There are certain places that stay with you long after you leave them. For me, the Eastern Slopes of Alberta are one of those places.
I grew up camping between Cadomin and Robb, and so many of my favourite childhood memories were made out there. We were fortunate to spend many summers camping on Crown land with our camping family, exploring the backroads, quadding through the mountains, swimming in rivers and finding little places that felt like they belonged only to us for the day.
I remember Ruby Falls and the Great Canadian Divide. I remember the excitement of never quite knowing what we might see around the next corner because there was so much wildlife out there. We saw grizzly bears, black bears, moose, wild horses, deer, wolves, coyotes and foxes. There was always something to look for, and even when we didn't see wildlife, there was something about being surrounded by those mountains and forests that made you feel completely connected to where you were.
One of my favourite memories happened on a quadding trip when we stopped along a trail that ran through a wildflower meadow. There were wild horses grazing in the meadow, with the mountains and forests surrounding us, and somewhere nearby we could hear the McLeod River moving through the landscape.
I can still picture it.
I remember us stopping and taking it all in. Those are the moments that stay with you. The kind of moments where you don't need anything other than where you are.
From there, we found a spot along the McLeod River where we could cliff jump into a deep section of the river. We set up lunch, spent the afternoon swimming and enjoyed being outside together. We had so many days like that growing up. The Eastern Slopes became part of our lives.
That is why it breaks my heart to think about those landscapes changing forever.
There is a lot happening right now around Alberta's Eastern Slopes and how these lands should be used and protected. Mining and other forms of development have the potential to change landscapes that have been wild for generations, and organizations like CPAWS and Protect Our Winters Canada are working to raise awareness and advocate for the protection of these places.
For me, this isn't an abstract environmental issue happening somewhere far away. I know those mountains. I know those rivers. I have stood in those meadows. I've watched wild horses grazing there. I've spent afternoons swimming in the McLeod River. When I hear conversations about developing these landscapes, I don't just picture a map with an area marked out for potential development, I picture the places I remember. And the thought of losing them is devastating.
We can't simply replace what took millions of years to create
One of the hardest things for me to understand is how easily we can look at a natural landscape and see it as something that is simply there for us to use. A mountain can be viewed as a resource. A forest can be viewed as timber. Land can be viewed as an opportunity for development. But when I look at the Eastern Slopes, I see something completely different. I see a living ecosystem that has been developing for an unimaginable amount of time.
Those mountains were not created for us, but they have become an incredibly important part of the lives of the people, plants and animals that depend on them. The forests provide habitat. The rivers carry water through the landscape. Wildlife uses these areas to find food, raise their young and move between different habitats. The valleys and forests all work together as part of a much larger ecosystem.
And once we significantly alter those systems, we can't simply put them back the way they were. It took millions of years and multiple ice ages to form the mountains and geological structures that we see today. Yet it can take only a very short amount of time to dramatically change a landscape.
We can talk about reclamation and restoration, and those things have their place. But restoring a landscape after it has been significantly disturbed isn't the same as leaving an intact ecosystem intact in the first place. Once a mountainside is removed, we don't get that mountain back. Once a mature forest is gone, planting new trees doesn't immediately recreate the forest that was there. Once habitat has been fragmented, the wildlife that relied on it can't simply carry on as though nothing happened.
There are some things that we can repair, things we can recycle, and things we can rebuild, but there are also things that are irreplaceable. That is what I think about when I look at the Eastern Slopes.
This is actually where Earth Warrior began
My connection to these landscapes is also a huge part of why Earth Warrior exists today.
Most of my summers were spent camping throughout the Eastern Slopes, so I grew up with a very strong connection to the outdoors. Those experiences shaped the way I see the world and, eventually, the way I started my business. When I began Earth Warrior, I wanted to find ways to reduce the amount of new resources we needed to take from the earth. That is why we started with materials that already existed.
Instead of creating another product that required new fabric to be manufactured, we started looking at the textiles that were already here and destined for landfill. We could take those materials and give them another life. And the more I have learned about waste and resources over the years, the more I realize that the same thinking applies to the natural world.
At Earth Warrior, I often talk about creating a world without waste. When I say that, I don't only mean the things we throw into our garbage bins, I mean changing the way we look at resources altogether. We live in a world where it is incredibly easy to look at something and ask, “What can I get from this?” But I think we also need to ask, “What is this already providing?” For example, A forest is providing habitat, a river is providing water, and a mountain ecosystem is providing homes for wildlife and helping support the watersheds that communities downstream depend on. Those things have value before we ever extract anything from them. In fact, sometimes their greatest value comes from leaving them alone.
The Eastern Slopes matter even if you never camp there
I think it is easy to assume that protecting these areas is mainly important to people who spend their weekends hiking, camping, skiing, fishing or quadding. Of course those people care deeply about these places. I certainly do. But the Eastern Slopes matter to all Albertans, whether they spend time in the mountains or not.
One of the biggest reasons is water.
