Lost Lake - Gone but not Forgotten (Sumas Lake)
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- čas přidán 13. 02. 2021
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This film was created in the traditional territory of the Sto:lo Nation and Qayqayt First Nation, whose people have been part of this land since time immemorial.
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European ideals for life didn’t cohesively work with the environment, so they adjusted nature by draining Sumas Lake instead of changing their way of life. The discovery of this lake was its demise. 100 years later, the lake is resurfacing - how long can humanity hold back mother nature?
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Featured on CBC Radio 1 Early edition with Steven Quinn, CBC News with Johanna Wagstaffe, and Global TV. This short has also been nominated for multiple short film awards.
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linktr.ee/bric...
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Music: Flight of the Inner Bird - Sivan Talmor
ArtlistIO License Number
771679
Thank you Mother Nature for reminding us again who's boss.
This video aged like a fine wine.
Yeah it did. I live like 5 minutes away from this and it’s flooding full again. Full circle ⭕️
"would we dare drain it again?" Timely.
Right. The lake nearly claimed itself again. As an evacuee, I wish all of my evacuees the best, and hope they all can return home soon. Tomorrow. the Abbotsford Police said I can attempt to return to my home. I know there is water in my garage, but not sure about the house yet. God bless all.
@@shunin88 - You watch. Government will authorize the draining of Sumas Prairie/Lake yet again, in fact, if I'm not mistaken, the pump station is working overdrive as we speak to do exactly that.
And according to the flood report just released by ecologists who studied this incident - in about 30 years the flood will happen again and will be 4x as costly.
How many among us knew anything about the history of Sumas Lake before this week’s disastrous events and the devastating losses?
Nature may be manipulated but she is unconquerable.
Such an interesting clip. Thanks, @BricklightFilms. Informative and educational. I’ll watch for the feature.🍂
As the director of this film, I grew up in Vancouver. Our cinematographer grew up in the Okanagan. Neither of us had this tid bit of history remotely touched on in class. We do have friends and colleagues who grew up in Abbotsford and they did learn about it, but not as in depth as we are all learning now. They got some select history.....
I learned what I know of it from Sumas First Nations workbooks and stories, and the extensive research and interviews collected by Chad Reimer. We filmed this to help fund a larger project so we could share the history with as many people as possible. We have been working on this for a while and only now people are interested....
@@BricklightFilms hope you are able to continue this story and show the folly of the decisions that are being made to drain it again 😭 Government should be restoring this lake. It would act as a buffer for future flooding. Like the Springbank reservoir in Alberta which was planned after the 2013 floods there. Such shame that politics trump logic and science 😔
I have lived around ten minutes south of there for around 7 years now and did not know there was ever a lake there
I had just been talking with my husband about the lake as we live in Abbotsford and own property in Hope. I told him all about it. And the pump station as I had wondered why there were no lakes near by when I moved into the area 20 years ago. So I looked up lakes in Abbotsford and had come across the history. I know it’s heart breaking because of the lost of farms. But when they drained it they would have had loss then as well. I feel it should be a lake As was intended. The area looks beautiful and peaceful filled with water at the end of the mountains.
This will ALL be blamed on goreBULL warming, and not only will they not learn they cannot CONTROL nature, but will come back in a vengeance even harder to do the impossible. All the while draining your pockets--along with any other of those pesky lakes that get in the way.
Great piece of history. Sorry for all the people that lost everything back there and now.
There was a massive con draining the lake in the 1920s and that was the loss of a complete and rich community that had lived off that land for hundreds of years.... The Sema:th people were robbed of their culture, food, and land....for helping people.....
Now, an established ecosystem created over the last 100 years is flooding.....
Living on the low ground is a brilliant idea when it floods. The rich live on the hills.
That is exactly what the Sema:th did. It was the settlers who wanted the grazing land.
@@SC-oh9ol it seems like you don't like our content, we are not sure why you are here. Please discontinue discord with this account, we will not accept colonialist history that disregards Indigenous people in this way.
Beautifully done. It is interesting how nature recently protested and readjusted.
Interesting as heck
Lol sumas lake has returned new landscape names… Whatcom island, Chililiwack island, Hope island
If none of this water receded I presume they would declare it a sea vs a lake at this point. The sheer size of the body of water connects along many rivers to the ocean. I wonder how the Rambo statue is doing on our newfound, and hopefully very temporary Hope Island.
@@BricklightFilms newfound hopeland, actually sounds nice?
Beautiful film
Not excusing the decision to drain the lake 100 years ago but not really interested in celebrating what would probably be the most contaminated water body in the province now sitting on top of hundreds of farms, flooded manure pits, oil leaking machinery, and rotting carcasses of thousands of dead livestock.
Gross! And very true. Think about all the Geri cans and other toxic chemicals we all have in our houses. All the chemicals the farmers use. Now in this lake. Now heading for the Fraser/Stolo river and the mouth of the Salish Sea. Oh man.
Aptly put.
I'll take it
@@MyDogmatix They cleaned up Britannia Beach and False Creek, marine life returned. Pollution resulting from agriculture can be cleaned up too, not overnight but it's possible.
How accurately done this video is I have to say amazing job.
