THE CHAPMAN CREEK FIVE

If I can take liberties with Winston Churchill's famous speech "The Few," it may one day be said about the battle to save the Chapman Creek Watershed, "Never...was so much owed by so many to so few." I am writing here about The Chapman Creek Five: Hans Penner, Ron Neilson, Germaine Wilson, Ken Dalgeish and Michael Sidal.

One month ago, these five individuals put up the initial barricade to block Western Forest Products from beginning its road building in the Chapman Creek Watershed. These same individuals are now named in an injunction filed by WFP in the BC Supreme Court. Their first court appearance was last Monday, July 9th and they and their lawyer were granted an additional week to prepare their defense. They will return to court on Tuesday, July 17th.

Due to their convictions and the convictions of others who have since joined them, our regional government and local health agencies have been given the breathing room to take steps that will hopefully result in the complete shut down of logging in our coastal watersheds. However, these five individuals of whom four are senior citizens now face a legal bill of $10,000; the cost of challenging Western's injunction application in court.

Therefore, a plea is going out to all citizens of the Sunshine Coast to help cover these court expenses. An account, Watershed Legal Defense Fund, has been established at the Sunshine Coast Credit Union and you can deposit at or mail contributions to any SCCU branch. If you would like an acknowledgement for donations, send your cheque to:

c/o Dale Peterson
Watershed Legal Defense Fund
141 Forbes Rd. Gibsons, BC. V0N 1V6

As well, as of this date, any contributions made through this FOE site and the ravagedegmont.com site using the PayPal Donate button will be forwarded to the Chapman Creek Five's 'Watershed Legal Defense Fund.'

Coast Watershed Map

Friends of Egmont gained access to a new map of the watersheds recently produced by the SCRD's Planning & Development Department. Seaweed, ravagedegmont.com's webmaster, has put this .pdf file up on the server so readers can access it. The file is a good size at 1.7 MB so I would recommend anyone on dial-up to do a right click on the link below and click "Save link as..." or "Save target as..." and save the file somewhere on your hard drive. You can zoom in quite a bit on the map. Here is the link:

Sunshine Coast Watersheds Map

We thank Kim Tournat, our MLA Nicholas Simon's Constituency Assistant, for forwarding that map to us.

We would also like to thank SCRD Area D Director (Roberts Creek), Donna Shugar, for adding our blog to her 'links' page. Donna's website is a good resource for coast and creek issues and I would recommend bookmarking it to keep it handy.

Welcome Ground Truth Trekking Visitors!

I ran into a young American couple the other day at the Green Rosette Bakery on the Skook Trail. Erin and Hig are a month into a 4,000 mile trek that will take them from Seattle to False Pass at the tip of Alaska's Aleutian Archipelago. They are travelling by foot, packrafts and skis and anticipate completing their incredible journey by next March. They updated their blog from our Heritage Museum and you can read what they have written about our area here. I will place a link to their blog under "Site Worth Visiting" to the right. I think it will be interesting to follow their journey up the BC coast and see our province and country through their eyes. All the best to you both, Erin and Hig, in the days and months ahead.