Super Powered: A Census of Sunshine
The sun. From 150 million kilometres away, it powers the East Kootenay’s regional economic engines, local history immemorial, even your own heartbeat and mindset. Senior Trench writer Dave Quinn squints skyward at the meaning of it all.
Blaze one up. — A dazzling sun casts hiker Lena Armstrong, and the towering Howser, Snowpatch, and Bugaboo Spires behind, in dreamy summertime beauty in Bugaboo Provincial Park. The bright minds of sun scientists have illuminated the fact that exposure to sunlight increases the brain’s release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with an increased sense of calm and focus, and elevated moods. Pat Morrow Photo
Ra, Helios, Surya, Sol Invictus, and Inti. All part of the global sun god dream team: supernatural beings that embody our fascination with that big glowing disc in the sky. Here in the Kootenays, twin lynx brothers were elevated to become Natanik,̓ the Sun and k¢iǂmitiǂnukqa, the Moon. The near-universal presence of solar deities across the human cultural experience is tribute to the undeniable human fascination with our sun and its utter influence over everything. From our diurnal reality of day and night to the miracle that is photosynthesis, aurora borealis to ocean tides, the sun’s gifts are what brought life to the third rock from our sun. From a galactic perspective, we are in the ‘Goldilocks zone,’ neither too near nor too far, but just the right distance from the unfathomable nuclear reaction that is our sun.
Here’s a look at eight sunny snippets from within the Rocky Mountain Trench:
~ 1 ~ Hot Hot Spot
When the City of Kimberley set up data loggers in 2008 to measure sunlight hours in preparation for a potential solar array on Fertilizer Hill, science told them what local Ktunaxa people have known forever: the East Kootenay gets a whole lot of natanik,̓ Sun. In fact, Kimberley sees the sun for more than 2,150 hours per year, with nearly 320 days of sunny weather. The sunniest spot in Canada is the Hamlet of Manyberries, Alberta, with over 2,500 sunlit hours, and 350 days with sun.
~ 2 ~ The Hole and Its Hairy Hordes
First Nations have long referred to a triangular pocket of land northwest of Cranbrook and east towards Fort Steele as ‘the Hole in the Sky.’ Consistently sunny even on overcast or rainy days in town, this unique landscape supports a rare pocket desert, complete with cactus, bitterroot, bunchgrass, and other open grassland plants, all within sight of what was an ancient interior temper- ate rainforest, now a sea of two to three metre cedar stumps up the nearby St. Mary Valley.
Collectively known as the Wycliffe Wildlife Corridor, this is arguably one of the most critical wildlife movement and winter range areas in British Columbia, if not Canada. Thousands of elk, mule and whitetail deer, and even moose overwinter in this zone, and endangered species like badgers, curlews, and historically burrowing owls use this zone of mixed forest and native grasslands, one of the most endangered eco- systems on the planet. Grizzlies, wolves, coyotes, and sandhill cranes are regular visitors, and even wolverine and caribou have been spotted passing through this rare, relatively intact, wild, valley-bottom grass- land-forest mosaic between wilderness areas.
~ 3 ~ Heliotropic Hillsides
The animals, of course, come for the food. Rare native bunchgrass plant communities offer the best, high-quality, year-round food for large mammals. In amongst the grass hide the bulbs and seeds of a floral fireworks show that draws visitors April through June to check out the first tentative light purple, hairy crocuses, then a fuschia sea of shooting stars, and, if conditions are right, the yellow ocean of the balsamroot sunflowers so intense that it seems like some sun god has knocked over the floral paint bucket. Finally, the creamy Mariposa lilies, ominous death camus, and larkspur round out the season. Many of these blooms, particularly the balsamroot, practice heliotropy — tracking the sun across the sky on a daily spin on their stems — so the short-lived flower can focus the sun’s energy like a radar dish, ensuring seeds have the best chance of success.