Also Praying those pumps stay on thru the night
Fuck the pumps
Thank you. We put a lot of work into researching before we shot it. I truly hope the pumps are saved to spare the town of the flooding. I hope everybody is safe.
Quick visit from the future, both the pumps and John Conner survived
Thank you for telling the lake's story so beautifully. The only right answer to your question at the end is 'No". No one should be so foolish as to try to lose the lake. We should only rejoice that it has been found, and be thankful into the future.
@@shifty7739 Eating locally produced food is only great for the environment when it can be done without destroying the local environment. You seem to be mislead about the non-existence of the lake as well as the value of marshlands.
I had to rush away to a Zoom meeting so did not have time to ask whether you have "skin in the game." I am not quite sure what this expression means; but, if having skin in the game means caring a lot about what happens to a lake and its ecosystem then I have a lot of skin in this game.
It is a lake. Scientifically it is a lake. Please provide us your ecology degree in Limnology. If you can't provide one, your opinion on the lake's designation is moot. We've seen you pop up negatively in a few comments and it's not tolerated. No trolls, name calling, or any other break in terms of service will be allowed. You are one comment away from being banned from our page.
The ideal has been to conquer not cooperate with Mother Nature. It has proven to not be a successful strategy over the long term. Perhaps now the attitudes are changing as the cost to maintain this mindset continues to go up. We shall see.
I would love to say we will learn from this, but look at New Orleans, Puerto Rico or any other disaster we've had in the last ... even 2 years.... What blows my mind (the director) is that when you look historically, the civilizations that fell, fell due largely to overconsumption of resources. They initially found areas that were very lush and rich with everything they needed, and then overharvested to the point where they changed the eco-climate of the area created natural disasters that wiped them out... drought, flooding, etc... It feels like, and I'm not an expert in this particular field so this is opinion only, all animals including us, have a default system in place to cull our populations when we no longer have the homeostatic balance with our surroundings. I'm going to look into this more and speak to people who are experts in this study to find out more details.
Before current day, this was happening to isolated civilizations. I am terrified, but also fascinated to see how it works on a global scale and I'm also terrified and blown away that I'll be living through something like this.
Lake is coming back, look what are the 4 most affected areas are.
It's almost like the original lake may have shown us exactly where it wanted to be.
@@amandachristmas9682 Exactly
I've always known this. I grew up in Abbotsford. My mom grew up in Clayburn. She and Dad both told us about the draining of Sumas Lake.
yes its part of our history. People need to pay more attention to where they live and the history that comes with where they live.
I grew up in a different area of the valley and never heard a peep about it. I think maybe unifying a curriculum about specific BC history and prior to settlement history for the indigenous peoples would be good. I'm only also learning now about Tsleil-Waututh having their entire village burned down in 1913 to build industrial at false Creek. I would have loved to learn this in school and learn about the "great land reclamation" that settlers felt entitled to. I think I would have been supportive of indigenous history and reconciliation much sooner. Maybe that's why they don't do it....
@@amandachristmas9682 would certainly be useful. But it also takes an effort on an individual to show interest in the place they call home and seek out the history that is there. Mill Lake is a great example in Abbotsford as it has placards all around about the history of mill lake and what it was used for in the past before it became a park. also there is a lot of stuff posted on youtube like this but also from the government. there is a 360 degree camera view walking through the barrowtown pump stations showing you the equipment operating and all the rooms etc. The information on our history is there for those who seek it.
@@One_Guy As a child, especially one who didn't grow up specifically in Abbotsford, I wouldn't have been able to even understand what I didn't know about a neighboring city I had been to maybe only a few times. My mother is from England, and I can tell you she had no idea about it until I told her. Also, as a kid, I had no internet.... that is new and maybe it changes how kids learn now in a way I can't even fathom. Playing devils advocate, I would rather take the position of "most people won't look into Canadian history themselves, let us add it to the curriculum from childhood and hope it sparks a continuous learning opportunity for them" vs "they should be adventurous and figure it out on their own"... It's fantastic you were that person, not all of us are or can be for whatever reason. If we spark the history in children, one would hope they would at least remember it or continue growing their knowledge as adults. And we need to include proper Indigenous history in these lessons so they learn that it wasn't all fur trade, beading, and drum circles (this is my recollection of my lessons on Indigenous history from elementary school and I'm glad I went beyond this)
Good luck with your full documentary This short sure left me looking for more.
Thank you! Our director is furiously writing the new outline. Keep checking in - we'll announce here, and socials when it's going to production. @bricklightfilms for all of them!
Nature is always striving to maintain balance, humans are always causing imbalances and the more imbalance we cause the crazier the swings will be when nature tries to rebalance herself. If we continue down the path of destruction the swings will only get worse and worse until nature has taken care of the human parasites and begins to heal. The audacity we have as humans to believe we can somehow overcome her and escape this inevitability. We have to learn to live in a mutually beneficial relationship with Mother Nature if we are to survive as a species. This flooding is a warning
I couldn't agree more
The lake has returned, when will people ever learn. Leave lakes as lakes, its as nature intended.
Shut down barrowtown pumps! Bring the lake back!
