STORIES

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Work and Industry on the Fraser River, part 2

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Community: Fraser Valley

The following essay is part 2 of 3 on work and industry on the lower Fraser River. A photo slideshow accompanies it. Here is Part 1. Part 3 follows next week.

Between Fort Langley on the south shore and Albion on the north shore runs the Albion ferry, the only inland example of BC Ferries vessels I’ve ever seen. The two boats crisscross in front of us as we slow to an idle and let the river current push us along. A harbour seal swims along beside us and dives, exposing its speckled grey and black back.

We carry on, past a few small saw mills on the north shore, with their collections of bobbing logs. In the midst of the logs tender boats bounce and rear and remind me of mini tugboats. They spin and nudge the logs like border collies shepherding sheep. A flotilla of houses sits in a calm row on the south bank. A campground passes by with the white trailers arranged in rows above a pebbly beach. It feels a long way outside the city.

We sweep into Maple Ridge to see condo complexes and roadways and construction. Wood chips from a sawmill tumble over the top of a conveyor belt down into the belly of a moored barge.

Ahead, through the narrows of islands and shore, we spy the Port Mann Bridge, a place I dread to visit because it means traffic jams and jerky braking driving. But this morning it glows with warm colour, looking almost graceful in the soft sunlight. We push downstream and the bridge looms larger above, a rusty red span from riverbank to riverbank, an enormous expanse even here at the narrows.

From below I find myself in a kind of reverse observer. I’ve often crossed this very bridge and glanced upstream to the east, to the valley, at the river climbing away through islands and trees to the wilder distance, leaving the city. And now here I am in the river, admiring the grace of the bridge that seems nothing but a crude instrument of city planning as a driver.

To the north the Pitt River sweeps away between heavy pilings on each bank. The city of Coquitlam climbs the treed hills in row after row of streets, homes, yards. On the opposite bank, to the south, a train yard crowds right down to the edge of the shore. Row after row of train cars sit on tracks cut from the thickets of blackberries.

The depth gauge on the boat incredibly reads over a hundred feet. The volume of water that now flows underneath us is staggering. It feels like we’ve entered suddenly into the edges of the city, with buildings, infrastucture and warehouses crowded in, and the wildness that had been all around us has receded into the water.

We pass under the Port Mann Bridge and more bridges appear ahead: the Pattullo, the Alex Fraser. Now we’re right into the heart of the log booms. Great rafts of them are fastened to the pilings next to the shore. We overtake a tug towing what must be a kilometre-long boom of logs, so long another tug has to assist midway through the boom to steer it around a corner.

In the midst of all the industry, a female osprey sits on its nest on the top of a pile. We cut the engines and drift towards it. I see the black and white markings as she raises her head. The golden eyes capture the sunlight. We drift past and watch her as she watches us. For a few seconds she takes flight, circles around our boat and returns to the nest. We remain still and let her settle back on the nest.