Entries by Larry Brandt

When the Gates Close: What BC Park Restrictions Reveal About the Deeper Failure of Reconciliation

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Recent reports of British Columbia closing provincial parks to non-Indigenous visitors during certain times have sparked strong reactions—especially in outdoor communities and online forums like morel mushroom picking groups, where similar access restrictions on reserve and Crown lands have appeared. These closures aren’t just policy decisions; they’ve become flashpoints in the national conversation about land, […]

Tides of Tension: Rights, Regulation, and the Elver Fishery Crisis in Atlantic Canada

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Each spring, the rivers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick swell with life—and controversy—as elvers, tiny translucent baby eels, begin their upstream migration. Worth up to $5,000 per kilogram on Asian markets, elvers have become the focus of one of the most volatile and symbolic disputes in Canada’s fisheries: a collision between Indigenous treaty rights […]

The Seal River Isn’t a Stage — and CPAWS Isn’t the Star

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There’s a growing sense of betrayal in Manitoba’s Seal River region — a place so remote and pristine, most Canadians will never lay eyes on it. But the people who live and work there have cared for it every day, for decades. And they’re watching now as national and international groups try to claim the […]