We all know they won't. Instead of buying the land back and helping relocate people they will just spend more than a trillion dollars every 30 years to keep it farm land. And they will do this whether science agrees or not. I'm not sure what it would actually take to get governments to change.... I don't think governments ever have, look at historical cities that have perished - the leaderships greed didn't stop until the city buckled and died... Grim.. sorry, I haven't had my coffee yet.
Well, you certainly called it. And it didn't take 48 hours.
It didn't fully refill. The entire area, if filled, would be from Chilliwack to Sumas Wa and about 10-20 feet deep in most areas.... We got close, but not fully.
Just finished reading Before We Lost The Lake. Will watch for your film.
We love that book. It wasn't why we started making this but we definitely read it after we started shooting and were blown away with the extensive knowledge Chad Reimer has learned about the lake. He has created something so special with it. I'm glad you got the opportunity to read it and I hope we can even do half the justice to the story that Chad did.
It should be returned into a lake and put back to its original size , all the residents relocated somewhere else , back to the beautiful wetlands beside the ocean that it used 2 be
If we did this everywhere, whole cities would need to be displaced. The shifting balance is never-ending. None of it was here during the Ice age and before that. Dinosaurs get wiped out making room for new life.
This is interesting. In the 1910-1920's Vancouver/Abby area the colonizing settlers "reclaimed" land by draining Sumas while simultaneously filling in a good portion of Skwácháy̓s (False Creek) (all the way back to Clark Dr.) We then built a massive infrastructure hub on these newly created lands with no regard for future generations. Now we are dealing with the consequences of our actions AND STILL building massive infrastructure on "reclaimed" land - the hospital in Skwácháy̓s. If we allowed certain areas to reclaim their space our climate issues would subside. We are creating these disasters ourselves by artificially and quickly altering the landscape. Our new land is sediment and our structures won't last. Be it flood or earthquake, many areas we "reclaimed land" in will no longer exist and keep costing our government a fortune to maintain.
The Semá:th Xόtsa (pron seMATH hOTsa) area was was green land from Triassic to Miocene and during this time the solid foundation of the land was being formed. The sediment (the same that we created 100 years ago in the area) became rock through compression over thousands of years, which went through various stages to create the stable land mountains that held up to the coming ice age. In the Pleistocene the Glacier advanced to the Cox Station area at the bottom of Semá:th mountain by the rivers edge. It then started retreating - near where valley gravel pits sit today. The retreat then continued until about 11k years ago. The area became an important flood zone and water regulation hub for the Fraser River, and was a wetland the area. Once drained the Fraser burst its banks in other areas but the full effect of losing wetland water retention systems in Semá:th wasn't felt by *us* until the 1948 flood in the prairie.
If we allowed this area to become a wetland once again, not only would we see species once lost start returning (sturgeon being one), we would have a valuable water retention and natural flood regulator in the lower Sto:lo (fraser) and keep a predictable water level in upper Sto:lo.
None of us can afford to lose food with our artificially sustained population. This is a hard position we are all in. We've created a demand for the product that comes from a lake bed. This will not end well for us with either a drained or flooded lake scenario. Keeping it flooded is ripping the Band-Aid off now, draining it is putting on a second Band-Aid that will break off again in a decade or two and cost an even higher ridiculous cost for repair.
Just the term "Lower" mainland say it all.
Amazing and it shows mans impact on on the environment
More knowledgeable now. The earth does what it does, this time it's here in BC with this rain. Fukishima, Japan had tsunamis over the course of time and was forgotten until it came again. Nothing stays the same over time...Cheers...
My grandma said last time sumas flooded the water reached the seat of the tractor.
What a video. Keep it up!
Thank you! We are in development for a feature on this topic. Probably release in 2022
Never knew the story of Sumas lake in hindsight the early settlers played Russian roulette with all the residents. I wish them well never the less.
Again, it wasn't swamp/marshland. It was a lake and areas of marsh/wetland - but is primarily a lake. Here's a neat link for you to read before you continue posting any more incorrect information. Also - we've managed to destroy the ecosystem in this area in the last 200 years - it was perfectly fine for the 11k years prior to European arrival.
books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JGlz_AWQAWIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=designating+a+lake+vs+marsh&ots=woVAxwsKQB&sig=r7TRnkWyiBeGT4rBryPBswH61VE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=designating%20a%20lake%20vs%20marsh&f=false
Mother Nature Is Speaking To Us
I agree. From an article the director wrote almost a year ago: Mother Nature has a way of doing what she wants, and no matter how hard we fight it, one day, the lake will exist again.
Its baaaaa,aaaack
This is wild. I had no idea.
The exact reason we felt compelled to tell the story :)
Paybacks a birch.
And the lake came back again , but sadly this time with lot of vengeance. Let lake live again. So others could live too.
Kind of prophetic if you think about this topic and the video was done before the flood.
We created a hypothetical and never expected to see it happen. We've been told about "the big one" for 60 years, none of us expect it to happen in our specific life time ... But a massive flood.....
Let's just hope our other developing films aren't prophetic.....
What a sight to see
Are this vedio made before the flooding? lake is back! my heart goes out to those victims. Be strong BC the sun will rise again and we will be fine. ❤
Yes! We made this video back in February 2021. The flooding didn't occur until, now, November 2021. We are watching the unfolding events hoping everybody stays safe and can start rebuilding / returning to their lives soon.
