Plus, if you enjoyed Jennifer Skin Wickham's poem in an earlier posting, you might want to check out the interview I did with her on my Smithers Community Radio show In the Shadow of the Mountain about a month ago.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
We're still here...
To "celebrate" the anniversary of the Joint Review Panel's decision to give permission to Enbridge to proceed with its plans to build the Northern Gateway pipelines, Friends of Morice-Bulkley and the Wet'suwet'en chiefs are hosting an event to celebrate healthy rivers and wild salmon and to send out a friendly reminder that the opposition has not gone away.
Saturday, June 13, 2015 from 12 - 2 in Bovill Square in Smithers.
Plus, if you enjoyed Jennifer Skin Wickham's poem in an earlier posting, you might want to check out the interview I did with her on my Smithers Community Radio show In the Shadow of the Mountain about a month ago.
Plus, if you enjoyed Jennifer Skin Wickham's poem in an earlier posting, you might want to check out the interview I did with her on my Smithers Community Radio show In the Shadow of the Mountain about a month ago.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
The Elephant in the Room
It's been pretty quiet here for the past few months because I've been doing a book tour for my latest book, Shafted: A Mystery, helping launch a great book of poetry, Second Growth, by Fabienne Calvert Filteau and trying to keep track (and failing) of all the LNG pipeline proposals in the northwest. (Check out the Madii lii camp on the Suskwa and the No More Pipelines website for ways in which people are resisting that boondoggle.)
But I had to take the time to thank John Vaillant for his article The Gorilla on Burnaby Mountain in today's The Tyee. And of course thanks to The Tyee for being another voice in the room along with that elephant.
Vaillant argues that Canada should take a lead on alternative energy rather than subsidizing fossil fuel industries and subverting our democratic values to support their projects.
But I had to take the time to thank John Vaillant for his article The Gorilla on Burnaby Mountain in today's The Tyee. And of course thanks to The Tyee for being another voice in the room along with that elephant.
Vaillant argues that Canada should take a lead on alternative energy rather than subsidizing fossil fuel industries and subverting our democratic values to support their projects.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Engussi Wedzin Kwah by Jennifer Wickham
Thanks to our new library director, Wendy Wright for telling me about Jennifer Wickham's amazing poetry in I'm a Real Skin - the Smithers library has a copy, you can buy it at Mountain Eagle Books in Smithers, and you can source it from Jennifer's webpage.
Jennifer has given me permission to post her poem about the river many of us call the Morice or Bulkley.
She is my healer
a consoling friend
a life giver, a grandmother
a sister to the ancient ones
she heard the songs and touched the skin
of the Original Wet'suwet'en
sacred knowledge in every drop,
but we forgot
we try to listen with our ears
time has made us deaf to her
there's too much background noise.
the smog is in our souls
shhhhhh.....can you hear her cry for you?
I need a job, I need a new car
I just bought a new eco-friendly travel mug from *fill in the blank*...
It's funny right?
The love of my life is not my cell phone
a flat screen tv or my shoes
Engussi Wedzin Kwah!
I don't need to tell you how beautiful she is
how her clear blue/green sparkles in the sun
or how her glacial currents take your breath away
and jump starts your soul and very cell in your body
how her voice sings you alive
this isn't that kind of love poem
Let's get back to listening....
What are the names of your rivers?
Can you hear them inside you?
Let's resurrect those words together
ALL our words, all at once
I want to feel all those hard and soft sounds
hitting me at the same time
just let me absorb the words of our ancestors
like Wedzin Kwah
but I'm not a river
I am a Wet'suwet'en woman
my purpose is clear
Like ancient protocol and boundaries
I'll show you where the line is
we were born her guardians
warriors watch over Wedzin Kwah
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Dakota Fracking Oil
Last year, I wrote a post, Bound For Glory, after travelling through North Dakota on our way home from southern Ontario about the visible impacts of the industry on the landscape.
Earlier this year, I went to Liz Logan's presentation on the impacts of the fracking boom in BC's northeast. She tackled the issue head-on - talking about the work the industry provides and the cost of that employment. Her people are beginning to wonder if the benefits outweigh the costs.
