Blog - Environment

Last week, our crew got arrested protesting the Bear Mountain development. This week, our crew began prospecting for minerals at the top of Bear Mountain.

NDP MLA John Horgan discusses our aquisition of Mineral Rights for the Bear Mountain development

 We have now acquired the mineral rights for the entire Bear Mountain development. All 950 hectares of it. Our holdings now include the mineral rights to the Bear Mountain Interchange site, as well as Bear Mountain Highlands. We think that, given the helter-skelter, voraciously-in-all-directions nature of the development, some peon must have been asleep at the switch when the time came for the annual renewal of the claim.  Simply by acquiring a BC Free Miners license, which takes about 15 minutes and costs $25, we gained access to the extremely efficient new claiming system now put in place by Richard Neufeld and the Gordo govt. and were then able to click through all the Bear Mountain polygons, acquiring all of it.  Len Barrie and the Bear Mountain developers landscaping "vision" for their development has resulted in a giant, blast-terraced open pit mine, -which is then stuffed with cheesy stapled-together monster-homes.

Len Barrie, Les Bjola, Stew Young et al may own the very surface skein, ~and the "overburden"which they are so wantonly squandering, but the entire mountain  now already completely stripped and decapitated, perfect for a giant open-pit stripmine

Ingmar & Shawn arrested

We may now travel anywhere at Bear Mountain in order to prospect for minerals. We may dig freely anywhere so long as its more than 75 metres away from a residence. On our claim we may travel anytime on public roads and private roads, or we may cut our way through brush as required. We may bring as many "agents" along to help with prospecting. We may establish a camp. If a private road is gated, Bear Mountain is obliged to give us a key, or to have someone come down and open the gate. We may bring in large tracked vehicles, excavators, D-9 Caterpillars etc. provided we give LGB9 24 hrs notice. We may jackhammer and blast. We now own all the caves on the site. If our geologist determines that minerals are present in any of the loads of blast rock being excavated from the mountain, we are entitled to examine such and be compensated.

The definition of "minerals" is unclear, and is, apparently, at the discretion of Mining Minister Richard Neufeld. The Gold Commissioner has the power to confiscate our claim, ~only if it can be determined that we were using the claim for purposes other than for which it is intended. That is why we intend to conduct our operations entirely in the spirit by which the Campbell government's new very highly streamlined process has made these rights available: -we are obliged and prepared to now go forth onto that landscape as aggressively as possible, -to extract whatever possible profit which might be extruded from our private subterranean resources, as fast as possible.  As we determine our strategy to exploit our resources to the maximum advantage, we want a court injunction to stop the blasting which is slated for the massive karst formation in the southern portion of our claim, -which includes the entire proposed Bear Mountain Interchange site. We believe that we can get better value for that resource by leaving it intact. //

I have confirmed from Arch Branch Director, Justine Batten, that Arch Branch personnel believe that the previously excavated sinkholes in the vicinity of the former treesit site may have been old mine adits. Batten assured me that she had asked Golder Associates, which is now, concurrently with the destruction of the site, rushing to complete an Archaeological Impact Assessment, to explore this possibilty and she was confident that it would be addressed in the report. The Golder report will be made available to the public "in the next week or two," she said. This news significantly advances the potential value of our claim. The excavated sinkholes may be aboriginal, as I have been arguing, but this theory wasn't favourable for the progress of the interchange project, and now all evidence which would have proved the existence of CMT's on the site, or any sort of archaeological or other resources, has been utterly destroyed.

I believe that there are large quantities of basalt, perhaps even some gneiss -right under the 19th hole of the golf course next to Len Barrie's house. As far as I know, basalt makes quite attractive rocks, which might sit quite nicely on the mantlepieces of people who want just a little piece of the Bear Mountain action! We hope to begin digging a large open pit there, perhaps as early as next week.