❤❤❤
Timely, eh? I'm learning a lot about Sumas Lake today.
I noticed that your river and wet land shots all have that yellow scourge in them, as the wetland I live beside does as well. Reed Canary Grass (RCG). That plant sure does like water. It would be sad to recreate the lake and then have RCG take it over.
I wasn't aware that yellowish grass was an invasive species. I can't find anything online regarding this plant in that area. When things settle down and we go back to shoot the longer documentary, I'll take a look and see if it's still there and see if somebody can't come by and identify it. Thank you.
It’s back!
Duhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's an amazing feat that this lake returned in one day lol 😆 😄. Love it
The lake wants to be there so bad. The entire full force of water would push through the breached dam and flood in 2 days all the way from Chilliwack to Sumas WA. Mother nature is powerful..
@@mhart9279 cheering for people to lose everything they have? What a nice guy...
@@mhart9279 Have you thought about all the food that this area provides for people? What would you rather have, a lake, or farmland that feeds untold amounts of people? People manipulate the environment around them in order to live and prosper. Maybe you should stop wearing that suit and go live in a forest without all the wonderful things that progress gave you. But no, you will enjoy all the amenities that are provided for you, while complaining and whining about how cruel human ingenuity is. Maybe you should be angry at politicians that are unwilling to maintain the infrastructure to avoid floods like this instead of "rooting for a lake". Makes you look like a clown.
It was so scary. I stayed up all night watching, slept for 3 hours, woke up, and our property, road, and freeway were buried in about 6 feet of water, so we evacuated by boat. Scariest thing I have ever seen.
@@blairthandi7058 I'm sorry for your traumatic experience - I can only imagine how fearful it was to see your home inundated so completely.
48 hours? Well we beat that and the pump is still working...
There is a concern it will fail by 1am. Please stay safe.
They said 48 hours if the pumps failed.
This seems relevant now for some reason... great video
It unfortunately does. We truly didn't think our hypothetical scenario of the pumps failing would be seen in our lifetime. Here is hoping those working on the pumps can keep them operational. So far so good...
@@BricklightFilms To prevent this from happening, the Americans really need to something about the Nooksack River. If Canada and USA can work together, I am sure something can be done to prevent their waters from spilling over. Barrowtown pump station can easily handle just normal flood water, but if an earthquake or tsunami came, well, then it is all over.
New subscriber here from abbotsford 👋
Thank you! We will be starting to shoot a longer documentary shortly. We are using this time to finish the planning stages and once it's safe to go back in the area and people have started to settle we will be starting to film! Can't wait to release it! Thank you for the follow!
@@BricklightFilms wow! I'll be looking for that thank you so much!!👍🏼
It did flood back in 2021 and we did drain it again.
This alone caused the extinction of 80% of the upper Fraser coho and about 30% of lower Fraser sockeye in one swoop.
White sturgeon lost prime habitat and green sturgeon may have spawned there as well. Green sturgeon are now only found in rivers around San Francisco bay in California.
However it was also the final nail in the coffin for malaria outbreaks in BC. People used to abandon the Capital at New Westminster every summer because of unbearable masses of mosquitos. Draining the lake killed off the species that carried the disease.
Was the tradeoff worth it? I dunno
Personally, no. Nature has a way of keeping populations level and we've fought hard to have ours explode beyond any reasonable sustainability......
None of this is necessary. Please refrain from this sort of dialogue on this channel or you will be deleted. There is enough negativity in this world and this is not the place for it. Nor is blaming foreign countries. We are having a dialogue about Canada, not anywhere else. If you keep this up we will remove your messages.
Fun story I came across writing a different article about this lake - the Malaria outbreak was only because Europeans brought the disease with them. Prior to that, there was only the annoyance of mosquitos but not the threat of disease from them.
100 years later
It's uncanny!
Hey btw it is November 16th and it is flooding so good luck anyone and stay safe
When we made this short, we never thought in a million years it would actually flood.
👍❤
Correct me if I'm wrong but as it stands the current flood is do to the Nooksack flooding in Washington State and flowing north into the Sumas prairie. Additionally the Barrowtown station is not just a pump but a damn so in the event of a power outage the damn aspect would still function and prevent the Fraser river from flowing into Sumas.
As for draining the lake it would have never stood a chance. One way or another it would have been drained eventually and will never return, that's just simple logic.
May I correct you if you're wrong? This was made a year ago, not last week. This was a hypothetical situation, earthquake, to explain pump failure. It would flood the area in about 48 hours - which is why it's so high on BC Hydros fix list.
I'm not even going to get into the ignorance of humanity thinking we can alter our environment as drastically as we do with no consequences for our actions.
@@amandachristmas9682 altering the environment for progress is been around since the dawn of mankind and will continue till the end of our existence.
@@amandachristmas9682 oh and I agree about the pump failure and being a priority but the issue isn't the pump. It's proper infrastructure in Washington State and BC. They've been warned about this situation for over 30 years but the moron's running the show would rather be reactionary and cost to repaid will be in the billions.
