Where in Canada can one look out the window of their vehicle and view not just one deer grazing in a field but an actual herd of the ungulates? This happens to be a common sight when one drives down the hill and through the Bear Flat ranch lands owned by Ken and Arlene Boon when coming from Ft. St. John.

As it happens, I was part of the archaeological survey bunch working on the Site C project for four summers, and when we headed off down towards the Peace River at Bear Flat, we were often awestruck by how many deer were grazing out in the Boons’ fields. But it’s not just deer that abound on these beautiful flatlands along the Peace. There’s also no shortage of elk, moose and, at one time, buffalo.

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Early one morning, we headed off to the west end of Bear Flat to undertake some survey work. When we stepped out of our truck on the local rancher’s property to look down onto the Halfway River estuary flat we could see a moose. No, wait a second, there’s another two, three? Hold on! There’s more! If I recall there was something like total of eight or nine feeding on willow that day.

But then again, Bear Flat is one most incredible place to say the least for wildlife and was recognized as such by the first fur traders to arrive onto the scene, the first being none other than Alexander Mackenzie and his crew on their expedition in their search for an overland route to the Pacific back in 1793. And from Mackenzie’s journal May 16, 1793, entry:

“…Mr. Mackay, and one of the young men, killed two elks, and mortally wounded a buffalo, but we only took a part of the flesh of the former. The land above the spot where we encamped, spreads into an extensive plain (Bear Flat) … The country is so crowded with animals as to have the appearance, in some places, of a stall-yard, from the state of the ground, and the quantity of dung which is scattered over it. The soil is black and light. We saw this day two grizly (sp) and hideous bears.”

Mackenzie was so taken with the site that he convinced the North West Company to construct Rocky Mountain Fort just a few miles downriver at the mouth of the Moberly River. The great explorer determined that it was the ideal location since not only was the company able to secure a bountiful supply of furs from the local Indians, but also the country was abounding in an apparently endless supply of game from which meat could be processed into pemmican. This essentially solved the problem of keeping the company’s canoe brigades well supplied in food in order for them all to be able to paddle back to Fort Superior where the furs collected over the winter were exchanged for the following year’s supplies and trade goods.

This then raises a hypothetical question: if Canada’s early fur traders recognized that this particular stretch of the Peace River, where the Site C development is slated for, as perhaps the richest area for wildlife in all of the Canadian West, why then haven’t wildlife values apparently been taken into account in measuring the cost and benefits of the project?

— Rick James, Royston, B.C.