Insanity, Responsibility, and Civil Disobedience

Presentation by Erin Nelson

Grant Hadwin probably was insane.

He was still rational and moral.

The logging companies were insane, too, but unlike Hadwin, they had no moral compass.

Cutting down the Golden Spruce was an act of civil disobedience.

Hadwin was “intense” and reckless.

Random and impulsive.

Paranoid.

But...

Hadwin was at home in the forest.

He understood how it worked.

His ability to survive in the bush was based on sense and respect.

Logging in BC was irresponsible and irrational.

Forests were thought to be infinite.

In 1980, only 1/3 of logged areas were replanted.

Clearcutting destroys forest ecosystems.

Here’s how.

Trees store water.

Without them, water simply runs off, causing floods.

Recent floods at Kingcome Inlet.

Clearcuts were identified as a main cause.

Trees also store nutrients.

Those get recycled when the tree dies.

Clearcutting removes these nutrients from the ecosystem.

1998 clearcut at Rivers Inlet.

The logging industry was dying with the forests.

But irresponsible logging continued.

In 1993, the NDP government gave MB rights to clearcut 70%of Clayoquot Sound.

Hadwin was disgusted with the industry.

He wrote tons of letters, but it came to naught.

He saw an injustice of bureaucrats destroying the environment.

He took more direct action.

Like an activist who has exhausted his other means, Hadwin took action.

He cut down the “pet tree”.

He didn’t see why it was any more important than the rest of BC’s forests.

Stump of the Golden Spruce

What is it?

Martin Luther King Jr broke a civil disobedience campaign into four steps.

Step 1: Gather information.

Hadwin did this during his work in the logging industry.

Step 2: Negotiation

Hadwin’s letter campaign, and his attempts to speak with logging companies.

Step 3: Preparation and “self purification”.

Hadwin prepared himself extensively and had time to reconsider.

Step 4: Action.

Bye, bye, Golden Spruce.

Thus, Hadwin went through all the steps of an act of civil disobedience.

“... an individual who breaks a law that his conscience

tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the

penalty... in order to arouse the conscience of the

community over its injustice, is in reality expressing

the highest respect for the law.”

Hadwin disappeared before he could be imprisoned.

But the important thing is that he didn’t deny what he did.

He was open about what he did and why he did it.

Hadwin’s actions qualify as civil disobedience.

Hadwin’s action was a politically motivated protest.

He may have been insane, but he was still rational and moral.

Logging companies were not. They thoughtlessly destroyed their own livelihood and that of others.

Grant Hadwin was only trying to stop it.