@@thecrowfliescrooked the way in which we currently do it is not sustainable. Millions of Indigenous people lived on this continent for tens of thousands of years and managed to manipulate the environment in a way that left it for generations in the future. In 150 years in Canada - we've altered this landscape so much we are literally killing our environment and ourselves. There will be no resources left to harvest for our economy to function and the water will flood back, taking out all the cities we've built in the flood plains.
Our destruction has escalated.
@@amandachristmas9682 The past is the past and nothing will change that nor will it change things going forward. Money, that is the only focus until we are truly fucked, which is coming. It's no surprise we're doomed but until it effects people on a large scale nothing will change. Governments are reactionary and that happens when the flow of cash is interrupted. Watch how fast the Highway number 1 gets repaired after this flood. The quickness of repair won't be for the good of the people, it'll be to keep the cash flow coming.
The lake and ice WILL be back, with humans or without.
9 months ago,posted then. Intresting,
We didn't intend for it to be a prophetic video - however, it was inevitable at some point that the flood would happen again - and it's right on time. Every 30 or so years. Drained in 1920, flood in May 1948, flood in Nov 1990, Nov 2021.
This is where the message of treat the Indigenous People with dignity will be, or else.
We are currently in development of the documentary feature about the same topic, we are diving into the Indigenous story from pre-settler times, how they interacted with the first few minors and explorers came through and the tragic decision made by the settlers to drain away this almost 1000 year old lake. It's devastating what is happening now and it is a mirror for what happened then....
I'm sure the indigenous are enjoying the dairy, eggs, and meat as well. Not saying the lake should have been drained but don't act liek the only reason not to do it was because of first Nations people.
I don’t eat those items…
They get paid well
@@breezybre2670 The indigenous never gave a crap about dairy to begin with many are lactose intolerant btw. These farmlands were meant for a European diet since day 1 which now it got transformed into a modern Western diet.
Aztecs, challenge accepted!
Awesome sneak peak! When can we expect the full documentary? I'm a resident of the area :)
We are in development! I’ll keep you posted.
That depends on what happens in the next few days. There will be a video, we are just not sure if it will be about a lake, or the idea of a lake. Please stay safe.
It was our peoples waterway, our transport route to other First Nations Communities.
It should still be! We are on the side of the lake and the Sto:lo peoples....
at the risk of sounding ignorant.... I don't understand your point? once the water was gone there was no other way to travel across that land? Like horses/cars couldn't reach the other communities?
@@brianweir9885 I want to start by saying thank you for bringing this up. I see this sentiment a lot and this is written with a tone of patience and knowledge and not from a negative place. The point Jil may have been making (and Jil may correct me if I'm off base) is that for 11k years Sema:th, like other Indigenous people, had developed a system of using this lake and river system as it was. Indigenous people on Turtle Island had vast and complex trade networks built on waterways. This specific lake was a mutually beneficial relationship - it allowed them to travel and eat, and in turn, they didn't over take and the lake continued to flourish which ended up housing vast populations of large animals like elk and bear, smaller animals, massive schools of fish and over 250 well populated bird species.
There's a really interesting course I would highly recommend at Indigenous Relations Academy. In the course that is linked at the bottom it teaches that the only reason Indigenous people were seen as a lesser culture was because of the colonized system of "intelligence". This lesser than meant that the newly found communities life and opinions didn't matter to those settling in the area - and their brilliant and rich knowledge of the land was often only used to learn the area and then they were burned or drained out of their land. Here are the two big factors that Europeans used to rank newly "discovered" societies.
1) The Wheel. English colonialists thought you were more primitive if you didn't use the wheel however, FN in the pacific northwest, and quite a few other areas through Colorado and other mountainous and heavily treed areas found using waterways was much more efficient and they didn't have to cut the trees down to create roads. They built the trade routes on the rivers - and because none were artificially dammed by humans there was more of a net across the continent that connected more areas. Wheel here would have been ridiculous. We can't imagine this net now because of all of the re-directing we have done. America almost doesn't have a river that makes it to the ocean.
2) Written language. Indigenous culture is heavily reliant on oral history and it was taken very seriously. Stories were meticulously passed down and it was/is a cherished historical practice. We can't even say our written language is more accurate than oral at this point - it's been written and doctored by those who believe they are the victor. Religious texts have been doctored to suit leadership (King James bible) and all translations are subject to error. It is arrogant to think written history is better than oral history.
Anyway - these reasons were main reasons Indigenous people were deemed less than by Europeans. This snowballed into thinking the Indigenous people didn't have any attachment to the land and we can do whatever we wanted. In the case of the Sema:th - their harmonious lifestyle was destroyed when John Lord came in and MOWED the marsh because his foreign cattle didn't take well to the native grass in the area. This changed the landscape and the attitude of settlers who then worked against the land and drained the lake, instead of building on higher ground as the Sema:th did. (there were other people who were catalysts for change but Lord was the biggest cringe in my opinion. He destroyed an entire wetland ecosystem with a lawnmower. Please read Before We Lost The Lake by Chad Reimer if you are interested in learning the other folks)
The point is we never should have drained the lake and we never should have treated Indigenous people as less than. It wasn't ours (Europeans/Asian/South American etc) and the Sema:th said no. We didn't' listen because we felt superior and to this day that level of institutional racism still exists. Look at the comments of some people on this video or on the videos of Wet'suwet'en protests. This systemic discrimination leads to the lack of history and importance of the place we now occupy to the Indigenous people who managed it for time immemorial.
