by Dave Butler
“Sorry, miss, this is a crime scene. Can I help you?”
His expression changed when she pushed her badge toward him. “I’m Jenny Willson. I’m a law-enforcement specialist with Parks Canada.”
The officer levered his long, muscled body out of the car and pushed his hand toward hers. Willson took it, gripped it hard, and looked up all six foot five of the man to his craggy face and deep-blue eyes.
“Corporal Benoit Fortier. Pleased to meet you, Ms. Willson.”
“It’s Jenny, please. I’m in town visiting my mother and noticed the scene as I drove by,” she said, finally letting go of Fortier’s hand. “I hope no one was hurt?”
“That was our hope, too. But unfortunately, we found a body inside buried under a collapsed wall. It’s too early to determine a cause of death. It was so badly burned that we can’t even confirm who it is.”
“That’s awful. Any idea what happened?”
“I’m fairly certain there was a fire,” the Mountie said, smirking. Dark humour like that was common to law enforcement. “We’ve got a few theories about cause, but the investigators are still working on it.” He pointed to a man taking pictures inside the charred ruins, his yellow coveralls a stark contrast to the black wood and white ice.
Another man was sitting on the ground just outside the line of yellow tape facing the smoking ruins with his arms across his knees. His features were blocked by a shock of wild black hair and a beard. “Who’s that?” Willson asked.
“Albin Stoffel,” said Fortier. “It was his office. He’s a wildlife researcher working in the mountains around here. I spoke to him when he arrived here first thing this morning, and he’s been sitting there ever since. He’s certain the deceased is his research assistant, a woman by the name of Sue Webb. He says that’s her car. He’s also convinced it was arson … and he keeps saying he knows who did it.”
“Who?”
“Well, he claims it was the guy who’s proposing the ski area, a guy by the name of Stafford Austin. You’ve heard about the project, I assume?”
Willson nodded. It was only her first day in town, not even on the job yet, and Fortier was the second person she couldn’t be completely honest with about her presence in Golden. And now she’d learned of an unexpected connection to the ski area. If the researcher’s accusations were true …
“Could Stoffel himself be responsible?” she asked.
“It’s possible, I suppose, but not probable. He was clearly devastated when he arrived this morning. If he did do it, he’s a talented actor.”
“So why does he think Austin did it?”
“He claims Austin didn’t like his research,” Fortier said, “and that he did it to silence him.”
“That’s one hell of an allegation.”
“It’s a pretty drastic way to make a problem like that disappear. Last summer, Stoffel did lay a complaint against Austin and his partner, though — a guy by the name of Hank Myers. Said they’d threatened him with a gun. I talked to them, but it was a classic ‘he said, he said’ — no evidence to prove anything. They knew they were on my radar, though, so to go from an alleged threat to arson and murder would be a huge step.”
Willson turned toward the burned building, her mind ablaze with questions. And one of them had nothing to do with the fire — she found herself wondering whether this tall, rugged Mountie had a wife or a girlfriend.
“Can I ask what your interest is in all of this?” he asked.
Besides you?
“Nothing at this point,” she said, turning back to him. “I’ll find out later today if I’ve got a job in Yoho Park. If I do, and there’s a criminal link between this situation and the proposed ski area, I’d like to know about it.”
“Fair enough,” said Fortier. “I’ve probably already told you more than I should, but it was colleague to colleague, right?”
“Got it,” said Willson. “What did Stoffel lose in the fire?”
“Everything in the building was destroyed,” said Fortier. “I was in there last summer when I first met him, and that building was a tinderbox, a firetrap filled with shit from one corner to the other. But he told me today that he keeps digital backups of all his research off-site, and that all his hair samples — whatever they’re for — were at his house and are being couriered to the lab today.”
“So, we’ve got an incredibly tragic loss of life for no apparent gain,” said Willson, thinking like the investigator she was. “Stoffel will have to find a new office, I guess. What do you know about Stafford Austin?”
“Good question,” he said. “I ran background checks on him before I met with him. The only blemish on his record is a pair of charges for fraud in Idaho. No convictions. As far as I can tell, this seems to be the first time he’s done business on this side of the border.”
“Fraud?”
“Yep. But his partner, Myers, on the other hand, is even more interesting. He was discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps for an alleged off-base assault, a serious one, from what I can tell. Wasn’t convicted in court, though, military or civilian. His record shows he worked for a series of private security contractors after he left the Corps. I’m wondering what any of that has to do with building a ski area.”
“It’s not a set of skills I would look for if I were starting a project like that. The only thing those two men seem to have in common is that they both have good lawyers.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Fortier, breaking into a wide grin.
Willson’s knees almost buckled at the brilliance of Fortier’s smile, but she continued calmly. “Because of the possible links between this and the park, could you keep me posted as the investigation evolves? If I move here, that is.”
“No problem,” said Fortier. “I’ll tell you as much as I can.” He handed Willson his card, and she returned the favour. “Will you be living here in town, or up in the park?”
“I’ll be here in town,” she said. “My mother lives here.” Why is he asking?