The Eastern Slopes are connected to watersheds that provide water to communities, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems downstream. What happens in the mountains doesn't simply stay there. That is why I think the conversation about mining and development needs to be bigger than whether someone personally enjoys spending time outdoors. This is about the water we depend on. It is about wildlife habitat. It is about healthy forests and ecosystems. It is about the future of these landscapes.
Clean water should not be something we only think about when there is a problem with it. It should be something we protect before there is a problem. And honestly, I don't think clean water should ever be treated as something that can simply be traded away for corporate payouts.
The same goes for the ecosystems that support it. We need to remember that humans aren't separate from nature. We depend on the same water, the same air and the same healthy ecosystems as everything else living here.
What does “undeveloped” actually mean?
There is another part of this conversation that has been sitting with me. The way we describe land matters. Sometimes natural areas are described as “undeveloped” simply because there aren't roads, buildings, mines or other infrastructure on them. But I don't see an undeveloped landscape when I look at the Eastern Slopes. I see an incredibly developed ecosystem.
It has taken millions of years for all of these pieces to come together. There are forests growing in places where they have adapted to the climate and soil. There are rivers moving through valleys. There are animals following migration routes and wildlife corridors. There are plants, insects, fungi and microorganisms all interacting with one another. It is not empty, it is not unused, and it is not waiting for us to give it a purpose. It already has one. That is probably the biggest thing I would want the people making decisions about Alberta's future to understand. What might look like underdeveloped land on a map can actually be one of the most complex and valuable systems we have.
The people fighting to protect these places
There are organizations doing important work to help Albertans understand what is happening and participate in these conversations, and two that I particularly want to highlight are CPAWS and Protect Our Winters Canada.
CPAWS, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, has been advocating for the protection of Canada's public lands and waters for decades. Here in Alberta, CPAWS has been actively involved in efforts to protect the Eastern Slopes and has been raising concerns about coal development and its potential impacts on watersheds, wildlife and habitat.
What I appreciate about CPAWS is that they make it easier for regular people to understand what is happening and actually participate. Conservation can feel overwhelming when you start looking at government policies, proposed projects and regulatory processes, but CPAWS gives people information and practical ways to take action.
They also make it easy for people to contact government representatives about protecting the Eastern Slopes, which is something I think more of us should take advantage of.
Protect Our Winters Canada, or POW Canada, brings a slightly different perspective to the conversation. Their work connects climate and conservation with the outdoor community, bringing together people who love skiing, snowboarding, hiking, climbing, biking and other outdoor activities and want to protect the places where those activities happen.
I love that idea because I think a lot of conservation starts with connection. When you spend time somewhere, you start to care about it. When you care about it, you start paying attention to what happens to it. And when you realize that something you love could be changed permanently, you start looking for ways to protect it. You don't have to be a scientist or a conservation expert to care about a forest, or know every detail of environmental policy to care about clean water, you don't even have to spend much time outdoors. Sometimes it simply starts with realizing that these places are worth protecting.
So what can we actually do?
I know that reading about environmental issues can sometimes leave you feeling like there isn't much you can personally do. But one thing we can all do is use our voices.
CPAWS currently has an easy way for Albertans to send a letter to government about protecting the Eastern Slopes. You can use their letter as a starting point, add your own words and send it.
We all have our own connection to these places. Mine happens to be a wildflower meadow with wild horses grazing in it, mountains rising behind the trees and the sound of the McLeod River in the distance. That's what I think about when I think about protecting Alberta's Eastern Slopes. And I think about how incredibly sad it would be if a future generation stood in that same area and couldn't recognize it anymore.
What I hope we choose
If I could stand in the middle of one of Alberta's wild places with the people making decisions about its future, I would want them to stop for a moment and really take in what is around them. Look at the forest, look at the mountains and Listen to the river and think about everything that depends on that water. Think about the wildlife moving through the landscape and the generations of Albertans who have come here to camp, explore, work, play and make memories.
Then I would ask them to think about what this place is worth.
Not just what could be taken from it or what could be built on it, but what it is already giving us simply by being there. Clean water, Wildlife habitat, Forests, Recreation and Beauty; A place for ecosystems to thrive and people to reconnect with nature. There is so much value here that doesn't have a price tag attached to it.
That is something I think about a lot through my own work with Earth Warrior. So much of what comes through my studio has already been labelled as waste. A piece of fabric that someone no longer wants might look like garbage to one person, but when you look at it differently, you can see everything that is still there from the material, to the resources that went into making it and the possibility of giving it another life.
I think we need to give our natural landscapes that same kind of consideration. Just because a forest hasn't been logged doesn't mean it isn't doing something incredibly important. Just because a mountain hasn't been mined doesn't mean it isn't valuable. And just because a river hasn't been developed doesn't mean it isn't serving a purpose.
Maybe we have become so used to asking what we can get from something that we've forgotten to recognize the value of simply leaving some things alone.
Some places don't need to become something else.
Maybe their greatest value is in remaining exactly what they are: wild, healthy, connected and alive.