Free Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist by Patrick Moore

a permanent community on the original native village site. Roads were built to access timber farther up the valleys. Diesel-powered engines had replaced steam engines some years before, but it was the introduction of the motorized chainsaw, which replaced double-bitted axes and crosscut handsaws, that revolutionized logging. Productivity increased dramatically with this improvement in technology. Loggers and their families shared in the postwar boom in material culture and working-class affluence. It was a wonderful time to live in the rain forest.
    I didn’t know I lived in a rain forest; to us it was simply “the woods” and it rained a lot. When it rained for 30 days straight, we began to miss the sun. My playground and backyard was a recent clearcut across the road from our house. We didn’t call it a clearcut because the word wasn’t known; it was simply an opening or the “slash.” The slash was a better place to play than the deep dark of the old-growth forest surrounding us. It was brighter and when the sun shone it was warmer and drier. The only other places where the sun came out were down on the dock and on the tide flats. In the clearing you could sit on a stump in the sun and all summer long the berries grew: first the salmonberries, then thimbleberries, then huckleberries, and finally the salal berries. They were all deliciously different and we shared them with birds, deer, and bears. As time went on, new trees came up and added year-round green to the logged area. The hemlocks, cedars, and firs that competed for sunlight eventually crowded out the berry bushes. It was time to move on and to play in a more recent clearcut. From this experience I developed a very different impression of logging than one might gain from the popular press today.

    My dad, Bill Moore, worked alongside the other loggers six days a week, spending evenings and Sunday afternoon in the office tending to company affairs.

    Today I can walk through forests where my grandfather clearcut logged 60 and 70 years ago, and if it weren’t for the presence of rotting, moss-covered stumps, you would never know the forests had once been cleared. The new forest is so lush and full of shrubs and ferns that all evidence of disturbance has disappeared. Bears, wolves, cougars, ravens, owls, eagles, and all the other forest-dwellers live there. The trees are straight and tall. Although they have not yet reached the great size of their predecessors, they form a dense and growing cover on land once cleared bare. The marvel of this renewal is that it took place entirely on its own, without the slightest help from human hands. There had been no thought given to reforestation or any other aspect of restoration.Nature has regenerated almost in spite of human disturbance and is rapidly returning to itsoriginal condition.
    My dad was a big man who had inherited the logging camp at age 21 when his father, Albert, passed away. It was the beginning of World War II, the business was $40,000 in debt, a large sum at the time, and there were 60 grizzled loggers, all older than he was, and he had to be the boss. Dad worked day and night for 20 years before he could see any light at the end of the tunnel. In the woods dad could curse a blue streak while lines snapped and machines broke down. At home he was a well-read family man, who, although stern at times, would joke and play with us during his few hours away from work. He taught me about leadership and the fact that someone must take responsibility for making decisions, at home, in the workplace, and in government. He had a small business but he loomed large in his industry, becoming president of two industry associations, the BC Truckloggers Association and the Pacific Logging Congress. He cared about working people; he founded and chaired a number of initiatives in forestry education, worker safety, and loggers’ sports. The saddest thing I’ve ever seen was his 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s as it