This Land is Whose Land?

There is an oddly contrived ethos of mountain bike localism that exists on British Columbia’s Crown Land (and probably other public lands throughout the world for that matter), one that manifests most visibly in the unwritten laws of film stunts: those jumps, built airs, and manicured cliffs that are only allowed to be ridden by their creators. Funny thing is, no such ownership officially exists. Unless these stunts are built on private land, it’s anybody’s game. So why all the fuss? And fussing there is. When gaps and tables and drops built by athletes and production companies for specific film and photo projects get prematurely poached, shit hits the fan.


British Columbia is a large, diverse, and wildly beautiful province defined by one fairly unique quality. Ninety five percent of its land base, what amounts to nearly 900,000 square kilometres of everything from dry desert landscapes to thick forest to high alpine mountain wilderness, is owned by the public. It’s called Crown Land, a leftover from Canada’s days as the largest territory in the United Kingdom’s once formidable Dominion. It’s a welcome residual to be sure, few countries in the world have as much area dedicated to the public. And when we say public we mean that anybody at anytime is allowed to venture forth without risk of trespassing or criminal offense. Yes, in many respects, paradise.


With so much land, British Columbia lacks the policing infrastructure to ensure those public lands aren’t abused. And they are abused, most notably by the logging and mining companies that regularly rape the landscape via an industrial resource extraction tenure system. They pay a lease to take certain quotas of forest and minerals, and they take a lot, often shipping raw materials straight out of the country. But that's a whole other issue best left for a visit to David Suzuki's website.



Because of the lack of policing infrastructure as it relates to the shear size of public lands, users like mountain bikers, equestrians and motorized vehicle enthusiasts are forever busy building trails. The large majority of which are unsanctioned by the government. And while you’re officially not allowed to build trails on public lands, there is a culture of ask for forgiveness not permission. Once a trail is there, it’s there. The government doesn't have a "de-trail" budget. Not surprisingly then, virtually every mountain bike trail in the province has been manufactured illegally. Which is all fine and good from a mountain biker's perspective, as the vast majority of these trails are made without restriction to other mountain bikers.


But what many people forget is this ethic of “public land.” I’ve seen mountain bike trails get discovered by trials motorbikers who shred the shit out of it. Mountain bikers go toe to toe with the motorbikers claiming, “this is our trail, we built it, stay the f*ck off.” But in the end, there’s nothing we can do. It's public land.


Back in the early days of the Shore there were “private” trails. Stunt sequences no one was allowed to ride as they were built for movies or photography only. Ride them, or worse, shoot on them, and there was hell to pay. Today, especially in places like Kamloops, you hear swirlings of infighting as it applies to film stunts. When moves are constructed for a particular athlete or film segment, and they get poached by another crew, well, friendships are challenged, reputations are tarnished, shit talk ensues. Poaching is incredibly frowned upon by the film community, and it makes sense.


Kind of.


At the heart of the issue, people are forgetting the whole notion of public lands. If you build it, spend 1,000 hours on it, pour your heart and soul into, and it rests on Crown Land, you have to accept the fact that it is not yours. It’s ours. The freedom to do as you wish, to build these perfectly manicured luge tracks of radness without fear of consequence comes with a cost--the submission of ownership. To even consider that it's yours, even until all the filming is captured and in the bag, is fundamentally wrong. It has to be.