By Chris Miller
Staff writer

Former NDP cabinet minister Dr. Tom Perry counts him as a role model. Green Party leader Adriane Carr calls him a grandfather of the province’s environmental movement. But most people have never heard of 88-year-old Bert Brink.

That’s because the long-time conservationist is modest to a fault. Colleagues agree Brink could be a household name if he didn’t shun the spotlight.

One of the original commissioners on the B.C. Land Commission, Brink has been front and centre on issues such as dredging Burnaby Lake, conserving Burns Bog, protecting endangered plants in the Okanagan, preserving coastal Garry Oak ecosystems and expanding parkland near Redfern Lake in the Northern Rockies. And that’s just a select sprinkling of his accomplishments. Perry estimates Brink has been involved in every significant conservation issue in B.C. over the last 60 years.

"He’s a very generous, modest guy and he’s a great humanist, really," Perry says. "He’s an astounding naturalist and he’s also one of the great people I’ve met in my life."

Carr offers a similar appraisal. "He’s sort of inspired conservation activism," Carr says. "And B.C., of course, is well-known globally for it. He’s one of the people who has brought that about."

Despite his age, Brink remains an active conservationist and a few areas remain particularly close to his heart. One is the Northern Rockies, a magnificent, unspoiled landscape far from the province’s urban centres. Another is the Lillooet region, an outdoor paradise about 200 kilometres north of Vancouver, now threatened by logging and mining interests.

The latter area is a bit of a sore spot for Brink, who was a member of the Vancouver Natural History Society in 1937 when it asked the province to turn the South Chilcotin Mountains—in the Lillooet region—into a park. Environmental groups such as the Southern Chilcotin Mountains Wilderness Society, the Outdoor Recreation Council of British Columbia and the Sierra Club have made similar requests, to no avail.

Brink remains an advocate for the South Chilcotins, recently joining a rally at the H.R. Macmillan Planetarium intended to spur the government into action.

The issue doesn’t make him angry, just regretful that the government, timber companies, mining firms and conservationists haven’t reached a compromise. He’s hoping they find common ground soon, before his time runs out.

Brink first saw the lofty Southern Chilcotin Mountains and their flower-filled alpine meadows while working for the federal government in the mid-1930s. Brink, who hadn’t yet completed school, took a job driving thousands of sheep from Kamloops to the mountains. Rangeland in B.C., just like farms and ranches across the Prairies, suffered during those years, and the drive was intended to take pressure off existing pastures.

Serving as an assistant, Brink embarked on the arduous drive westward across vast swaths of rangeland. After negotiating passage fees with landowners, fending off coyotes, which circled the flock, and boarding the sheep on a ferry—a process that took a few trips back and forth—Brink and company arrived.

He was enthralled with the Southern Chilcotins, and remains so to this day. Vibrantly coloured wildflowers from southern and northern B.C. meet in gorgeous alpine meadows, and wildlife proliferates. Deer and bighorn sheep roam the territory, which is also home to foxes, bobcats and bears. Unlike the Coastal Mountains, which have jagged V-shaped valleys, the land around the Southern Chilcotins has been rounded and smoothed by glaciers, making it perfect for hikers and horseback riders.

"It’s not a cliffhanging area," says Brink. "It’s an area where there are some beautiful mountains—they’re beautiful, absolutely superb. But the topography is gentle. It’s an area where families can go."

The Vancouver Natural History Society recommended the province protect the Southern Chilcotin Mountains after members viewed a film by Bralorne resident Charlie Cunningham in the 1930s. Society member Renee Ronayne, whose pioneering family settled in the area, also became one of its outspoken advocates. Ronayne helped arrange summer camps in the area, which Brink and many others attended.

Unfortunately for conservationists, resource companies have long had their eyes on the territory, too. After decades of inaction, the government started a Land and Resource Management Plan for the Lillooet region in 1995, but the stakeholders—representing logging, mining, conservation and tourism interests—never came together.

Instead, they split into two groups, conservation and tourism on one side, resource industries on the other. Each fired recommendations off to the province last week.

Needless to say, their plans are vastly different. Conservationists want more than 70,000 hectares of unclaimed territory in the Southern Chilcotins protected; the resource sector says it will cede 43,000, mainly in alpine zones. If the government gives in to industry, the last pristine valleys around Spruce Lake, one of the area’s recreational gems, will be lost, Brink says. Three or four valleys around Spruce Lake remain untouched; conservationists would like to see at least a couple protected.

Though the logging industry is still key to Lillooet, Brink thinks the town doesn’t fully appreciate the area’s tourism potential.

"I know the people in Lillooet town have an employment problem," he said. "I’m sympathetic. But I think in the long run they should protect their recreational base as well as their logging base."

Cabinet begins reviewing the recommendations when its new session starts Wednesday. Unless a decision comes down before the upcoming election, the entire debate could move back to square one, Brink says. Of course, there’s also a chance the Liberals would drop any decision made now out the window once they gain power.

"That’s certainly a privilege of government," Brink says. "They can reverse almost anything. But there is a lot of pressure being placed on Mr. Campbell right now to accept the environmental side of things. He’s being lobbied as well as the premier."

Born in Calgary in 1912, Brink traipsed through the wilderness near his parents’ farm and ranch before attending grade school. After his family moved to Vancouver, where they owned a livestock farm in Kitsilano, Brink—a Cub Scout at the time—began lacing up his boots for field trips led by Vancouver Natural History Society founder John Davidson, known as "Botany John." Davidson, who later taught Brink and became a university colleague, proved a prominent influence. An outspoken conservationist, Davidson decried the wasteful logging practices of the time, such as sweeping aside young timber to get at old growth.

