NOVEMBER 2016 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


This could be final harvest for Site C dam opponents With a deadline to leave their land


looming, Peace Valley farmers Ken and Arlene Boon may realize their farming days are over years before the waters rise


by JONNY WAKEFIELD


FORT ST JOHN – On a drizzly September afternoon, Ken and Arlene Boon stood on a hillside overlooking the Peace River, detailing what they’ll lose to the Site C dam. As president of the Peace Valley Landowners’ Association, representing dozens of farmers and ranchers who will be affected by the dam’s 83-kilometre flood zone, Boon has given this tour many times.


At the bottom of the hill on a bend in the highway is a market garden filled with fruit, vegetables and a rain-soaked stand of sunflowers. Along the river, a pair of teepees stand in a hayfield, leftover from a culture camp Treaty 8 First Nations members held this summer. On top of one of the benchlands that line the area, known as Bear Flat, is the Boons’ log home construction business and homestead where Arlene's family has lived for three generations. Now, with a highway realignment around the proposed reservoir set to bisect their land, the Boons are facing the bleak prospect of bringing in their last harvest and ultimately losing their home.


“We’re losing everything,” says Arlene. “We’re looking at having to start over.” Since former premier Gordon Campbell revived the idea of a third Peace River dam in 2010, the Boons have been the face of agricultural opposition to Site C. In the lead-up to the government’s decision to green-light the project, the Boons attended countless hours of review panel hearings in Fort St John. They’ve addressed TV cameras on the steps of the Vancouver court house after legal challenges. Last winter, they helped lead a protest camp that blocked construction for weeks – a stand that eventually earned them and six others a court injunction.


But after years of fighting, the Boons received their official buyout offer from BC Hydro in August.


“Seeing an offer and


knowing there’s a deadline, it is disturbing,” Ken Boon says. “And it brings a new reality to where we’re at. It’s a little hard to take.”


While the Boons have nothing in writing, their lawyer says BC Hydro hopes to have them off their land by the end of the year. The dam is scheduled for completion in 2024 but sections of Hwy 29 between Fort St John and Hudson’s Hope need to be realigned above the flood reserve before the river is diverted. BC Hydro wants to begin rebuilding eight-and-a- half kilometres of highway through Bear Flat early next year. When contacted, however, Site C spokesperson David Conway would not give a specific date by which the Boons must leave.


The first highway crews appeared on the Boons’ property this summer. First, it was geotechnical workers with drilling rigs to test the soil and rock for the roadbed – creating a line of boreholes across the property just metres from the Boons’ home.


The archaeologists came next. Parts of the yard have been transformed into a dig site, with square-metre sections cordoned off with pink and yellow tape. The dig has turned up hundreds of pieces of chert, a flaky, obsidian-like rock used by the region’s early residents for tool making. Some of the arrowheads tested positive for buffalo DNA – additional evidence that the Peace River valley was a trading hub for plains and coastal First Nations.


“There’s a reason why the homes are all on this stretch along Bear Flat,” Ken says over coffee at their kitchen table. “It’s because it makes sense to build homes on these benches. They all have good springs, and we’re not disturbing good farmland. That’s the same reason the archaeologists are finding so much here – because it’s been a desirable place for man to live for 10,000 years – and Hydro wants to put a road right through it.”


In September, the Boons


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Ken and Arlene Boon stand over Hip Peace Produce, a market garden that operates on their property at Bear Flat. With Hwy 29 set to be realigned through the centre of their property, the Boons are bringing in what could be their last harvest. (Photo Jonny Wakefield/Alaska Highway News)


are dividing time between harvesting their crops and finding a new place to live.


Driven down land values Since BC Hydro first


proposed Site C in the 1970s, farming in the valley has been, in part, an act of defiance. BC Hydro and the Crown own 93% of the land in the flood reserve, which has


driven down land values and discouraged large-scale agriculture in the valley. According to the Joint Review


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