One more river
We looked at our river, about a year after it had been completely dammed to allow for the huge reservoir behind it to fill up. The rocks on the side of the river were slick with green algae, common on the shores of the salty James Bay but because the fresh water was stored, the salty bay water claimed a new home as far as the first rapids, now called La Grande 1. We wondered if this was always going to be like this, no freshwater fish just briny coldwater species.
Finally, the green slime disappeared and the fish came back. Many years later, sometimes brave fishermen would cast lures into the fast waters that churned out from the spillway, a long concrete canal which swished dangerously fast and steeply into the waiting river below. The fish grew in spurts, rapidly and plentiful, because of the artificially turbine-warmed waters and the fish grew to very large sizes and in turn, attracted large seals from the many islands of the bay.
These half-ton seals would bask on the other side of the river, safe from our natural and predatory taste for seal meat. Today, a few rare souls eat the seal liver, considered the best part of a seal. The ringed and bearded seals, no longer hunted with a passion by the few remaining Inuit of Fort George, grow to immense sizes, fed by the fish of the first dam. Now there is virtually no market or need to use seal and seal by-products. The seal competes with our need to consume fish. We were once part of a balanced way of life, we ate fish and seal, the seal ate fish, and in less than two generations, we ate everything else instead, leaving a way of life of catching our own protein in favour of store-bought foods.
A few weeks ago, another river became part of that renewed effort to turn us into fodder for retailers and consumerism. The fish of the Rupert River will now have to depend on a series of weirs to artificially raise the levels of the waters to those of just a year ago and hopefully, the muddy and salty waters of lower James Bay won’t creep up the river, as it did with the Fort George River back in the 1970s. But again, a way of life that depends on wild fish of the Smokey Hill may go the way of the La Grande. Let’s just hope that all those environmental studies come true and turn out the way they optimistically said it would be.
Stories coming back and Facebook images alike now show a river studded with outcroppings of rock where once a powerful flow of water created a vision of energy and spirit, only to be brought down to a sad trickle of what was once a fruitful river. No longer will the waters flow the way they should, unhampered and left to nature to determine what to do with all that kinetic energy. Perhaps, one day, a way to either make energy easier or make energy use more efficient or both may save nature and quench the thirst of the energy-hungry south.
Hopefully that day will come soon, when energy comes from a real energy source, other than converting natural and life-giving waters into something to turn a machine to make electricity. Maybe nuclear is the way to go, except used in a way where there is no use of water to cool it down enough to prevent meltdowns. Perhaps one day we will not have to sacrifice a way of life and a whole generation of people just to make a million toasters work every morning. Ironically, electricity is being increasingly used to run vehicles, which use batteries, which need recharging, which require electricity, which need power lines, transmission towers, dams and energy stations….