Paul George of Gibsons is among the 13 people named this week to the Order of British Columbia.
Lt. Gov. Janet Austin said in her announcement that the 13 new members of the order, chosen from a pool of 160 nominees, “have helped us to grow as a province, taught us to care for our environment, enriched our lives with literature and art, helped us to address past injustices and inspired us to become a more caring and inclusive society.”
The official bio supplied by the province notes that over the past 40 years George has “helped to steward a contemporary view of B.C. beyond a province of just resource extraction with the creation of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee.”
George, 79, immigrated to Canada in 1968 as a Vietnam War objector and worked teaching high school sciences.
He worked with Haida leader Guujaaw and others to protect Gwaii Haanas in Haida Gwaii, which is now a Haida Heritage Site and National Park Reserve.
George and friends founded the Western Canada Wilderness Com-mittee, now known as the Wilderness Committee, in 1980 and in the years that followed helped found North America’s first Green Party, the Green Party of B.C., and led dozens of campaigns for wilderness protection.
The official bio calls George “an inspirational leader [who] came up with ideas for unique campaigns, tactics and strategies that no other environmental group had used.”
George is also the author of several articles and a book about the Wilderness Committee called Big Trees, Not Big Stumps.
George told Coast Reporter the accomplishments he’s being recognized for were a group effort by a “whole wave of people aware that we need nature to survive,” including his wife Adriane Carr, a former B.C. Green Party leader and current Green city councillor in Vancouver.
“It’s a great honour, but it’s not just me,” he said. “All of our campaigns and everything I’ve participated in had lots of other people – it wouldn’t have happened without their help. I feel a bit guilty for being the one that was selected because I couldn’t have done any of it alone.”
George remains active in Green politics and said he and Carr are working to complete their solar-powered home on the Coast to make it fully carbon-neutral so they’re “walking the talk.”
He also said that he’d like to see the government acting now to protect areas like Vancouver Island’s old growth stands and Mount Elphinstone.
“There was an era there where the government really got serious about protecting more [natural] areas – places like the Tetra-hedron. It kind of slowed down after Clayoquot Sound,” George said.
“It’s an empty award if they just continue to promote fossil fuels and don’t protect what natural ecosystems we have left that are threatened.”