Here's a link to the course. My employer paid for it (it's part of their training fund, they also highly recommended all of our staff take it for clarity as we work on unceded territory)
www.indigenousrelationsacademy.com/collections/training
I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about this if you are wanting a respectful dialogue. Full disclosure - as the author - I am the daughter of a British mother and 6th generation Canadian, dad side also European with pastoral connections up until about 1915. I'm learning not only this history to understand better, but also to understand how my family may have had a negative role in some of the lives of Indigenous people. I also work along side several Indigenous communities creating visual content and fighting for land back/rights and the right to be treated as with sovereignty.
@@shifty7739 I warned you to stop spreading misinformation. You are now unable to communicate on our channel. And for anybody else reading this - you may have open dialogue on our channel if you are at least respectful. Trolls will be hidden from our channel not because we don't like differing opinions, but we do not tolerate full blown misinformation, rude, or harassing comments.
@@BricklightFilms thank you!!
Yup…
MOTHER GIAI'S REDEMPTION!The Creator states it will come back greener than ever as THE NEW EARTH, ADONAI
2:40 I guess the answer is yes, yes we would.
Who were these Europeans? They were not Canadians?
Strangely, it wasn't the Canadians partaking in the Gold Rush in the way we think. Hudson's Bay had only set up an outpost in 1843 and was primarily involved in the fur trade. When gold was discovered by James Douglas he sent the samples to San Francisco and in 1857 people from California, Oregon, Australia, Mexico, European countries, and China came over to find their fortunes. 1858 was when BC became a colony under the British Empire. New West became the trading post they would stop at for supplies and provisions. Semá:th Xόtsa (Sumas Lake) was a secondary spot for miners stop before hitting the mountains. Eventually people decided to stay there and farm and set up feed lots for the prospectors work animals...... All of this done, of course, without any consideration for the people who were already living there.
If you read a lovely book called "Before We Drain The Lake" by Chad Reimer - he also explains that various Europeans and Americans were surveying the land to create a border and found themselves hiring the Sumas First Nations to help them navigate. We are also currently creating a feature length documentary about the history.
Here's a reference to dog more if you're interested....
goldrushtrail.ca/history/
Was asians also really sucks how everyone just loves to blame europeans for all their woes
@@BricklightFilms Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. Like throughout human history, desperate people do desperate things. I can only imagine how hard life must have been before electricity and motor vehicles and social programs to get people through hard times. Before knowledge of how the world and the universe works. It must have been hard for native peoples too. No eyeglasses, no modern medicine, no steel tools or steel cookware and not even horses. Probably many died young. No wonder wars were fought between different tribes over resources. We are so lucky today with what we have. Not much is said about the suffering and sacrifice that these people must have endured in those days.
Beautiful video, thank you.
the fish biome would not magically come back
This particular aquatic biome did house fish in the first place and fish would naturally find a way back to that habitat. However, we have decimated the sturgeon population worldwide. They managed to live in large and healthy populations for about 200 million years, but commercial fishing and human greed has decimated their populations. Our dams are also to blame for sturgeon decline as well as other fish. LUCKILY, biologists are restoring some populations in Mississippi, Missouri and St. Louis rivers but unfortunately exact locations can't be produced since they are scared of poachers. Sturgeon require time to develop - males reach mating maturity at 15yrs and females at 30 - so if that population were to thrive again in the lake, a team of biologists, and Sema:th would have to come together and protect the lake from people. Likely the lake would be closed off to public in a conservation effort. Other fish in the lake like cod, carp , pink salmon etc would naturally come back, or would adapt if introduced.
It happened.
Yes, when we did this film last February it hadn't though. ☺️
DO NOT attempt to fight with mother nature.
Yet, collectively, we do. It is so strange.
Thank you Ray Silver. Just another reminder of all we've done wrong to the earth. Sigh!!
What we are capable of doing is making decisions going forward that would make him proud.....
Mother nature is taking it back,... its a 80km that the world misses just for the benefits of careless about the earth farmers,... you feed the world with shit Lord gives it back, and 2021 Lord on Sumas Lake means alot of his intentions 🙏 to replace his creations,... not just BC but all around the world it's Karmaguedon
I have a completed searches about Sumas Mountain Road and Lakes, just go on my public Facebook page, just letting you know that I am living on Yarrow central road, so every news it is good or bad one's
You are right in the middle of it. I hope the situation is starting to at least ease up a bit.
It was beautiful and serene i am sure. Then white man came and ephed it all up. I say let the lake return
If the pumps blow and the place clouds fully back - I agree to keep the lake. It sucks for those farming, however insurance doesn't cover you for flooding when you build on a lake bed (weird I know) .... We lose farm land that never should have existed.
Keep checking back, we are developing a feature length documentary right now.
I lived in Bellingham 25 years, learned this many years ago. My heart goes out to everyone affected, but kill the pump and let mother nature have it back.
Oh so you're saying we should have a mini nature genocide continue on?
