OPEN LETTER TO PREMIER DAVID EBY
AND FOREST MINISTER RAVI PARMAR
FROM ELDER BILL JONES, PACHEEDAHT FIRST NATION
July 2026
Dear Premier David Eby and Minister Ravi Parmar:
I write to you today to implore you to refrain from clear cutting any more old-growth forest on the Pacheedaht unceded lands, particularly the Walbran.
As a boy, I remember when the salmon ran in the river in runs so strong you could walk across them to the other side. I have always considered our forests as our cathedral, our relatives who provide us with food, medicine, biodiversity and everything we need to exist. Quite simply, the land is us and we are the land, and that relationship of love and respect has sustained us for millennia. Never take more than you need; never take it all has always been our way.
Yet, in less than 200 years, our land has been ravaged in the pursuit of profit for both government and industry. There is no thought to the care of the people. In destroying our forests, you have brought upon us terrible wildfires, droughts, floods and landslides across the province of BC.
Nothing seems to have moved you, not the pleas and protests contained in the thousands upon thousands of letters, emails, phone calls, rallies, sit-ins, parades, art installations, documentaries, books and legal actions from people of all walks of life. Indigenous peoples, teachers, writers, film makers, artists, lawyers, doctors, scientists, foresters, students, retirees, children, youth – all of us have not made the slightest dent in your determination to annihilate all the accessible old-growth forest. You ignore the recommendations of your own panels, including the Old-Growth Strategic Review, the Technical Advisory Panel and more recently the Forest Practices Advisory Board. Most of all, you continue to ignore Fairy Creek, the largest mass civil disobedience movement in Canadian history. You simply pretend it didn’t happen. The voices of tens of thousands of people across the province have apparently made no difference to you.
What of your legacy in the generations to come? As it stands, you will be remembered as the architects of the destruction of our once great BC forests, those who refused to stray from the path of corporate profit-making to consider the needs of the people. Why not change that by saving what’s left of our old-growth forests?
It seems to me a strange legacy, particularly for Premier Eby, considering the government no longer makes any profit, as it spends forest revenues on fighting wildfires, repairing infrastructure and increasing health costs.
Now with the use of gates and roadside boulders, you deny me access to what remains of my cathedral. Please tell me why you think you have the right to deny me and my Nation our spiritual practice and culture on our unceded lands?
I look forward to your detailed reply to be provided to my email address at william.jones@me.com with a cc to the media contact listed below.
Respectfully,
Elder Bill Jones
Pacheedaht First Nation
MEDIA CONTACT
Kathy Code
Codekat999@gmail.com
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Elder Bill Jones is the Pacheedaht First Nations guide and mentor of Fairy Creek, the biggest mass civil disobedience movement in Canadian history.