Clearing the Air
Dirk Brinkman likes to describe himself as a “hegemonist,” which by one definition is somebody who wields “predominant influence.” This title is a tad self-aggrandizing, but there’s no doubt that Brinkman’s four-decade-long career in the forestry and silviculture industry has been characterized by a maverick creativity, energy and tenacity that sets him and his business, the Brinkman Group of Companies, apart from the crowd. From the crisp fall days of 1970 – when Brinkman and a friend scored a contract from the Ministry of Forests to plant trees in barren clearcuts up Wild Horse Creek near Cranbrook – the company has grown into a diverse and thriving concern with annual revenues topping $25 million and a workforce of more than 1,500 during the peak season. The tentacles of its tree-planting and forest management operations stretch across Canada and the United States and as far away as Central America.
Industrial-scale reforestation remains the Brinkman Group’s bread and butter – its crews have planted more than 900 million trees over the past 35 years – but the company also undertakes controlled burning, brushing and spacing contracts, as well as urban-based ecosystem restoration projects such as those carried out at YVR and Stanley Park. However, what truly distinguishes the company these days are its foreign endeavours. In the early 1990s, the hegemonic Brinkman started dabbling in subtropical forestry, which in turn led to his present – and most controversial – preoccupation: climate change and the still-emerging science and economics of carbon sequestration through tree planting and forest management.
“I’ve always felt like I’m on a mission, and right now my mission is to stop global warming,” says the 64-year-old Dutch native. “Twenty per cent of global carbon emissions come from deforestation. We have to stop that.”
A visit to the Brinkman Groups’s headquarters – situated in a drab, almost-neglected-looking two-storey office building in an equally nondescript New Westminster neighbourhood – seems to confirm the sincerity of this new mission. Bookshelves in his spacious office are lined with everything from soporific forestry policy pamphlets and ecosystem restoration manuals to treatises on climate change and carbon trading. A well-thumbed copy of James Lovelock’s gloomily prophetic The Vanishing Face of Gaia – about humankind’s urgent need to adapt to imminent catastrophic ecological change – is perched on the edge of his desk.
Brinkman comes from hard-working immigrant stock. He was born in Zaandam, Holland, the year the Second World War ended. In 1950 his father moved the family to Ontario and, with his wife, proceeded to raise a family of 10 children on the salary he earned as a State Farm Insurance agent, while juggling a personal interest in Christian education and labour associations. In keeping with his father’s pious values, in 1965 the younger Brinkman enrolled in liberal arts at Michigan’s Calvin College, later pursuing studies in the philosophy of religion. On his first summer excursion out west, Brinkman landed a job falling trees ahead of the advancing waters of the Williston Lake reservoir in northern B.C. He was instantly hooked on the B.C. bush life, and religious studies were left behind.
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