Tofino and the Thunderbird...

If you've been waiting for a mythic creature in this feature, wait no more! There is a giant Thunderbird flying over Tofino BC, and no-one sees it.
Years ago, while I lived on the beach at Schooner Cove, I had a wierd experience with a mountain while walking through the rainforest at night. I'm not going to describe it now, maybe another time. Lets just say a mountain rescued me. I didn't understand the experience at the time, but when I heard about the planned open-pit copper mine on Catface Mountain, it became a bit clearer. That mountain, it turns out, was not Catface, but one of its siblings. If one giant can fall - they all can.
I was living in Ontario when I found out, I said to my friend on the phone who told me about it - "over my dead body". She said "mmhm, I thought you might feel that way".
In the Wayfinders Wade Davis talks about sort of adopting a mountain, it's your protector, and you are it's. A relationship. It's a large part of the reason I am here.
According to the Ahousat they last saw the Thunderbird on Catface Mountain, approximatley 150 years ago. They saw it come down off the mountaintop and take a whale, then fly off with it. Was that the end of the era of mythic creatures here, as white and modern culture began its encroach? Perhaps. Maybe not.
We'll see.
What is a 'Thunderbird'? How big does a bird have to be to pull a whale out of the sea? Even a small whale. Has anyone seen 'golden eagles dropping goats off cliffs' on youtube? It's pretty cool (there's that darkside thing again). Golden eagles have an 8' or so wingspan. 15 feet? 20? 30? 100? Pretty big. Hard to imagine, isn't it?
Is it easy for us to say that's bullshit? That it's symbolic, representative of some cultural experience, a hallucination? If there were real Thunderbirds, we'd have bones, fossils, poop, something. Some record to prove to our ration-bound scientific brains that it exists. We don't.
And there is an assumption underlying this that we know better, that our form of knowledge is superior somehow. Is it? I'm willing to give the Ahousat credit and say - maybe it does exist, or did. But then, they've approved the mine so far.
The mine is planned to be the largest open-pit copper mine in Canada to date. It would be mined for approximately the next 20 years, if it's not expanded. A nearby lake would be used as a tailings pond, and a new fake lake built. It would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with giant heavy machinery and bright lights visible and audible from Tofino, the best tourist town in Canada after Banff. Not to mention the leacheate, the ruined salmon streams, the destroyed old growth forest, the mountains of toxic material, the impact on whales and fish from the new port and boat traffic... all in a UNESCO bioshpere reserve, Clayoquot Sound, a place that people from all over the world hold dear!
Am I willing to give the Ahousat credit on that too? That they are using their heritage most wisely? Our heritage? For this is a place not only of the Ahousat, but that belongs to all of humanity, and there are precious few of them left.
In this little town that brought forestry in BC to its knees in the mid 90's, changing the face of forestry in Canada forever, may the Thunderbird rise up in the hearts and souls of all those involved, and grant us vision enough to see the past behind us, the people on their sides, the future before us, and the Thunderbird trapped on Catface Mountain in the middle. The future is the one we make, let's hope it has Thunderbirds in it.