Resolve to stand firm, together, in 2013.

I had a wonderful visit in mid-December from a two of the actors (Georgina Beaty and Anita Rochon) from Architect Theatre working on The Pipeline Project, which is a theatre development project about, you guessed it, Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal.

They were on the road through northern BC in November and December and came to spend a couple of hours in Driftwood Canyon. We (I!)talked as we walked across the arched bridge over Driftwood Creek and later over a cup of tea back around our kitchen table. It made me realize how long I’d been living here, how many environmental projects we’d been involved in over those years, and how the stories are still the same. Threats of economic disaster if we don’t do what is being asked of us, while industry insists that what we ask in terms of safeguards or alternatives is impossible. Neither has proved true.

Anita Rochon
(photo courtesy project facebook page)

Telkwa, for example, is still a thriving community even without a coal mine or coal bed methane. It is possible to take the lead out of gasoline, it is possible to shut down beehive burners, and it is possible to create a park in the Babine Mountains. And, praise be, there will be no fracking in the Sacred Headwaters.

This last important victory demonstrates that it is also possible for First Nations to work with the non-native community – both on economic projects like the Kyahwood Forest Products and the sale of salmon at Moricetown and on environmental campaigns to protect wild salmon from fish farms or oil spills.

This was not the case when I moved to Smithers in 1977. It was still a regular practice for the fire chief to ask town council for permission to have his crew practice burning down “derelict” buildings – buildings that were often shelters for otherwise homeless Wet’suwet’en. It was not uncommon for Wet’suwet’en to be asked to leave stores and restaurants. Back when they were called Carriers.

Things have, in many ways, changed. Beautiful totem poles stand in front of Smithers Secondary and Northwest Community College. The Office of the Wet’suwet’en is located in downtown Smithers. The Dze L K’ant Friendship Centre owns the building that used to house the jail. School District 54 has just published Niwhts'ide'ni Hibi'it'en – The Ways of Our Ancestors: Witsuwit’en History and Culture Throughout the Millennia. 

Turn the crank and you can hear, among other things, a Wet'suwet'en greeting here at Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park.
(photo courtesy project facebook page) 

The Wet’suwet’en went through a long process educating both themselves and our community about their history and culture. Work began in earnest in 1984 when the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en launched a suit that claimed ownership and jurisdiction over their territory and led to an exhaustive recording of traditional knowledge that has left us all the richer. Even though Chief (sic) Justice Allan McEachern wrote an insulting decision denying even their existence as a people, the process of gathering that information, of talking to each other, had a very powerful and positive effect. We all knew what had happened in the past, knew that steps had to be taken to repair the injustices of that past. And the Wet’suwet’en demonstrated clearly that they still existed and held onto many political and cultural practices we had pretended were in the past. The Supreme Court’s overturning of McEachern’s decision on Delgamuukw and Gisday Wa was welcome, of course, but a transformation had begun.

Which brings me to the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel. While it will be disappointing, we shouldn’t be surprised if the panel makes a decision as insulting and misinformed as McEachern’s was. But it will be too late.  We have listened to the oral presentations from community members and read the technical evidence and cross-examinations from interveners. We have spoken to each other and there is no going back. We have heard hundreds of stories from across the province and we know how many of us oppose this project. We have educated ourselves and each other about the sham economics of the project and the environmental impacts of tar sands expansion, pipeline construction and oil spills both globally and locally. We cannot “unknow” this.

This is part of what I said as I poured tea for two young actors sitting around a table that had seen hard labour in the offices of the Telkwa Foundation, the Smithers Human Rights Society, and the home of Walter and Peggy Taylor, people who stood up against social and environmental injustice throughout their long lifetimes. We are honoured to be able to sit at this table every day and gather energy from those who have come before us.

So raise a toast to what we’ve learned this past year, and make a resolution to stand firm, together, in 2013.

Save all our coasts

Our travels have brought us (via Via's the Ocean) all the way to Halifax. This morning we were missing the Smithers Save our Coast event so we mounted our own little demo at the Halifax (very industrial) harbour.

The Widening Gyre

We were driving (yes, driving) across the prairies, often sandwiched between semis carrying heavy machinery, steel pipes, or huge plastic barrels; pickups carrying men and equipment to service oil wells, pumping stations; vehicles rumbling into tank farms or out to the grain fields peppered with black tanks and pumping stations. The arteries of oil. 

All of that big sky, big wind and only one or two old windmills on the whole route; it wasn’t until we drove past Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario that we came across solar panels, a huge field of them. And in Shelburne, at the base of the Bruce Peninsula, a line of ghostly windmills, their ponderous blades revolving in and out of sight through the fog. 

