Still though, B is the letter for me (as is
15, spaghetti and meat sauce, orange, and

you arching your back, hair down, while
on top of me). And many other letters
inspire imagery in me too: I can’t see a D
without thinking of my sister, T reminds
me of my best buddy, A of when I was
smart, E of Paul Oakenfold, X of
Malcolm, O of orgasm, and J reminds me
simultaneously of the girl of my dreams,
all those who never came close, and, of
course, smoking a nice BC atty. Letters
abound andsthey almost always seem to
mean more than their sum total.

But letters are not all equally liked or
used. The letter E is the most popular in
the class, followed by I, S, A, R, N, T, O,
and L. Out of the 45,000 most common-
ly used English words polled, E is the king
and Q the jester. What I wonder though,
is where in the world does W fit?

Well, with me, the W reminds me of
trips into Vancouver as a kid to catch BC
Lions games, back when Roy DeWalt was
DeMan. I’d see the Woodward’s W, in

Matters

David Suzuki,
David Suzuki

Foundation

 

emember the old saying “extinc-
tion is forever”? Well, someone
should try explaining that to the
of Canada and British
Columbia. They haven’t quite figured it
out yet. Or if they have, they just don’t
seem to care.

governments

Canada’s few remaining spotted owls
are in dire straits. There are just eight pairs
left in British Columbia, along with a
handful of singles, and they are disappear-
ing fast. Yet neither government is willing
to do anything to save them. In fact, you
could say that it is official policy of these
two governments to allow the spotted owl
to quietly go extinct in this country.

The situation is a far cry from what
was promised when Canada finally and
belatedly adopted legislation to protect
species—long after the
United States and Mexico had their own
laws. While Ottawa trumpeted the new
Species at Risk Act as a breakthrough,

endangered

July 13/2005

 

flaming red, emblazoning the top of its
East Hastings tower, spinning like a
whirling dervish to annouince to the
world that an empty warehouse and
poverty lives here. W reminds me of my
earliest French classes, where it became
my favourite French thing to say—dou-
blevé (pronounced doob-le-vay; my lord
how I love the letter J).

At my latest job, I find myself editing
town-and-county bios for a government
directory (yes, as exciting as you think).
Despite its low ranking in the language, W
is one of the most popular first letters for
place names. In the alphabet, W means
shit: fourth from the bottom, fifth least-
used, a mere recreation of the U or V
(depending on whether you’re Anglo or
Franco, and we know how much W hates
the French). A completely unoriginal
thought, W serves as fodder for the bot-
tom feeders.

Yet W seems to be everywhere,
whether you want it or not. W has access
to everywhere in the world, what with the

environmental groups complained that
holes in the legislation were big enough to
drive a logging truck through.

Turns out they were right—and the
spotted owl will be the first victim.
Clearcut logging, sanctioned by the BC
continues in their
remaining habitat, and Ottawa refuses to

government, last
intervene. The main problem is that
Canada’s endangered species legislation
only requires the federal government to
act if the species in question is on federal
government land—which makes up less
than five percent of the country. And
since spotted owls don’t normally nest on
military bases or in those anonymous civil
servant bunkers in Ottawa, it leaves
them—and most species occupying the
other 95 percent of Canada’s vast land-
scape—unprotected.

However, there is a discretionary pro-
vision that gives the federal government
power to intervene on provincial land in
emergency cases where the province has
failed to protect an endangered species. In
the case of the spotted owl, the failure is
clear. The owl is Canada’s most endan-
gered bird. Yet, only is the
government of British Columbia allowing
logging in the last of the bird’s habitat, it
is actively encouraging logging through its
Timber Sales Program. And it has slashed
funding for its Spotted Owl Recovery
Program.

not

Without immediate intervention, the
spotted owl is as good as gone. And it

World Wide Web and its www-dot-what-
ever-dot-com worship. W has become so
prevalent that over a short period of time
(the last decade or so), it has undergone a
dumbing down of pronunciation: from
double-you to double-ya, a la John Wayne
phonics, to the even dumber ‘dubya, a
nod to how cowboy power has harnessed
the whole world over.

Is there any letter more international-
ly despised than W? Websites dedicated to
hating W have popped up everywhere:
www.smirkingchimp.com,
www.bushandcheneysuck.com,
www.bushorchimp.com, and the auspi-
ciously officious www.georgewbush.org,
These sites, dedicated to the Dumb Ass of
the kingdom of W, hate the great White-
House hope, George W. Bush. Whether
they know it or not though, they all hate
him from behind three W’s.

In the 2004 US election, you couldn’t
surf the news without drowning in slo-
gans that spoke half-truths: W is for
Women; ’m with W; ’'m George W.

won't be the last species to die out while
supposedly under the “protective” wing
of Canada’s Species at Risk Act. Many of
the 487 species in Canada currently listed

as “at risk” by the science body governing
species at risk are critically imperiled. And
if the federal government is unwilling to
step up for the spotted owl, it sets a
depressing precedent for the other 486.
Even the science panel’s recommenda-
tions of which species to list as threatened
or endangered are being challenged. In
recent months, the federal government
has refused to list northwestern grizzlies,
western wolverines, and two highly imper-
iled populations of sockeye salmon as
species at risk—in spite of the panel’s rec-
ommendation. So politicians are not only

 

Bush, Bitch; etc. Wrapped up in a culture
of counter-spin, the letter became a mag-
nanimous pro-Bush sentiment and you
couldn’t express your contempt for W
first endorsing him—
www.anti-bush.com, for example. Much
like how making out is the new finger-
bang, www is the new KKK.

But where does that leave us, besides

without

with an under-used, over-inflated, could-
n’t-walk-through-a-doorway-without-turn
ing-sideways W?

It leaves us in a world where no matter
how low your rank may be, regardless (or
is it regardless?) of how little you grasp the
English language, you too can rise above
your station in life, shirk both responsibil-
ity and the laws of natural order, and be
whatever you want to be.

And isn’t that the American Dream?

Darwin isn’t dead; he just lost the elec-
tion. Long live the W.

ost Endangered Bir

 

deciding which species are worth saving,
but which species are actually endangered
in the first place. This kind of frightening
misrepresentation of science is something
more akin to what would be expected of
the Bush administration, not the Canadian
government.

Before the Species at Risk Act was
adopted, I was asked by a reporter if I
thought the legislation would make a dif-
ference. I replied that it had potential, but
only if politicians heeded the science and
were willing to take action. So far, they
haven’t done either, and the spotted owl
will soon be history because of it.

Take the Nature Challenge and learn
more at www.davidsuzuki.org

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