In Brick's winter issue, I came across an article and photographs by Elizabeth Farnsworth and Terry Evans which dug much deeper into the conflicts people are facing within families and communities about the fracking oil boom in Dakota. I was happy to find this is available online: Dakota Fracking Oil Boom.
You might want to check it out.
Earlier this year, I went to Liz Logan's presentation on the impacts of the fracking boom in BC's northeast. She tackled the issue head-on - talking about the work the industry provides and the cost of that employment. Her people are beginning to wonder if the benefits outweigh the costs.In Brick's winter issue, I came across an article and photographs by Elizabeth Farnsworth and Terry Evans which dug much deeper into the conflicts people are facing within families and communities about the fracking oil boom in Dakota. I was happy to find this is available online: Dakota Fracking Oil Boom.
You might want to check it out.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Louder!
I came across this marvelous, terrifying poem in Brick: A Literary Journal No. 93, Summer 2014. Brick has long been one of my favourite journals. Jan Zwicky has long been one of my favourite poets. They both have kindly given me permission to post "Near" below.
You don't read poetry, you say? This will change your mind. Read in a quiet corner, read it out loud to your friends, read it even louder in the town square.Take it out into the world where it belongs. Where you belong.
It arrives. The far dream
that terrified us—that put the steel
in our forearms, and we woke each morning
to its distant shuddering—
is far no more. Heavy-limbed, it sprawls
across the daylight, brushes back
the damp hair from our foreheads, stares
and laughs. And the axle of our will
is seized, the wheel splintered, an engine
that does not, does not
turn, and when we go below decks, find
it is missing, a hollow, a dark sift
of emptiness, and the ferry is slammed
against its moorings, helpless, the contagion spreading,
and the one who knows, the one who has been readied,
is absent from the table.
Near is the hard grief, the grief
from the pit, whose hands shake, which cannot find
the knife, which cannot stand, or kneel, or lie,
the grief that is tearless, that gags.
The clearcut, the dead zone, the gas-contaminated
well, the salt earth, the foreign
investment protection, the child soldier,
the rape, the spin, the addiction
to speed, the saving of labour, the image,
the image, the image, the image,
the genetic modification, the electromagnetic
field, the sense of entitlement, greed. The present
is thick-lipped and stunned; it sweats. The voice
of the century is a wild clanking, a loose stink that lifts
and settles in our mouths. Did you raise your hand? Did you
say something? Louder. Louder.
You don't read poetry, you say? This will change your mind. Read in a quiet corner, read it out loud to your friends, read it even louder in the town square.Take it out into the world where it belongs. Where you belong.
Near by Jan Zwicky
It arrives. The far dream
that terrified us—that put the steel
in our forearms, and we woke each morning
to its distant shuddering—
is far no more. Heavy-limbed, it sprawls
across the daylight, brushes back
the damp hair from our foreheads, stares
and laughs. And the axle of our will
is seized, the wheel splintered, an engine
that does not, does not
turn, and when we go below decks, find
it is missing, a hollow, a dark sift
of emptiness, and the ferry is slammed
against its moorings, helpless, the contagion spreading,
and the one who knows, the one who has been readied,
is absent from the table.
Near is the hard grief, the grief
from the pit, whose hands shake, which cannot find
the knife, which cannot stand, or kneel, or lie,
the grief that is tearless, that gags.
The clearcut, the dead zone, the gas-contaminated
well, the salt earth, the foreign
investment protection, the child soldier,
the rape, the spin, the addiction
to speed, the saving of labour, the image,
the image, the image, the image,
the genetic modification, the electromagnetic
field, the sense of entitlement, greed. The present
is thick-lipped and stunned; it sweats. The voice
of the century is a wild clanking, a loose stink that lifts
and settles in our mouths. Did you raise your hand? Did you
say something? Louder. Louder.