If we don't adjust how we interact with the planet we live on we will continue these "nature genocides" you speak of. Indigenous people lived here for about 25 thousand years, there was about 60 million residents in what we now call North America. They had no problems living within their means with nature and still enjoyed beautiful and richly complex lives. There needs to be a re-connection between humanity and mother earth. Right now we think we can control her, and that is not the case. We are learning the hard way.
I imagine it was a mosquito paradise back then.
How was this posted 9 months ago lol??? Wtf
We made the movie about the history of the area and found out through research what would happen if the pumps failed. BC hydro actually has a specific order in which they repair outages and the Barrowtown pumps are #2 on the list of importance. #1 being hospitals. We thought it was interesting and unfortunately it is now relevant.
@@BricklightFilms ahhhhhh y'all jinxed it 😂😂😅😅
well i think we're fucked lads
whats the song name?
Music: Flight of the Inner Bird - Sivan Talmor - it's on artlist dot io and may not be available in full form elsewhere.
Pump just failed
No not yet
czcams.com/video/FM1xwaqtnpg/video.html
I also heard it failed from somebody within the city. I hope it is a trigger response. This will be like nothing you've ever witnessed if it fails.
No, all 4 are still running as of an hour & a half ago, if you watch the video link posted below by Thefreakinwierd1. One had a problem earlier & they fixed it.
@@SIERRAnBC Oh good. I heard the one was puttering about but I didn't know they fixed it. Here's hoping it holds out.
Good effort. Reasonable video but with sad undertones of the usual 2021 mantra of nature lost.
There was 606,000 people in BC in 1926 (Stats Canada), most in the Vancouver/Fraser Valley region. Today there is just over 5 million, nearly 3 million in the Vancouver/Fraser Valley.
People gotta live. People gotta eat.
In the recovery from the current flooding, the agricultural production will return just as it did from the annual flooding around the lake before it was "choked". Some of it may even be better with new sediment and distribution of all the cattle poop.
A mention might be in order of the 100,000s of thousands, maybe millions of people who are now provided food from this Lost Lake and surrounding floodplain.
Mother Nature is one tough b+^@h. Humans are the delicate flowers she can/does/will drop at any time.
We did make this well before this flood happened. And that tone is prevalent because we truly are running out of time and humanity needs to make some drastic changes to continue existing in any meaningful way. We do need housing, we do need food we *do not* need all of the other luxuries in the way we are consuming them. We are truly wasting our resources and over consuming them on trivial things that are not required for a base standard of living. There is a privilege that goes along with our North American lifestyle that we now collectively think is a right, and it's going to be our demise.
Also, if you are listening to the scientists, the area, flooded or not, will contain contaminations for a time to come. There are some "fertilizers" and there are a lot of toxic chemicals, dead animals, and other contaminations that will cause health problems for us, animals and growing our food for some time to come.
It never should have been drained in the first place - and now that it is, we've created a different economy around it. We have exploited nature in a way to grow our population in an artificially sustainable way. If we only farmed where the land naturally suited farming, we would grow our population at a more reasonable rate like all other species. Our manipulation has over populated areas that can't sustain our life if nature takes her place back.
None of us (biologists, environmentalists, geologists, etc) are saying "let everybody starve", what we are saying is this entire view of life as we know it is unsustainable and these very devastating events will happen more rapidly and with more consequences and damage if we don't find a solution to our overconsumption. Scientists have been trying to get ahead of this for 50 years, and now the water is boiling and we don't know how to climb out of it without the feeling of loss and inconvenience.
Is the full documentary available now?
We are in development. We were hoping to shoot it through 2022 and release it later in the year or early 2023. We may be escalating production in light of current events. Our newsletter on our website will keep you posted, or like our page and you will see updates pop up as well.
@@BricklightFilms 🙏❤️
What a narrator’s voice you have
Thank you! It's always weird to hear your own voice, it's nice to hear this from somebody else. -Amanda
Gonna be scary,when the big one hits.....all that farm land will liquefy.......
It's true. If left as a lake it would just.....upset the water... With three massive and costly floods so far (40s, 90's, 2021) i wonder how many times they will continue to rebuild. This one has a rough cost estimate of 500 million dollars to repair as it stands now. And that doesn't include the rest of the province. The Coquihalla will be another extremely costly repair....
@@amandachristmas9682
Being on a flood plain,and not being able to put flood insurace on one's property,says alot.
I don't understand why people are willing to risk,your investment,home.
I'm not fully certain either. There are quite a few flood plains in the lower mainland, like the Hatzic / Deroche / Sumas regions that all have high dollar value and a decent amount of residents. And then look at the rest of our current flooding issues, all of these cities and towns being built in low lying valleys along the river. Economically it makes sense for transport and ease of creating a sprawling community vs building on the side of an unreliable mountains edge... But I personally wouldn't take the chance.
Awesome 😎
Thanks 🤗
Can we stop using 'American football fields' as a unit of measure?
Even when speaking with people about this now, they can't imagine the scale. We use football fields because it is a common size we can picture in our minds. We thought hard about whether we wanted to utilize it, but after reaching out to many people with the question it was unanimously voted to add that as a unit of measurement.
No we can't.
Lets just say a football field not the small US field
Accepted US units of measurement.
