With Site C protest, history is again being made at B.C. fort

It’s no accident that Treaty 8 First Nations members and their farming neighbours have chosen an historic European fort site to risk arrest to stop the $9-billion Site C dam.

The Rocky Mountain Fort site, at the confluence of the Peace and Moberly rivers, was selected in 1793 by explorer Alexander Mackenzie during his quest to discover a route to the Pacific Ocean.

“This spot would be an excellent situation for a fort or factory, as there is plenty of wood, and every reason to believe that the country abounds in beaver,” Mackenzie wrote.

For 10 years, until 1804, the fort was an important outpost for Canada’s expanding fur trade, the first one in mainland B.C. It brought fur trading to a region untouched by the insatiable desire for beaver, bear, lynx and fisher furs. But just as the fort site forms a key part of Euro-Canadian history, so is it seeped in history and significance for First Nations, who lived at the fort or travelled there to trade furs for utilitarian goods such as knives and gun shot, and trinkets such as glass beads from Venice and Bohemia.

When archeologists first found and excavated the site in 1975, they noted the absence of a palisade, a testament to the friendly relations between Europeans and the local Beaver and Sekani peoples.

Today, continuing that tradition, Peace Valley farmers are camped out in minus-20 C weather at the site alongside Treaty 8 members, who vow to prevent B.C. Hydro from continuing work on Site C. During the holidays, B.C. Hydro erected a bridge across the Moberly River in preparation for logging all the forest around the site, where explorers David Thompson and John Finlay stayed and Simon Fraser passed by.

It’s little wonder that First Nations members are prepared for arrest. Despite three ongoing court cases, B.C. Hydro began construction work on the dam project last August, fasttracking logging and road-building with crews working around the clock.

While the Rocky Mountain Fort site is the line in the sand for First Nations members opposed to the destruction of the Peace River Valley by Site C, it should also be a line in the sand for anyone interested in preserving a fascinating piece of Canadian history.

The fort consisted of a handful of buildings and employed 14 men, many French-Canadian and Metis. It served as a provisioning centre for canoeists heading eastward, manufacturing large quantities of pemmican or dried meat. An archeological dig in the 1980s found bison bones and rendered grease. It also discovered more than 20,000 artifacts at the site: everything from beads, broaches, pendants, buttons and finger rings to thimbles, fish hooks, razors, axes and awls.

That same dig uncovered the remains of two of the fort’s buildings: the men’s quarters, divided into small partitions to house voyageurs, and the wooden-floored main building, with two fireplaces of river cobblestones and a cellar to store valuable commodities.

A journal by an anonymous North West Company clerk, called the Rocky Mountain Fort Journal, depicts the early fur trade in the upper Peace River Valley and offers glimpses into the lives of those stationed at the remote outpost. First Nations figured prominently in the clerk’s entries, including an individual the Europeans called “the swan,” who became the fort’s trading captain.

Lost to archeologists for almost two centuries, Rocky Mountain Fort is a treasure for all British Columbians, but also of symbolic importance to protesters now gathered there who believe Site C will destroy far more than just this iconic site.

They face arrest for continuing to defend the Peace River Valley from what they say is an unacceptably expensive and unnecessary project that will jack up hydro rates, destroy aboriginal hunting and fishing grounds, and threaten future food security by flooding some of Canada’s richest farmland.

More than two centuries after its founding, First Nations and European descendants are again making history at Rocky Mountain Fort.