We need a few more Ingmar Lees

Dave Obee
Times-Colonist
July 24, 2005

Think of passion and determination — and a desire to make a difference

My friend Ingmar Lee left the hemisphere on Wednesday, and no doubt a few hundred people in corporations, government agencies, environmental groups and everything in between are breathing sighs of relief.

I have to wonder, though, whether the people of India know what’s in store.

Lee is absolutely committed to environmental causes, with no compromises allowed or even considered. He has devoted much of his life to raising awareness of what’s happening to nature on Vancouver Island and around the world.

He’s offended a few people along the way, but that goes with the territory. He’s not the type of person to sugarcoat his message, and he’s not willing to fade into the shadows if he believes someone should be doing more to preserve our planet for future generations.

Lee stands up for what he believes in. He’s also willing to sit down for what he believes in, too, if it means sitting in a tree. But don’t ever accuse him of sitting on a fence.

If he decides a corporation such as Weyerhaeuser needs to be challenged, he’ll do it. If he believes voters need to be reminded of Premier Gordon Campbell’s drunk-driving conviction in Hawaii, he’ll put it on a shirt. And if he thinks environmental groups have sold out to corporations, he’ll say so. Nobody gets a free ride when Ingmar Lee is watching.

Lee was an Independent candidate in Victoria-Hillside in the provincial election, taking 115 votes for a lastplace finish. He knew he had no chance of winning, but he saw an opportunity to get his message across.

He found ways to do that several times during the election campaign. On May 3, he started shouting at a televised all-candidates forum at the Ocean Pointe Resort. He was dragged out of the room by police and security staff, then taken away in handcuffs.

If he had wanted to infiltrate the business-oriented meeting, he could have done a much better job by camouflaging himself in a coat and tie. But he was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt that said Weyerhaeuser Go Home, and featuring a copy of Campbell’s arrest photo. He was easy to spot, even before he grabbed for the mike.

A couple of weeks before that, he disrupted a Campbell rally in the Crystal Ballroom at The Empress. Before that, it was a press conference. The list goes on.

Lee was one of the protesters who camped in trees at Cathedral Grove to fight the plans to expand the parking lot by taking out some of the old-growth forest. Early last year, the group built a platform 50 metres up in one of the trees, then added seven more platforms in other trees, connecting them together with traverse lines.

It was at Cathedral Grove that Lee fell seriously ill with meningitis. He was in critical condition at hospital in Nanaimo for a few days, and his long hair became so badly matted that it had to be cut off. It would take more than a conservative hairstyle to change Lee, though; he was firing more save-thetrees e-mails to me within days of leaving his hospital bed.

At 45, he finally graduated from the University of Victoria this year with a degree in environmental sciences. It’s tough to get a degree when you’re sitting in a tree, and yes, that’s how he spent part of his time on campus. There was a plan for a new building, you see, and it would mean taking out some trees. Lee felt somebody had to do something, and that somebody was him.

Lee dropped by the TC office this week to argue, once again, on behalf of the Vancouver Island marmot. And then he was off to India, where he and his partner Krista will attend Pondicherry University and Krista’s seven-year-old son Desmond will go to a Montessori school. Another feature of the region, he notes, is the best vegetarian food in the world.

Lee says he is hoping to do a master’s research thesis about the Burmese Buddhist appreciation of big trees and ancient forests. He spent a year in Burma as a Buddhist monk in the 1990s, so he’s no slouch on the subject.

And there’s more.

“I hope to immerse myself in the very active Indian environmental scene,” he says. “In India, in places, it is still possible to meet people who are living as participants in the ecological cycles of nature. I think we modern humans have more to learn from them than they do from us.”

In the past five years, the Times Colonist has published more than a dozen of Lee’s essays on the environment, but that hasn’t stopped him from taking shots at us, too. We haven’t done enough, he says, on the subjects dear to his heart. Given his devotion to the cause, I would be disappointed if he said anything else.

I like Ingmar. I don’t agree with everything he says, and I don’t agree with, oh, about 98 per cent of his tactics. But I admire his passion, and his determination to stand up for what he believes in.

Too many people these days sit back, complaining about the way things are, but doing nothing to change them. Lee gets out and fights, ignoring any personal cost or hardship. Lee’s cause just happens to be the preservation of nature. We need more people like him, fighting for many different causes, people who aren’t afraid to be counted.

He’ll be in India for a couple of years if he stays the full length of his study visa.

Don’t forget that India has ancient forests, too, running along the spine of the country.

In the next two years, if we hear of someone climbing high up in the oldest trees of India, shouting that they must be saved, I’d put money on the identity of that protestor.

dobee@tc.canwest.com

As Ingmar would say, lots of other people have been involved in the environmental efforts mentioned below too. Three cheers for the tireless and skilled Raccoons at the camp at Cathedral Grove, and for all those involved in the Uvic tree-sit and "campus planning"! And to all those who put in countless hours of volunteer time monitoring, witnessing, writing, lobbying, and networking out of devotion to BC's beautiful places, you have my admiration too. I'm a total neophyte in India, heading off (more than a week late) to attend the Salim Ali School of Ecology and Environmental Sciences at Pondicherry University to do an MSc. under a Commonwealth scholarship, without knowing anybody there. There is news in the local paper about legislation giving forest tenure to forest-dwelling peoples, and mangrove restoration projects going on along the southeast coast not far from Pondicherry run jointly by ENGOs and international research institutes. If any of you have contacts here or particular interests we would be grateful for the opportunity to make connections.

Cheers,
Krista Roessingh

What else can be expected from the industry-lackey quislings who still work
for Campbell and his logging-besotted government? Only a total kowtowing toady could ever get Campbell's "Chief Forest Exterminator" position. Anyone with conscience was exterminated from the Ministry of Logging under this regime.

What an utter catastrophe for our once magnificent forests, and how shameful
that the slightest attempt to demonstrate alternatives to the'fibre-per-year-per-hectare' clearcut and 'variable retention' scam now ends up as yet another steaming stumpfield.

Shame on the BC Ministry of Logging, and it's Chief Industry Quisling, Snetsinger.

Let's get on with putting up the "BC's Monster Foresters" website, and put a
name, face and address to these crimes against nature.

Ingmar