Driving, people say. You need oil just like the rest of us. In other words, shut up. As if it’s all or nothing. As if we have to accept whatever the oil industry does without question. As if the questioning doesn’t have any impact on production methods, cleaner processing, or more efficient use. 

But this isn’t what I want to say. With all this activity, it seems as if we’re all chasing our own tails. If  we put the oil produced on one side of the equation and all the energy that went into the oil extraction and refining processes, into the trucks driven, the steel manufactured to make those trucks, the equipment, the pipelines, the tanks, the drills, flying the workers back and forth to the oil and gas fields, well, what is the net energy gain? The estimates range from 1.5/1 to 5/1 for tar sands oil– that means for every unit of energy put into the process, from 1.5 to 5 units of energy are produced, a much lower amount than in the past. This, of course, doesn’t take into account the carbon footprint, the pollution of downstream ground and river water, the air and ground pollution as the oil is burned, the plastic manufactured from that oil settling into the landfills, snagging on trees, washing up on beaches, killing seabirds and other creatures. 

Petroleum is used to make a million things – some of them valuable and useful, others junk. There is a a range of ideas about what is wasteful, what is useful, and what is essential, but we can all question ourselves when we pick up a packet of 300 brightly-coloured hair elastics for $1.99 or ask for a plastic bag to hold the plastic bag holding 100 extra strength garbage bags we’re buying so we have a place to put the plastic packaging we’re going to throw out. You just have to see Chris Jordan’s amazing photographs of albatross chicks who died from eating a colourful diet of plastic whirling in the Pacific gyre Chris Jordan's amazing photographs to realize how far-reaching and destructive this is.It makes Yeats’ “Second Coming” all the more prescient.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

4000 Reasons Festival

In June, I took part in an event in Smithers to celebrate all the people who stood up to speak to the Joint Review Panel expressing opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern  Gateway pipeline project. (See Masset Hearings and 4000 Reasons). The event, organized by the Driftwood Foundation, included an afternoon of poetry and performance, a wild salmon barbecue, and an evening concert featuring many regional performers, including Wet'suwet'en dancers, Rachelle Van Zan Zanten, Alex Cuba, Magpie Ulysses, Miriam Colvin, Travis Hebert, and Los Gringos Salvajes. Videographer Taylor Fox has created a very moving video collage of the day: to view it, Click here.

Meet 'Dil Bit': The Enbridge Testimony Stephen Harper Doesn’t Want Heard

by Miranda Holmes

Many voices have been heard during these hearings, yet one has remained silent: the oily character at the centre of the debate. I think that’s a shame and so I am using my time before the panel to allow this character’s case to be made.

Hi, my name’s Dil Bit. That’s short for Diluted Bitumen, but I feel like I’m amongst friends here, so let’s not be too formal.

I come from the tar sands and, as you know, Alberta totally digs me. Alberta’s so generous she wants to share me with everyone.

If she gets her way, I’ll be passing through British Columbia a lot in the future, so I thought I should introduce myself properly.

As fossil fuels go, I’m a bit unconventional. But, as Alberta’s favourite son Steve will tell you, I’m totally ethical. (And don’t let those jet setting celebrities tell you any different.)

I’m also way better than conventional crude oil.

For instance, my total acid concentrations are up to 20 times higher than conventional crude. My sulphur content is up to 10 times higher and I’m up to 70 times thicker. Pretty impressive, eh?

Yeah, it’s true I can be a bit abrasive. Bits of quartz, pyrite, silicates, sure I carry them around. It’s just the way I’m made.

So conventional crude doesn’t have my grit. So what? No need to point out, like those granola eaters at the Natural Resources Defense Council did, that putting me in a pipeline is “like sandblasting the inside of the pipe.”

I don’t know why the Americans have taken against me, because – like so many of them – I pack some serious heat. Thanks to my true grit and my thickness (I like to think of it as strength), I make pipes hotter than conventional crude - and harder to monitor. In fact, pipelines carrying me are16 times more likely to leak.

See? I told you I was better.

I’m Alberta’s most precious resource. You think she and Steve are going to let just anyone transport me? No way.

For my travels through British Columbia, they’re going to use Enbridge, a fine, upstanding company with an excellent track record. Why, it took Enbridge 10 years to spill half as much oil as the Exxon Valdez. And they didn’t just spill it in one spot – they spread it around.

Regulators in the US thought the three million litres of me Enbridge spilled in Michigan was so funny they compared the company to those great comedy characters the Keystone Kops.

