A long-awaited dream of Darren Blaney is nearing reality.

Film-maker Jeremy Williams was at work in Bute Inlet as the Homalco and Tsilhqot’in people met. Blaney, actor Duane Howard and others were by his side, pointing out objects and places of interest – both past and present – as plans were discussed for what can only be described as ‘the long walk’.

Blaney, the councillor and former chief of Homalco, has been talking for years of taking
youth and others on a trek from Bute into Chilcotin country to reconnect with history and relations.

Now there are firm plans for filming the 130-kilometre walk from Bute to Chilko Lake in Xeni Gwet’in territory in the Nemaiah Valley. The journey through the canyons of the Homathko River will retrace history and explore the beauty of the river as it cuts through the Coastal mountain range.

Walkers will pass archeological sites and remnants of Waddington’s Road, a failed attempt to bring miners inland to the Cariboo gold fields in 1864. The walkers will also penetrate the mountains and explore the traditional place names and the stories those names tell.

If the mountains could speak, one story they would tell is of the Chilcotin War that fatally stopped the miners in their tracks and changed the fate of this country. Fourteen road workers were killed and five Tsilhqot’in chiefs were subsequently hanged. The chiefs were exonerated more than 100 years later, but the incident remains one of mourning for the Tsilhqot’in people.

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