The Healing Bog: "Bog Restoration", redefined, by Garth Thomson

Garth Thomson, from Kelowna  sends greetings and thoughts of just what kind of restoration is going on when we stand ankle deep in peat, pulling deer fern and salal. Read on...


Hello fellow Crazy Boggers,

I've been watching from a distance via email updates for the last 7 years (yikes time flies!) and visited the bog briefly on my only visit since 2003 to Vancouver last year. I was active in the bog from 2000-2003 and spent almost all my weekends during that time weeding, digging, and planting along with you.  My frog still watches me from behind my desk and my wooden badge is still in my box of "special things". 

The bog attracted me because it was such an interesting and beautiful place so close to where I lived at the time. I had spent many many years doing work related to the natural environment and had trained in forestry at UBC in 1985. In 2000 I had just finished the course work related to a diploma in Restoration of Natural Systems at UVic. I had also recently been diagnosed with Crohn's disease and was going through a major struggle to keep myself functioning at all. On the surface, it just looked like a quiet place to get away from the struggles but I think at a deeper level there was much more going on that wasn't said. I've really only been able to adequately put words on it very recently.