigned to police opposition to industrial projects. The controversial RCMP unit maintains a constant presence on Wet’suwet’en yintah (territory) where Coastal GasLink (CGL) is building a pipeline without the consent of the nation’s Hereditary Chiefs. 

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Energy, Indigenous Nations

Blueberry River First Nations beat B.C. in court. Now everything’s changing

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Apart from a little pocket of land on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, Blueberry River First Nations territory is an industrial wasteland. At a walking pace, it only takes about three minutes to stumble onto some kind of development. It’s a land of pipelines, clearcuts and gas rigs. But things are about to change.

After winning a hard-fought case before the B.C. Supreme Court in 2021, the Treaty 8 nation reached a final agreement with the province on Jan. 18. The agreement charts a path forward from a past where the province excluded the community from resource decisions and infringed on the nation’s constitutionally protected rights. Two days later, B.C. signed agreements with four neighbouring nations: Doig River, Halfway River, Saulteau and Fort Nelson. Collectively, the agreements represent a way out of conflict and a shared goal to heal the land. 

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