Blockade
by Christine Lowther
Caitlin Press
210 pages
$26
“The title of the book in your hands is meant as a verb,” declares poet and activist Christine Lowther of her recent memoir, Blockade. In this, her second memoir, Lowther details her experiences with the logging blockades on Vancouver Island in the early 1990s, from her first blockade at Kaxi:ks (Walbran River) in 1991, to her arrest at Tlaoquiat (Clayoquot Sound) in 1992, to the mass protests following the controversial 1993 Clayoquot Land Use Decision, which largely left the region open to continued industrial logging.
Based on Lowther’s diaries from the time, Blockade tempers wry, indignant commentary on corporate greed with reflections on how her “colonized mind” shaped her younger self’s perceptions of nature as an untouched wilderness. The memoir also touches on the sometimes-tenuous relationship between environmental activists and First Nations communities. Lowther’s occasionally sparse accounts are padded with historical texts like the mission statement of the Friends of Clayoquot Sound or lists of protest slogans. These interpolated texts add a frenetic, rambling quality to the prose. Dialogue often eschews tags, giving the impression of a communal rather than individual voice.
Lowther juxtaposes the brutality of clear-cutting, and corporate and government opposition to protesting, against brief moments of grace in the natural world. Squirrels “scold” and mosquitoes “dance . . . chaotically like tiny drunk fairies.” In one quiet moment, Lowther “managed to shoot, for several minutes, all five eagles huddling like a football team over their meal [an octopus]. They tugged with their beaks and pulled with their talons, but never got entirely out of the water.”
Blockade similarly intertwines protesters’ humanity with the harrowing retaliation they face. One evening, following a spiral dance, Lowther recollects fondly: “it was dark and chilly, but some people went skinny-dipping anyway!” Without so much as a paragraph break, Lowther continues: “There were twenty-one arrests the next morning.” These moments of frail, communal joy propel Blockade.
At times, Blockade reads more as a string of anecdotes than a cohesive narrative. Broad swaths might be frustratingly opaque to those unfamiliar with the history and major players of West Coast logging blockades, even with the included glossary. Blockade is not an exhaustive historical account of the 1991–1993 logging blockades on Vancouver Island, but rather, a “retelling from someone small who happened to volunteer in what turned out to be significant events.” It is this personal, human touch that sings through Blockade—both as a memoir and a verb. Lowther dares us to join the community and see the world that we could create if we tried.