“Good. It’ll be easier to stay in touch.” He took her hand again. “Thanks for introducing yourself. I’d better get back to my notes. My boss will want to see them by the end of the day.”
Willson watched him fold himself back into the police car, then she turned to again look at the smouldering ruins.
CHAPTER 5
DECEMBER 2
As the sun dropped behind the Purcell Mountains, splashing the sky with vivid streaks of red and yellow, eleven people settled into old couches and mismatched chairs in the basement of a home on the McMurdo Benches. Like many houses in the rural subdivision south of Golden, it sat on a rocky knoll surrounded by trees, linked to Campbell Road by a long gravel driveway. Through a gap in the forest, the house offered its resident a western view of a slice of the Columbia River wetlands that stretched 180 kilometres, north to south, at the bottom of the Rocky Mountain Trench.
Some of the evening’s visitors clutched mugs of tea; others sipped something a bit stronger. An ancient wood stove crackled and popped in the corner. The conversation was quiet and subdued.
The owner of the house remained standing. Fit and vibrant in her sixties, with grey hair cut short and parted in the middle, Sara Ilsley stood with the confidence of someone who’d spoken in public many times and was comfortable taking charge. As a retired forestry professor and consultant who’d moved to the valley three years earlier, Ilsley was respected by everyone in the room, not only for her intelligence and background, but also for her passion about their shared values. Behind her, wedged in the corner, a stack of blank flip charts sat on an easel, with a rainbow of felt markers nearby.
“Let’s get started, people,” she said, pausing to look at each person in turn. “In my opinion, this issue will define the Columbia Valley Environmental Society for decades. More importantly, it has the potential to change the nature of our whole area, to alter the quality of our lives. Personally, I can’t think of a more important reason to work together.”
Ilsley looked at her audience’s nodding, earnest faces and continued. “To do that, we have to get our shit together — pardon my French. Now, I’ll bet that when you first heard about the Collie Creek ski area, what the developer is calling Top of the World, you all laughed. You probably thought it was ridiculous, a hare-brained scheme that made no sense. You thought, I’m sure, that it wouldn’t go anywhere. But things have changed. The monster is now among us. Governments and their legions of bureaucrats are now involved. And when that happens, we know from previous experience that logic and common sense go out the window. None of them — not the proponent, not the government staff who run the review process, not the senior bureaucrats and politicians in Victoria, Calgary, and Ottawa who make decisions — none of them cares about us, our valley, the place where we live and work and play. Our organization must take this project seriously, because the monster has momentum. And momentum is dangerous. We’ve got to actively engage in every stage of the review process, as flawed and one-sided as it may be. We must play the role that no one else is playing, speak for values that can’t speak for themselves. And to do this, we have to be smarter than the proponent. They’ve got money behind them … and they seem to have the ear of both the federal and provincial government. I don’t think I’m overstating the situation by suggesting that this is going to be an uphill battle of epic proportions.”
For a long moment, she was quiet, staring at the wood stove, her face lit by its orange, flickering light. Her mouth was a tight line, her hands steepled under her nose as if in prayer. She was clearly in her element. She’d been the ideal candidate for executive director of the Society. She knew it, and the board of directors had come to know it in her first interview.
“In my opinion,” Ilsley said, “the work we undertake together to oppose this project, starting tonight, will be more important than anything any of us has ever done. If we’re going to succeed, we have to throw everything we have at it. Each and every one of us has to commit to this, and we have to find others willing to do the same.”
She paused. “Before we start, Albin Stoffel sends his regrets. Many of you know about Albin’s wolverine research, and some of you know that, tragically, his office burned to the ground last night. Albin wanted to be here tonight, but he’s busy finding a new office and dealing with the aftermath of the fire.” Some heads were shaking; many in the room were likely thinking about the body found in the ruins. “Who’s ready to get started?”
“Count me in,” said a bearded man sitting in the corner. He was in his early twenties and his eyes shone with excitement. “But what the hell do we do?”
“I’ve got some ideas,” said Ilsley, “but if we’re ready to work together, I think we should start by talking about what you think we should do.”
The young man slid so far forward that he was barely in contact with the chair. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I guess we could use Facebook to get the message out, to let people know that the ski resort is a crazy idea. And we should all attend the project open house tomorrow night so we can get more information. Even though we know it’ll be mostly bullshit.”
“Great point,” said Ilsley, chuckling. “We should all be there.”
“We need slogans,” said a mother of three who lived next door. “And I refuse to use the developer’s name for the project. In my mind, that somehow legitimizes it. So, how about “Keep Collie Wild” or “Conserve Collie”?
“And what about rallies?” asked a younger woman beside her, sitting back deep in a couch. “Let’s demonstrate in front of politicians’ offices. In front of the town hall. Let them know we oppose the project. Get the local newspaper there. Make them listen to us and our concerns.”
Ilsley began taking notes on a flip chart. Facebook. Social media. Slogans. Rallies. “This is good,” she said, “keep the ideas coming.” She wanted them to engage, brainstorm, find their way as a group to the big picture, to a course of action. But there was one idea bouncing around in her own mind that she wanted to get on the table. Finally, she couldn’t wait any longer. “What if we submit a competing proposal?”