1 American football fields (area)
2 Blocks (length)
3 Olympic size swimming pools (volume)
I have no clue how big a football field is.
If this could happen to a human pump imagine a nuclear reactor several years from now
There are a lot of technologies we have developed to control and manipulate nature, if they fail, the outcome would be unimaginable. We've also had a lot of great successes, however, we are being told right now, under no certain circumstances, we need to change how we interact with our environment.
@@BricklightFilms maybe people should listen
Amazing video! It's so amazing what a man can do when put their mind to something! It's an achievement that could never be accomplished nowadays unfortunately 😕
Thanks!
and It is happening again right now 100 times worse.
Precisely! The specifics of Sumas flooding is exactly as the flood models predicted for the area, however, that flood model didn't include the rest of the flood plains in lower BC. This has been described as catastrophic as "the big one" we've all been hearing about our whole lives. Stay safe.
ohh we'll drain it again that's for sure, were gonna drain the shit outta that hole
While it seems like we will - the cost will be astronomical. Back in 1920 they spent the equivalent of 20 million to initially build the pumps, and we've been spending about half a million a year since then (adjusted for inflation throughout a century) to keep the land dry. With the repairs to these pumps if they fail, plus the damage to the houses and business from Chilliwack down to the border will be astronomical. The timeline will also be quite substantial since we are also rebuilding the entire infrastructure that has been damaged from Abbotsford to Hope. This is going to be a long haul for sure.
It wasn't much of a lake very shallow . More of a back water in technical terms
A lake is any relatively large body of slowly moving or standing water that occupies an inland basin of appreciable size. Backwater doesn't fully explain it, a backwater is a part of a river not reached by the current, where the water is stagnant. This was definitely a lake.
I feel like the woman singing is drowning out the narrator
Thanks for your comment, sorry it took so long to get back to you. We mixed in and used several speaker systems to determine the level and it seems on some random headphones and speakers the music is still loud. We are taking this into consideration for future projects and adding a few more audio tests to our arsenal.
Perfect farmland, maybe we should ask the dutch if our system compares to theirs?
This day and age we should be moving away from the Zuiderzeewerken and Deltawerken (dam systems, land reclamation, water drainage works) and learn how to work with the land we were given instead of against it.
When this area floods again, and it will, it will be another trillion dollars to fix. If we work with the land and understand it's natural patterns and resources, we could better utilize the space and be more productive without habitat fragmentation, wiping out entire ecosystems, species populations etc.
Even the Dutch member of our crew is all for moving away from the human "progress" of the environment.
This isn't saying we want starvation and no jobs. There's a better way to do it and the government and industry sector have been told - in detail - how to pull it off and they won't listen.
Borrowed the land for a while
We are only ever borrowing this land. We do not own it. We should be it's guardian for future generations of humans, animals, and vegetation...
Perhaps if we could have pumped out all the water off the Atlantic ocean all aboard the Titanic might have been saved. This story is of the same level of absurdity. It is really sad to see what's happening now. That calls for a real rethinking of this in light of climate change.
Your statement is a false equivalency, and while we are all entitled to our own opinions - those of experts in their field outweigh those who aren't. This documentary, and others we work on are vetted through scientists and experts we are working with while we are shooting. Climate change is real, this is not up for debate. If you don't believe it, maybe you aren't a fit for our channel.
@@BricklightFilms Got news for you climate has been changing since beginning of time and man is not gonna change climate change
@@DCSPORTSTER unless you are a scientist who works directly with the various aspects of our climate you are not an expert in this field. Expert's facts and opinions are more heavily weighed than the average Joe. I work directly with people who study this, they live this, they test their hypothesis, they present their findings and generally, by and large, have a better idea than the rest of the general population about what our effects are as humanity on the climate. I'll personally be using their expert knowledge in my articles and scripts.
@@darkenergy410 Political science studies politics. I'm talking environmental scientists. There is a difference, and we should be listening to the experts in the field we are looking at. Looking at how our manipulation of nature is affecting future patterns - the branches of Environmental science are Social Sciences, Geosciences, Environmental Chemistry, Ecology, Atmospheric Sciences. Nowhere in there is politics. Our politicians should be listening to the environmental scientists as a whole, and making policies based on the informed recommendations from the professionals. Instead they are listening to industry.....
What purpose would the lake do that is better than feeding the large amount of people now in the world? This isnt primitive times anymore.....
The purpose is, it had existed naturally since the ice age melt and was the home to semath first Nations, as well a large number of species. Not everything exists for us to exploit.
Oh ya why do you need farms if grocery stores exist 😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@jeeplivion you are being sarcastic, but this is how City people actually think.
@@wacey7455 I live in the city but belong in the woods lol.
We at Bricklight Films live in a city and we don't actually all think this way in the cities. A lot of us are trying to do the right thing and are being roadblocked by government legislation and red tape. Our laws force industry to profit off our natural resources. We are punished for protecting them. Example, if a forestry tenure is transferred from a company to a First Nations community, that First Nations community is bound by law to make profit off the tenure or risk getting heavily fined for not removing the trees and taking a conservation approach. We are stymied by legislation that the people don't have a say in. The big industrial complex and government make these decisions on our behalf and it is very hard to get out of it once passed into law.