The Personal Environmental History of My Family
January 3, 2025 By: Robert (Borealis) Dowe- Douglas
Mark Butorac
HIST 3991: Environmental History
Borealis (Robert) Douglas
1/3/2025
The Personal Environmental History of My Family
To Talk about my families Environmental history and where it begins is to ask where my family comes from. My Grandparents Sharon and Rocky were both born on the banks of the Fraiser river in the 1940’s to parents that I never met and only have been uncovering the story of in my adult years. I know nothing about my Grandmothers parents other then the mother was a war bride from the UK, however I have delved deeply into the history of my Grandfathers family in my efforts to discover where my Indigenous Ancestry originates from. Being Haudenosaunee from the Onondaga Tribe my Great Grandmother comes from a reserve over in Eastern Ontario while my Great Grandfather was born in Minnesota. Because of the disapproval of one of the elders daughters marring an American back in the 1920’s after WWII my Grandmother Whilima, and my grandfather Alfried eloped which back in the day was nothing more then the two of them escaping for a journey to the west coast across the prairies. They officially got their marriage notarized in Batoche before settling in what would develop into the city of Langley.
My Grandmother Sharon was born in New Westminster shortly after my grandfather was. I imagine that the environment of the growing Vancouver Metro Area had a great deal of affect on my Grandparents as they decided after marriage and graduation from High school that the population and the stress of the expanding city on the ability to Purchase land on the Fraiser delta would be too expensive to be sustainable for the future family they wanted to have. Upon Learning that my Grandmother was expecting my soon to be Uncle David, the two of them packed up their hovel in Ladner around the late 1960’s and traveled up to the small town of Arras outside of Dawson Creek BC on the other side of the Mackenzie-Azouertta Pass, in the Peace River Region. There My grandfather purchased a section of land in 1976 that he farmed and built his family a home, which now included my mother Janice.
Not much else is to be said about particular history until my mother left the family home to pursue her own journey but to evaluate how the environment of Dawson Creek and the North of BC affected my family before my mother left it would explain a great deal of how my mother influenced me.
Dawson Creek and surrounding area is a rural farming area with resource extraction and, some minor logistics as the primary means of industry and labor demand. This is because the Peace river region is on the Montney Plateau which is a surprisingly fertile area for farming despite being the same latitude as Scandinavia. This and its isolation as the last populated area of BC before crossing over to the Yukon or the NWT means that most peoples families who first move there back before the 1980’s started as farmers, Loggers or long haul truck drivers being the primary people transporting goods between Vancouver or Edmonton on the way to Alaska with the construction of the Alcan Highway in the 1940’s to 50’s. My Grandfather started with farming but then transitioned to Truck driving with the rise of the Oil Industry in 1980’s when they discovered Oil and Natural Gas was also plentiful in The Peace River region. My Mother took up working in the Oilfield as a supplier of parts and machinery under many companies giving her and I (as my Father was dead/missing most my life) a comfortable standard of living since the Oilfield transplanted the Farming industry as the main Industry of the area. This how ever left myself in an awkward state as the Towns of Fort St John and Grande Prairie vulture the economy from Dawson Creek as they became the more developed Industry hubs this was because of closer proximity to the oilfields and proximity to oil refineries in Taylor BC and Steeprock Alberta. Naturally this didn’t allow me the same opportunities my family had but I did have other opportunities that brought me to back to the west coast where I now Reside in Nanaimo specifically.
If one were look at the entire journey its clear that the environment always pressured my family and myself now to migrate when the circumstances of the environment and how the people of the area use the environment, put too much pressure to stay in the current area the opportunities of another draw us to it. Like my Grandparents leaving the Westcoast to ensure a threshold of stability since the competition for housing was getting to great, or when I left the cheaper Peace River Region because there was no economic opportunities for me there. If the past was to be referenced to predict the future it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that the environment will pressure my descendants to leave Vancouver island in time.