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The third annual Carnival to Save Clayoquot Sound, as harried British Columbians have come to call it, got under way last week. The three - ring circus, featuring protestors, police and a grandstanding MP, interacted like cogs in a finely tuned Swiss watch. But while the demonstrations caused considerable curiosity in the forestry area of western Vancouver Island, it had virtually no effect on loggers who managed to bypass the daily melees.
The green team did, however, attract a squadron of reporters who portrayed the roadside rebels as guerrilla warriors pitted against logging giants MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. and International Forest Products Ltd. (Interfor). Painting the protestors in such light, critics fear, may incite calls for new boycotts against B.C. wood products in Europe.
Their fears appeared justified on July 5, when members of the Friends of Clayoquot Sound, joined by NDP Burnaby - Kingsway MP Svend Robinson, linked arms at the Kennedy River bridge. A German TV crew was on hand to catch a process server armed with a Supreme Court injunction prohibiting the obstruction of logging in nearby watersheds. The crew was filming a documentary about B.C. forestry practices for broadcast later this year in Germany, France, Spain and Austria. When asked by other reporters if they had already decided those practices were bad, ZDF - TV producer Christian Twente nodded and replied "Yeah."
Michael Morton, executive director of the industry support group Share BC, says that while the demonstrators have failed to stop logging, they have become remarkably adept at distorting their own importance. The Friends of Clayoquot, he noted, predicted some 1,000 people would take part in a three - day protest training session last month; 200 showed up. Then they assured the media 1,000 would...