Our Lungs of the Lower Mainland
Ben Abbot (he/him) // Contributor
Cameron Skorulski (he/him) // Production Manager
The breath you spare whilst reading becomes an act of conservation. Reflect upon how your air originates from the trees, the bush and the sea, so that a world of irreplaceable and wondrous nature does not become just a memory. Exploitation of the earth is a diminishing return, and ignorance of this is a sickness of the soul. By means of sacrilege, if the soul does mean the breath, please consider that Burns Bog in spiritual endangerment. This rhetoric aforementioned is not a meditation on worldwide environmentalism, nor a mere suggestion of politics, but rather the acknowledgement of activism in the treeline. An ecological disaster encroaches, and it is a sincere faith that it need not be this way.
There is a biosphere known as Burns Bog and it is withering at an alarming rate. The colonial attraction of tourism parks in the Coast Salish stewardship remains, the “Stanley Park Land Endowment.”
Early Canadian settlers occupied these territories along the northern Fraser Delta, at the end of the so-called frontier of “manifest destiny.” The late 19th century expansion guaranteed the high density metropolis that occupies the land today, known as ‘Vancouver.’ Burns Bog is at risk of the commercial speculative real estate market. Within this bubble of con-artist lobbying, the metastasizing of glass monoliths downtown into surrounding municipal suburbs squeezes every bit of natural land into strictly regulated parks and wildlife reserves. One must wonder with the fiscal power of the city, why Burns Bog is strangled by a rare pine rot that tumbles trees from their very roots. The old growth that once sheltered the forest floor with shade and perfect conditions for its natural flora, now growing vacant, has vast open patches of sunlight where invasive weeds and vines choke life from the dirt.
The history of exploitation remains in the ruins of a mid-20th century industry. A resource called peat or sphagnum became industrial gold for agriculture. Nitrogen rich and readily converted into fertilizer, the extraction of peat from the bog prompted the construction of a factory right within the forest. Directly linked to rail lines for the shipment of this resource away from its rare origin. Conveniently for the 1900s capitalists, it could also be used as a fuel substitute for coal and petrol machines.
Extraction of raw peat soil began in 1938 via BC Peat Company, LTD purchasing one-thousand acres of the marshland for $25 per acre. That $25,000 purchase granted 88 years ago requires today’s dollar of acreage buying power of $540 per acre or $540,000 total, nevermind increases on property tax. . . etc.
Production halted in 1964. A general estimate of five million kilograms of peat was mined, processed, then shipped before 1964’s buyout per ‘WPM LTD,’ an American company utilizing peat for incendiary explosive production. Eventually the gargantuan displacement of dirt exhausted the marshland. Foundation structural concerns shut down the ‘WPM LTD’ plant and the factory was scuttled and demolished by 1988.
To this very day in 2026, the sunken concrete remains can be found overgrown amongst asphalt mesas shadowed by the stunted birch trees. Titanic walls of blackberry bushes obscuring the concrete husks of silos and burying the rebar underneath fern leaves. Between 72nd Avenue and Kittson Parkway, a mausoleum of environmental abuse is openly available for public touring, despite the posted signage stating otherwise. Now, less than a century later, how easily forgotten that the greatest ventures of capital can succumb to a loss leader of quicksand.
2016 presented an early advocacy on the natural protection of Burns Bog, at this time Delta Parks and the old Burns Bog Conservation Society maintained co-protection of the nature reserve. Provincial election and rezoning acts commencing meant that coke coal trains were to run directly through Burns Bog on the pacific rail, to and from the United States. Fortunately, the public in massive objection to this idea; protested and successfully belayed the motion to move dirty coal through the Bog in massive amounts.
To this day, my local pride in the protest and rejection of endangering the forest remains, but I question where the same spirit in the public has gone now. While the lungs of the lower mainland struggle to keep clean air, the breath I spend is a sigh from the soul, to beg for others who have the spirit to fight.