The Happy Camper: What Happens in the BWCA Doesn’t Stay There—Quetico Pays the Price
This is about a couple of hundred kilometres of rivers and lakes flowing between neighbouring countries of Canada and the U.S., and one nasty mine upstream of it all with a chemical reaction that, once started, can never be stopped, all for U.S. patriotism and its military defence, in my opinion.
Yeah, that’s got Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax written all over it.
U.S. Senate recently voted to allow sulfide mining tangibly close to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), ending a 20-year ban. The “yes” vote won 50 to 49. All it needed now was a signature of approval from the President of United States. Looking at the administration’s history of mining, it didn’t look good to me. President Obama denied mining leases when he was in office, then in Trump’s first term, he pushed for mining to start, and then Biden placed a 20-year moratorium when he was in office. So, I could clearly see what Trump’s decision was going to be in his second term.
On the evening of April 27, 2026, President Trump signed the House Joint Resolution 140 into law, creating legislation which would revoke the 20-year mining ban in the BWCA, which will also prevent future administrations from safeguarding the wilderness canoe area from mining. The law basically nullifies the protection of 225,504 acres of national forest. It could also create a precedent for voting out other protections for public lands across the country.
This action will now give a subsidiary of Chile-based Antofagasta Minerals the go-ahead to extract copper, nickel and other precious metals at the headwaters of the national forest.
They chose a foreign mine over America’s most visited wilderness area (776,000 visitor permits were issued out between 2020 and 2024.) Yikes!
The proposed Twin Lakes Metals mine that’s located just a few miles from the border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the U.S., has been an issue brewing for quite some time. But now things are getting truly serious—for both the U.S. and, you guessed it, Canada.
Most Canadians don’t even know about this issue, and the ones that do don’t really seem to care about it. It’s a U.S. problem, right? Well, not exactly. BWCA borders Canada’s beloved Quetico Provincial Park, a world renowned 460,000 hectare backcountry canoe tripping destination with well over 2,000 lakes and connecting rivers; it hugs the U.S. border for about 240 kilometres.
Remember Grade 9 science class? “Poop rolls downhill,” or in this case, rivers flow downstream; And what’s downstream of this proposed heavy metal mine? Quetico
The leader of our lovely neighbour to the south, upstream, just signed the rights to pollute Canada’s iconic wilderness provincial park.
So, why aren’t we doing something about it?
I can guarantee my fellow American paddlers are pissed about it. They have been fighting against the mine for a long time, and they’re not about to give up just yet. But they are in for a tough fight with the political climate right now in the U.S. During the vote for the mine, it seemed to me that some Republican members of Congress stood on the House floor, wrapped in the stars and stripes, to do a lecture on patriotism, even holding up a poster decorated with images of missiles and aircraft, and loudly exclaimed that this copper mine is crucial to the U.S. military, vital to national defence, imperative to keeping America safe.
This issue of mining along the border of a national forest just went up another notch.
One advocate of protecting BWCA—and Quetico, since 92 percent of the park’s use is by American paddlers—is a U.S. wilderness protection group based in Minnesota. The Friends of the Boundary Waters are sounding out the alarm bells loud and clear.
But what’s the Canadian government doing about it? What’s the Ontario government doing about it? I haven’t heard much, except from the First Nations.
The Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation just put out a press release concerning the U.S. pollutants being flushed into their homeland which borders both the BWCA and Quetico Provincial Park.
The press release said, “This decision threatens the lives of our people, water, resources and our ancestral lands. As stewards of our lands, Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation will be asserting, exercising and protecting our rights, jurisdiction and sovereignty as a Nation.”
It seems they know what’s up. I really think the rest of us should think this through. We are talking about 220 kilometres (137 miles) of rivers and lakes, flowing between two neighbouring countries, and an enormous’ amount of sulfuric acid ‘virtually impossible’ to contain.
Check out the downstream run of the pollutants.
It’s a domino effect. Mercury levels climb and then sulphate pours down the watershed, through the BWCA, through the border lakes of BWCA and Quetico, and through to another protected area, Voyageurs National Park.
The Republicans stated that modern mining and state-of-the-art technology will allow zero percent discharge. The opposition said that the number of sulfide-ore copper mines in the world that have operated without contaminating water—NONE!
The Member of Parliament of Thunder Bay-Rainy River showed his concerns of the mining polluting the waters of northwestern Ontario. But has Environment Canada responded? What about Ontario’s Ministry of Environment? Any reaction from Ontario Parks? I certainly hope so. This has got to be a violation of the Canada/U.S. border treaty? Right?