Brink graduated from Kitsilano high school in 1930, then studied agriculture at UBC, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He completed a PhD in applied plant physiology—roughly equivalent to plant genetics—at the University of Wisconsin before returning to UBC, this time as an instructor, near the start of the Second World War.

An avid climber, Brink trained Canadian mountain infantry troops until suffering a leg injury in 1941 that dogs him to this day. While roped to a group

of French-Canadian troops on Mount Quadra, Brink fell off a precipice and swung against a rock face, fracturing his upper femur.

No medical personnel were on hand, so Brink—who wasn’t aware of the extent of his injury—had to complete an agonizing 10-day march back to civilization, humping his pack all the way.

Brink hasn’t been able to run since. Slightly stooped, he now slowly shuffles along with a cane, though his lack of mobility doesn’t affect his manners. When you enter his home on West 16th Avenue, he’ll politely take your coat and hang it up himself.

Reassigned to technical work after his leg injury, Brink participated in national defence-oriented agricultural projects. Brink helped develop crops for a soybean glue needed to stick together wooden parts on Spitfire and Hurricane fighters. He also helped grow fibre-flax for ropes and nets.

"It made a great deal of sense, I guess, but I always felt badly about it, because the boys I was with went overseas, and I always felt I should be with them."

Brink continued teaching at UBC during the post-war boom years, when the student population exploded. While helping usher genetics into the field of accepted sciences, he also became one of the province’s guiding lights ecologically.

Brink was president of the Natural History Society from 1950 to 1952 and founded its conservation committee in 1963. He also pushed for the formation of the B.C. Nature Council, which later became the Federation of B.C. Naturalists.

His work hasn’t gone unrecognized. In addition to the Order of B.C. and the Order of Canada, Brink has earned the prestigious Pimlott Award from the Canadian Nature Federation.

To show the respect Brink commands, one of his old friends, Dick Stace-Smith, recounts a story about organizing a surprise party for Brink’s 80th birthday. On the sly, a small group began contacting Brink’s friends and colleagues. As the list grew, they realized they would have to rent a church for the occasion. Three hundred people attended.

Sitting in a padded chair at his West 16th Avenue home, Brink assiduously avoids eye contact. When his gaze strays over, his sharp blue eyes quickly flicker away beneath his thin-framed glasses. He’s smart and serious—humour, or any sort of levity, rarely leaks into his dialogue. While not media-shy, he says he’s had his share of recognition but that the issues should be paramount.

Despite his wariness, Brink’s storytelling enthusiasm waxes at times. He recounts tales of wilderness hikes, trips to Africa with the Canadian International Development Agency and his work as a conservation-minded professor. He’s come face-to-face with grizzly bears and escaped a guarded Ugandan hotel during Idi Amin’s rise.

Brink recounts names, distances and natural features with academic precision. He spells out the names of almost everyone he mentions.

He grew close to many conservationists during Natural History Society summer camps, an institution since the 1920s. Because people had to do everything themselves—wash dishes, raise tents, start campfires—Brink learned more about people at the camps than anywhere else.

The society never lacked for personalities. Founder John Davidson and C.F. Connor, both respected professors at UBC, occasionally got into shouting matches over the classification of plants. One elderly Englishman, meanwhile, regularly wandered off to find interesting flora, which he’d then press and send off to the British Museum.

"He was a great old guy," Brink says. "A little bit dotty, you might say. We spent so much time hunting for that man some days."

Brink was a bit of a character, too. His old friend Dick Stace-Smith fondly remembers the "Bert Brink mile," a term referring to Brink’s tendency to under-estimate distances while leading society members on wilderness hikes. After Brink advised his followers that an interesting type of grass or plant was a mile away, he’d lead them on a 10-mile march, Stace-Smith said.

Getting to the camps was often an adventure in itself.

To visit Noaxe Lake in the Shulaps Mountains one year, the club first drove the dusty road to Lillooet, then rented an open cattle truck, which they took to the end of the road on the Yalakom River. After a horse-train met them and took their supplies on one route to the lake, the society members embarked on a roughly 15-mile hike over alpine meadow, rock and scree. One woman, Mrs. Pinder-Moss, tumbled on a rock and broke her leg as she neared the camp. Society members with medical experience set the injury, and for the next eight days, she remained immobile but cheerful, as she inspected the plant specimens other members brought back to her.

Brink stays on top of most environmental issues, jumping from one to another in conversation, offering quick observations and analyses. Global warming is one topic he doesn’t think receives enough attention in Canada. The effect if the sea level rose just one foot would be disastrous, he says, noting the United Kingdom has invested hundreds of millions of pounds to study the problem.

Then there’s the Fraser River. Though it has taken its lumps over the years—Brink is particularly critical of dyking that has changed its hydrology—he’s encouraged by what he calls "state-of-the-art remediation" in some sections damaged by industry.

Brink rarely misses a meeting with the Vancouver Natural History Society, the society’s conservation committee, which he founded, and a local group called Save Our Parkland. During the day, when not consulting with other conservationists over the phone, Brink sometimes pores over the thick documents delivered to his home. Glancing at a manila envelope containing a paper on the Fraser River, Brink casually admits reading it will be a chore. Since becoming involved with conservation movements over 70 years ago, it seems his work is never done.

Not one to lie across logging roads, sit in endangered trees or board whaling ships in protest, Brink remains strictly old-school in his methods. He’s disdainful of environmental tactics calculated to attract photo ops and interviews, especially when the science gets left behind.

"They do a fine job of creating awareness," Brink said. "In some cases, it is leading to positive results. But I would prefer to approach it on a somewhat more rational basis."

Brink said he argues with good friends, who use the very methods he deplores, about the best way to persuade society to change. Despite his reservations about their tactics, he’s happy with what he sees.