The conflicting ideas of economy and ecology examined in Ellingsen’s work

This story references David Ellingsen’s dad, Bruce, who was part of the island effort to access a CFA.

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Cortes Island photographer David Ellingsen has a fair bit of internal conflict as a proud, self-described environmentalist whose family history is in logging old growth trees.

In fact, Ellingsen’s family name is attached to one of the historic leaps forward in west coast logging, the Ellingsen jack, which largely replaced the Gilchrist jack as the go-to tool for taking huge felled logs out of the soggy coastal woods more efficiently.

“But while my father was taking down and milling trees, he was also working towards getting a sustainable, eco-forestry program going on Cortes Island, putting the local community in charge of the rate of harvest on any public lands on the island,” Ellingsen says. “He was thinking not only about the present, where you need people to have jobs and make money to live within the culture that we’ve created, but also looking towards the future and realizing that current system of forestry in B.C. and reflected all around the world, for the most part, is not sustainable for the long term.

“I guess, growing up as his son, that kind of had an impact on me.”

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Image: Photographer David Ellingson’s exhibition Last Stand, will be a major feature at the upcoming Art & Earth Festival, happening Sept. 20-22 all over Campbell River, culminating in the annual Fall Fair at Haig Brown House. Photo courtesy David Ellingson