The young woman who had suggested rallies looked at her with confusion. “But we don’t want a ski area up there! What good would that do?”
“It would mean,” said Ilsley, smiling, “that the government couldn’t immediately work with Stafford Austin. They’d have to decide which proponent had the right to proceed. If they chose us, then we could string them along for a while until Austin moved on. Then, when he was out of the picture, we could withdraw our interest. But even if they didn’t choose us, it would still cost Austin time and money.” Her idea was met with nods, so she added it to the flip chart.
“I think we should set up a blockade at the bottom of Collie Creek,” said another, much older woman. “We did that to stop logging on Vancouver Island back in the eighties and nineties.”
“You mean like a protest camp?” one of the women asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean. We would not only stop them from getting in there to do their studies, we’d also prevent them from building the resort if, god forbid, they ever got approval. And a blockade is a good way to get media attention, get people to hear to what we’re saying. Standing in a determined line across a road, arms linked, makes for a great front-page photo.”
“If you want do that,” said Ilsley, “you’ve got to be willing to be arrested.”
“Not a problem,” the woman said with a grin. “I got arrested three times back then, and I’ll do it again if I need to. I can think of worse things than strolling down a logging road arm-in-arm with a pair of handsome Mounties.”
Everyone laughed. Everyone, that is, but a middle-aged man in the corner. “With all due respect,” he said, “we’re talking about small actions that, on their own, won’t make a bit of difference to a project of this scale. What we need to do is to develop a strategy … a campaign … a battle plan … like we’re going to war. These guys are smart and they appear to have money behind them. We need plans and backup plans. We need to understand what resources we’ll require, and that will include money. Lots of money. We need to consider every side of this, and we need to hit it from many different angles. We’ve got be smart and coordinated.”
“You’re right,” said Ilsley. “What I’m trying to do is get as many ideas as we can think of down on paper. Then we can organize them into a campaign plan, just like you suggest. This is going to take lots of work, and we’re going to need more than just the twelve of us to make this happen. Tonight is only the first of many meetings.”
“Okay,” said the man, “I want to be sure we all understand that this is a big deal; we can’t go off like we’re shooting a pellet gun in the air, trying to knock the project down with sheer luck.”
By late in the evening, Ilsley had filled many flip chart pages with ideas. One led to another, which led to another.
“And we have to start calling it a mega-resort,” said the older woman, smiling.
“What does that even mean?” asked Ilsley.
“I have no idea … probably nothing. But people won’t take us seriously unless they know it’s not just a ski resort, but a mega-resort.”
Smiling herself, Ilsley wrote mega-resort at the top of the paper.
Looking around the room, she sensed that the energy had begun to wane. People’s batteries were running low. “Perhaps it’s time that we —”
“I’ve got a question,” said one young man, interrupting Ilsley. He was sitting in a darkened corner of the room, dressed in worn blue jeans and a long-sleeved camouflage shirt, a ball cap pulled down over his eyes. It was the first time he’d spoken all night. “Do we have to follow the rules?”
Ilsley turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“Earlier,” he said, his arms folded across his chest, “we started talking about blockades and getting arrested and stuff. If we want to stop the project, if we all believe that
a new resort will be bad for the community and bad for the environment, then how far are we willing to go to stop it?”
“What do you mean?” Ilsley asked again, more alert than she’d been all evening.
“I’m not thinking about anything specific … yet,” said the young man, his eyes still hidden. “But we’ve all seen it before. The review processes for big projects like this are always slanted in favour of the rich, not people like us. It’s like being in front of a fucking steam roller. If we stay there too long, playing by their rules, we get flattened. If we jump out of the way, it rolls past us to where it was going anyway. We lose either way. We’re stupid if we think otherwise. Our only real option is to put sugar in the gas tank of the process … or blow the fucker up.”
The warmth of the wood stove did nothing to dispel the sudden chill that enveloped the room. Ilsley shivered. “You’re talking about breaking the law,” she said, shifting to professor mode. “Let me explain something to you, and to everyone here. Civil disobedience is the public, non-violent, and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of changing laws or government policies. We saw that in the forest industry — blockades were common in B.C. for a while — and we’ve seen them on pipelines. You’ve all heard of the Standing Rock blockade in North Dakota. Perhaps we’ll end up doing that as a tactic in our campaign. It’s an important part of taking a stand. If we do, we must be respectful, and whatever we do has to be non-violent. And we’ll have to think carefully about the implications, not just for our campaign, but for us as individuals, too.”
She paused, crossing her arms across her chest. She looked at each person in the room in turn. “Let me also remind you that anything beyond civil disobedience is criminal activity. It’s nothing more than eco-terrorism. I can’t and won’t condone our being part of that. Not only is it against the Society’s constitution and bylaws, but someone could end up in jail for a very long time. And most importantly, we’d lose all public support that we might have gained for our cause. Eco-terrorists who resort to violence are dealt with harshly in this country, both by our courts and in the court of public opinion. As they should be. We saw that when protestors spiked trees and destroyed logging equipment. Am I clear?”
