Brilliant Dam: The Russian and Slavic settlers who moved to Canada during the Russian revolution era would have dissented against the wars and serf life back home. Controversially separated, these people moved to Saskatchewan, before come to British Columbia.
Lack of natural resources and the highly public B.C drug trade would have changed the ethics of the area after a 100 years of settlement. Like most small cities in B.C, the Kootenay Boundary area started with honest, esoteric values that can be difficult to contain when confronted with changing cultural values that come from the city and affect the youth.
However, the purity of the water, and the isolation of the small communities that link up around the rolling Selkirk mountains make it relatively serene and introspective, despite ups and downs that are hard to quantify.
One of the major employers of the area is a smelter that used to make ammo for the world wars. Still controversial today, this factory is a lead refiner, one of the only in Canada and has attracted attention for how counter-productive and surreal it's existence is after the first settlers built it years ago, even though our use of materials still guarentee it's survival.
The young adults grow up with the idea that they will either be moving, or working a local job like many people from small rural resource communities all over Canada. Their lifestyle is one of the only thing that matters to most of the residents here.
However, when this photo was taken in 2020-21, ultra conservative geopolitics were rising online and in governments everywhere, degrading the pro-peace level agenda that would have made places like the Kootenay's legendary to music and artists everywhere.
We were living in the area as young couple looking to escape the rising power on the internet in the city and popular culture everywhere, despite how peaceful it was, one of the many things about this area was how long it had been a place out of public eye.
The heritage surrounding the Columbia River had a strong fishing influence after a hundred years of survival, including B.C Salmon fishery. Despite what most people think about in the city, the means to this honest work is relatively simple despite how difficult it is.
The beauty in the austere is grounding as it says the opposite to visitors everywhere who looking forward to the magic of the mountains in response to B.C tourism's and real estate's advertising.
The controversial theories and people who live in deep places like this in mountain Canada make the city of Nelson, Castlegar, and Trail rich in history that go back to Peter Verigin, Doukhobhor revolutionary's assassination on 29 October, 1924.
Extremely dark times in the world seem to show up in funny places. Although out in the country, what the world does and feelings can show up in extra sensory places like no other, making for out of body experiences part of the life of the locals.
This part of the interior is known for conspiracies and UFO sightings to begin with, as no light pollution and deep critical thinkers have lived here for decades to escape persecution.
At the time, considered radical myself, my motivations into researching this and other projects were hard enough to experience, as it seemed completely necessary to go to the extreme limits to find out truth issues that were brewing tensions world wide.
My own personal life was considered dangerous enough, as the the fabric of society melted, so did our expectations for the future. As violence and greed had taken over the world, my struggles a woman and a photographer kept me moving from place to place from 2017-2021.
The peaceful attitude towards facism was controversial as higher powers built up to current war tensions by 2022. Simplicity was taught to me by the people I had known already, that to put on effect or display was the opposite of resolution or agenda.
The extreme hardships of Covid-19 and global scarcity, as well as the political row of locals against the environment as a whole, world peace, the war in the Ukraine, and the rights of women and men brought back years of struggle for many people familiar with the last cold war.
The property that we had bought had been sold after generations due to changing habits and the die out of an extremely private culture that sought a freer life, despite having a history of extreme environmentalism and polygamy that had also spoke the truth.
Despite such a dynamic environment, life was extremely counter productive, and like many regions with deep mystic layers underneath, the culture above and underneath were completely at odds with itself, just like people, creating cyclical tensions and the overdoes pandemic that started in 2016 and clamed roughly 12,000 by 2022-23 in B.C alone.
Neverless, the history of terrible circumstances is outweighed with how rich the story is, and how much Canada relies on outskirts like these to keep the thinkers and authentic safe despite the struggle for survival being needlessly easy in other places. As Canada loses it's integrity to migration and propaganda, many places like here fall victim to the same story we all have, was this your home at one point too?