This document discusses Grant Hadwin and the cutting down of the Golden Spruce tree. It summarizes that while Hadwin may have been insane, he was also rational and moral in his understanding of the forest. The logging companies in BC were destroying the forests irresponsibly through clearcutting. Hadwin saw the injustice of this and took direct action by cutting down the Golden Spruce tree as an act of civil disobedience to raise awareness, following the steps of civil disobedience outlined by Martin Luther King Jr.

1. Insanity, Responsibility, and Civil
Disobedience
Presentation by Erin Nelson

2.  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.

3.  Hadwin was “intense”
and reckless.
 Random and
impulsive.
 Paranoid.
 But...

4.  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.

5.  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.

6.  Trees store water.
 Without them, water simply runs off, causing
floods.

7.  Recent floods at Kingcome Inlet.
 Clearcuts were identified as a main cause.

8.  Trees also store nutrients.
 Those get recycled when the tree dies.
 Clearcutting removes these nutrients from the
ecosystem.

9. 1998 clearcut at Rivers Inlet.

10.  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.

11.  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.

12.  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.

13. Stump of the Golden Spruce

14. What is it?
Martin Luther King Jr broke
a civil disobedience
campaign into four steps.

15.  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.

16.  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.

17. “... 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.”

18.  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.

19.  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.