~ 4 ~ The Dry Gulch Legacy
Presumably hot and dry from the get go, the down- right desperate-sounding dispatch of Dry Gulch played a pivotal role in the history of the Columbia Valley. A fella by the name of James L. McKay built a ranch there in 1887. The next year he sold it to the son of a British Navy admiral who’d fought in the French Revolution, and before that squared off against Napoleon. Frederick Whitworth Aylmer would go on to layout the townsite for what was supposed to be called Aylmer, but was misspelt Athelmar, according to numerous newspapers of the day. Athalmer, with its bank, street lights, brothels, and two cops — plus its steamboat landing for journeys to and from Golden — would go on to be more important than Invermere, Windermere, and Wilmer too. But, alas, not for long…
~ 5 ~ Easier Money
That big blazing ball is a boon for business — and examples abound. Take tourism: Lake Koocanusa’s Sunshine Houseboats and Marina takes advantage of all the East Kootenay sun with their popular water park and houseboat rentals. Travel: Can 138,700 passengers be wrong? That’s how many of them landed at the Canadian Rockies International Airport in 2023. Cancellations and delays at YXC are rare compared to other airports in the region (Cancel-gar anyone?), thanks to the airport’s advanced systems and, with the help of year-round sun- shine, conditions that allow for landing nearly 100% of the time. Education: You can charge up your solar power know-how with the College of the Rockies’ Solar Photovoltaic Design and Installation course at the College’s Gold Creek Campus.
Real estate: Nearly 1,300 residential dwellings sold in April of this year across the Kootenays, and sales were up over 11 per- cent from the year before. There were 3,400 listings — up 34 percent. Newcomers like it here. Case in point: between 2016 and 2021, Cranbrook’s population increased by 2.3 percent. The average household income increased, too, up 18% from 2016, to $80,000 a year in 2021. Up the Elk Valley, Fernie’s population grew 17 percent from 5,396 in 2016, to its current 6,320. The average household in- come in Fernie? $121,500.
~ 6 ~ Funky Cold Ingenious
Despite all the sun, there is one limiting factor that stunts the normally bright East Kootenay growing season: frost. Our high, dry valleys are perfect collectors for cold air, and the sunniest parts get hard frosts well into June, and reliable -5 mornings even in late August most years. This severely curtails growing potential, unless more sensitive plants like tomatoes, basil, and greens are sheltered in a greenhouse.
But Invermere’s Groundswell Greenhouse has figured out a new way to out smart ol’ Jack Frost, having lit the way for year- round Kootenay gardening. Groundswell reliably produces greens year-round, with minimal, if any, added heat. Intense summer heat is pumped below the greenhouse into a sand pit, which is used as a thermal battery, slowly releasing that heat through the winter to offset any cloudy, cold days when the greenhouse might otherwise chill out too much.
~ 7 ~ Natanik’ Voltaik’
Kimberley’s Sun Mine and its 96 tracking photovoltaic panels make it the largest tracking solar array in Western Canada and the largest solar facility in B.C. — and one of the most productive. It was also the first solar array to sell directly to the BC Hydro grid, producing over 1 MW of electricity at peak performance, enough to run 250 homes. Run by Teck and established on land used for a century’s worth of tailings from the Sullivan Mine, a giant fertilizer factory, and a steel smelter, it’s a zone unlikely to support tall trees despite decades of exceptional reclamation efforts. Voila voltage: the perfect spot for a solar array.
~ 8 ~ Power to the people. But profit? Not so much.
According to BC Hydro, approximately 5,000 homes in B.C. have invested in net-metering photovoltaic power generation. In this system, no batteries are required, and your homes’ smart electrical meter calculates how much power your system contributes to the overall grid, which is then deducted from your BC Hydro bill. These savings are in addition to any power that your home uses directly from your roof-top solar system. Provincial and Federal grants and/or tax exemptions are currently available.
Unlike Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec, however, BC Hydro will only purchase excess power from your system at the highly subsidized market rate (.9-.14/kWhr at time of writing, among the cheapest power rates on the planet, compared to guaranteed solar power purchase rates of .39/kWhr in Ontario, making systems with 25-year warranty and up to 40-year lifespan pay for themselves in 8-10 years).
B.C.'s rates are far below the actual costs of power generation, including overruns on projects like Site C, greenhouse gas emission costs generated by B.C.’s use of Alberta’s coal-fired energy, ongoing maintenance, management, and environmental issues of our large hydroelectric dams and reservoirs, or BC Hydro’s ongoing monitoring and maintenance of over 900,000 wooden poles supporting 58,000 km of transmission line. This disparity essentially keeps B.C. in the dark ages by removing any incentive for residents to scale up solar power production from residential or business rooftops.
~ Dave Quinn
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Summer + Fall 2024 edition: