Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 15:12:56 -0700
From: Scott Frederick <scott451@gmx.net>
Subject: [KCUTS] Colleen McCrory, passionate wilderness activist dies
Hello Kootenaycuts,
Passionate wilderness activist dies
Colleen McCrory founded Valhalla Wilderness Society
Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, July 02, 2007
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=c4f0f96d-e634-4812-a770-e216f289efbe&k=15766
Prominent environmental activist Colleen McCrory, who gained
international recognition with her campaigns to save wilderness from
logging, died Sunday at 57 from brain cancer.
"We're all very much in shock," her son, Shea Pownall, said Monday,
describing his mother's death as "very sudden."
McCrory died in New Denver, the West Kootenay town where she was born
and raised and where she founded and ran the Valhalla Wilderness
Society for more than three decades.
McCrory became ill two weeks ago and was diagnosed with brain cancer
a week later. "It was a total surprise to all of us," said Anne
Sherrod, a colleague and friend of McCrory's.
The Valhalla Wilderness Society was small but achieved great
influence because of McCrory's passionate persona. The phrase "Brazil
of the North" became a familiar one in B.C. because of the way she
repeatedly used it to describe logging practices in the province.
During McCrory's last days, her family received condolences from
other well-known B.C. environmentalists, including David Suzuki,
Sierra Club activist Vicky Husband and Green party leaders Elizabeth
May and Adrienne Carr.
"She had a lot of supporters not just in this country, but also
around the world," said Pownall.
"She was the goddess of networking. She knew how to connect with
people and rally support for wilderness areas all over the world."
McCrory won a governor-general's award in 1983 and in 1992 she won
the prestigious $60,000 U.S. Goldman Environmental Prize.
McCrory founded the Valhalla Wilderness Society in 1975 to protect
the forests along Slocan Lake near New Denver, a small mining and
lumber town in the West Kootenays in south-central B.C.
The environmental society sought to have part of the Valhalla mountain
range of the Selkirk Mountains be declared a provincial park - and
after an intensive eight-year lobbying effort by McCrory and other
activists the 49,600-hectare Valhalla Provincial Park was established
by the province along Slocan Lake.
"Valhalla is to me is a glimmering ray of hope," said McCrory to a
reporter in 1987.
Her son, Pownall, said that the fight for Valhalla Park "became the
blueprint for what it would take to protect other wilderness areas in
B.C. and Canada."
McCrory went on to spearhead campaigns to protect other wilderness
areas of B.C. She was active in the campaign to have South Moresby
Island established as a national park reserve.
She was coordinator of the B.C. Environmental Network from 1989 to
1990, working on issues ranging from forestry to mining in provincial
parks. In 1991, McCrory founded Canada's Future Forest Alliance, a
network of activists determined to save the country's forests.
McCrory was a natural leader, said her friend Sherrod. "Colleen was
more than equal to the task. She was capable of standing up to the
cameras and the radios and telling the world what was going on to the
environment." McCrory ran for the Green Party in the 2001 provincial
election, finishing third in the riding of Nelson-Creston.
McCrory's activism angered many people in the forest-dependent
communities of her Slocan Valley. She lost her clothing store in New
Denver after it was boycotted. Someone threw a rock into her living
room in 1986.
"She was extremely courageous," said Sherrod. "Colleen understood
that as an environmentalist her role was not to be comfortable or to
be liked. Her allegiance was to the environment and she would defend
her principles no matter what the cost was to herself and she did pay
a huge cost.
"In many ways she never really had a personal life, and by the time
she finished her award-winning work saving the Valhalla and South
Moresby, she was $40,000 in debt. All her life she lived almost hand
to mouth, right to the end."
© Vancouver Sun 2007
http://www.freeimagehosting.ca/imagehost/pic/323JT9RJ/8478.jpg
Photo of Colleen taken in 2005 at the 25 Year Celebration of the
birth of the German Green Party in Berlin. She went to the party to
meet Jurgen Trittin, then Foreign Minister, so she could lobby him on
behalf of the forests and wildlife of Canada.
--
Only 684 organising days until the next BC provincial election.
Best regards,
Scott mailto:scott451@gmx.net
--
