Grey Whales In The Sewers (CityStudio #8)

How does one do it? How might someone psychologically connect the water a family flushes down its drains, or lets pass over its roof and directly into the storm sewer, with the grey whale? During May of last year, a mature grey whale visited False Creek presumably to feed on some of the herring that returned to spawn here a few years prior. False Creek, for most of its early history until halfway into this century, was an industrial hub for Vancouver. Sawmills, ports, and rail yards for the historic Canadian Northern Pacific Railway and the Great Northern Railway companies dominated this landscape and with heavy industry came heavy pollution. Such industry no longer resides here. Instead, its property has been replaced by glass towers, backdropped by the arboreal vastness to the north.

The grey whale, a keystone species, and the herring should proudly symbolize hope. Development is not innately nature-adverse, as the decisions we make in its name can easily be. We live in an era of mass extinction and rising consumption. It is hopeful to see creatures that we have kept at bay for so long in the name of progress, return to a place they called home long before we did.

Industry will inevitably return however. As all fossil fuels peak and continue to grow more expensive, the world will again look not so small and easy to traverse, and industry will return to the region. When this happens, what waterways will we allow it to populate? Does it matter? Water is all connected and water is patient. It will take its time flowing back towards the Pacific if it needs to, and with it, our pollution it will bring.

Before we forecast this era, it would be in the best interest of the grey whale and their fellow creatures if we begun to connect something with those who live in glass towers and beyond…All water is connected. Since the earliest life, Earth has been a blue planet. For hundreds of millions of years its water has been the same water, cycling over and over and over through the hydrologic cycle. Clean water means life for whales and fish and humans. Relearning this idea, the idea of all water being one water, is central to the goal of keeping water clean.

The iconic rain that is Vancouver's winter was transpired by the vast temperate rainforest to the north. Countless trees perspiring as they grow taller and thicker provides the moisture that becomes the snow that falls on our olympic slopes. This snowpack is what feeds our three protected watersheds–Capilano, Coquitlam and Seymour–which provide us the water we drink from our taps, wash our whites and darks, and sprinkle our prized lawns. This same rain, too warm for it to still be snow, also falls upon our roofs and runs off of our roads. Drains, both those in our homes and those in our streets try to capture all of this used water. Yet, much of it finds its way into the streams that run unseen beneath our feet, into False Creek, off to the Burrard Inlet, and out into the Pacific Ocean. Here the cycle begins again as clouds form and drift eastward, yet again, over Earth's largest body of water.

There are hurdles of scale, but all water can be visualized as one water. Imagining can lead to believing…believing to understanding…understanding to caring. Grey whales do not travel our sewers, but we can imagine them there, hunting for schools of tasty amphipods.