Friday, June 20, 2014
A Chain of Hope
On Wednesday, our family gathered at my mother's home in Powell River to celebrate her 90th birthday. She's been here for over 80 years since her family moved from Shetland. Her house sits about two metres above sea level, and each day we watch sea lions, otters, summer ducks, and herons going about their daily routines. Powell River seems a long way from Kitimat, the proposed terminal for Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline project. After watching the changes in industrial forestry, pulp and paper production, the huge limestone quarry across the strait on Texada Island, it's easy to be lulled into a sense of complacency about yet another mega-project.
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People seem to survive the changes brought about by global economics; her family left Shetland because of a depressed economy. Since then the North Sea oil boom has given those islands a material wealth it never imagined. Here on the BC south coast, the near-collapse of forestry and fishery jobs has been hard for coastal communities to navigate. The most recent cuts to BC ferry schedules are signaling an end for some communities and will diminish many others as their links dwindle.
For people in difficult economic circumstances, any work looks good and there are those who think a project like Enbridge's will provide part of a solution. But standing beside the light beacon in my mother's front yard just a couple of metres above the ocean, two thoughts come to mind: climate change and oil spills. They both signal other kinds of finales - ones more devastating than the difficulties coastal communities already face. If we can't come up with a better economic strategy than shipping raw bitumen from the tar sands, we're better off without one. We're better off standing up and saying no. We'd be wise to join in spirit the wonderful women of Hartley Bay who have crocheted a Chain of Hope to symbolically block the passage of oil tankers past their village and up Douglas Channel to Kitimat:
On June 20, 2014 the women of the Gitga’at First Nation will lead a symbolic blockade against the Northern Gateway pipeline by stretching a crochet “Chain of Hope” across Douglas Channel to show their opposition to oil tankers and oil spills in BC’s coastal waters.
Made of multicolour yarn and decorated with family keepsakes and mementos including baby pictures and fishing floats with written messages on them, the chain will stretch from Hawkesbury Island to Hartley Bay, a distance of 11,544 feet. The Chain of Hope itself is over 20,382 feet long and was stitched by the women and children of the Gitga’at First Nation with their friends and family across BC and Canada.
We have stopped oil tankers on this coast for close to forty years - here's to fifty years more. Then we can celebrate another 90th anniversary. Or our children can. Here's hoping.
People seem to survive the changes brought about by global economics; her family left Shetland because of a depressed economy. Since then the North Sea oil boom has given those islands a material wealth it never imagined. Here on the BC south coast, the near-collapse of forestry and fishery jobs has been hard for coastal communities to navigate. The most recent cuts to BC ferry schedules are signaling an end for some communities and will diminish many others as their links dwindle.
For people in difficult economic circumstances, any work looks good and there are those who think a project like Enbridge's will provide part of a solution. But standing beside the light beacon in my mother's front yard just a couple of metres above the ocean, two thoughts come to mind: climate change and oil spills. They both signal other kinds of finales - ones more devastating than the difficulties coastal communities already face. If we can't come up with a better economic strategy than shipping raw bitumen from the tar sands, we're better off without one. We're better off standing up and saying no. We'd be wise to join in spirit the wonderful women of Hartley Bay who have crocheted a Chain of Hope to symbolically block the passage of oil tankers past their village and up Douglas Channel to Kitimat:
On June 20, 2014 the women of the Gitga’at First Nation will lead a symbolic blockade against the Northern Gateway pipeline by stretching a crochet “Chain of Hope” across Douglas Channel to show their opposition to oil tankers and oil spills in BC’s coastal waters.
Made of multicolour yarn and decorated with family keepsakes and mementos including baby pictures and fishing floats with written messages on them, the chain will stretch from Hawkesbury Island to Hartley Bay, a distance of 11,544 feet. The Chain of Hope itself is over 20,382 feet long and was stitched by the women and children of the Gitga’at First Nation with their friends and family across BC and Canada.
We have stopped oil tankers on this coast for close to forty years - here's to fifty years more. Then we can celebrate another 90th anniversary. Or our children can. Here's hoping.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
ON the way to summer...
What an amazing watershed we inhabit! In the most beautiful and busy time of year - gardening, hiking, fishing, camping, birding, kayaking, and watching the bear cubs learn to climb cottonwoods - our wonderful neighbours are finding time to raise their voices.
Bravo!
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