If Enbridge maintains its current success rate it should be able to meet Steve’s federal standards, which allow undetected pipeline leaks of less than 2% of capacity per week.

For the Northern Gateway project that means Enbridge could legally leave 11 million litres of me a week behind on my way to Kitimat without getting into any serious trouble. And why should they? Eleven million litres of me would be more than three times funnier than Michigan, right?

That’s good news for me, because I’ve heard there are some mighty pretty places in northern BC and I think it would be a shame not to get to know them better.

And it’s good news for BC, because your premier’s promising lots of jobs out of oil and gas exports, and cleaning up after me will sure keep people employed.

Sorry if any of the spots I’m going to wreck is one of your favourites, but I’ve got to keep Alberta happy. You know what she’s like. 


Miranda Holmes is a former journalist who spent a decade working on toxics and genetic engineering for Greenpeace and other environmental organizations in Canada and the UK. She has also worked on human rights and development issues. She is now an associate editor of the award-winning Watershed Sentinel magazine. She made this presentation to the JRP in August in Comox.

Job creation

I was on a recent kayaking trip to Nuchatlitz Provincial Park on the west coast of  Vancouver Island. We stocked up on groceries in Campbell River and I was wearing my "I've got this sinking feeling" T-shirt. (If anyone knows who designed this great shirt, please let me know because I'd like to credit them here.)

Two people in the grocery store came up to me (separately) and said they liked the T-shirt. One woman said she didn't like the project, but thought it was a done deal. Don't worry, I said. It's not going to happen. Keep speaking up. The other woman said she'd be going/coming up there/here (north) if she was needed. Later on, another couple told me the same thing.

Meanwhile the technical hearings are taking place right now - you can find summaries at the Northwest Institute website.

Now even though I've probably read too many John LeCarre novels where the lengths to which industry and government will go to protect economic interests is always nerve-wracking, I was more than a little creeped (to use a word my kids used to employ) to read an article in The Guardian Weekly: Shell spending $1 bn on security. It details the extent to which oil companies will go to maintain an unwelcome and environmentally destructive infrastructure. The article begins: "Shell is paying Nigerian security forces tens of millions of dollars a year to guard their installations and staff in the Niger delta....The oil giant also maintains a 1,200-strong internal police fore in Nigeria, plus a network of informants." Its budget for security in Africa, the article says, is number three after the total security budgets of the countries of South Africa and Nigeria.

I guess that's one way oil creates jobs.

Another perhaps unexpected job creation project that can likely be credited to the oil industry right here in Canada comes from the establishment of Alberta's counterterrorism unit. According to a June 6 Globe & Mail article, "After labelling certain environmental and first nations groups as extremists and radicals, Canada’s federal government, along with the country’s top law enforcement and spy agencies, have set up a counterterrorism unit in Alberta in order to protect the province’s natural resources and infrastructure."

The job spinoffs are amazing.

Just as it would be nice if some of Shell's security money went into addressing the environmental devastation its oil projects have caused in Nigeria, it would be nice if the Canadian government kept funding those scientists studying the effects of climate change and created jobs in alternative energy. The folks we stayed with in Nuchatliz rely almost entirely on solar - and that's on the wet coast. Go figure.

Think tankers and what comes along with them

I received notice of this August 24 presentation in Smithers from the Friends of Morice-Bulkley - as always, it's the stories people tell that really illustrate the impact of oil spills - and bravo to the folks who take the time to share their stories, as so many have done at the Joint Review Panel hearings.

A coalition of First Nation organizers and conservation organizations are sponsoring Dr. Riki Ott, a renowned marine toxicologist and oil spill expert on a speaking tour throughout British Columbia in August.  Friends of Morice-Bulkley are hosting Dr. Ott at the Old Church in Smithers on Friday, August 24 at 7 pm. Everyone is invited to this free event.

In her talk, "Think Tankers -- and what comes along with them", Ott shares stories of accidental activists from the Exxon Valdez spill, the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster, the Enbridge Michigan spill and more, showing the devastating costs of our fossil fuel dependency on communities across North America. Her stories show what ordinary people are doing to create more self-reliant, sustainable, and democratic communities. Ott engages the audience to imagine what it would take to transition off fossil fuels and confront the dangerous expansion of corporate power – and inspires people to take action.

Ott says, "I spent a year in Gulf of Mexico communities after the BP oil disaster, warning people what to expect based on my experience with the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In Cordova, Alaska, we learned that the oil industry does not know how to clean up oil – there would be a cover up, not a clean up. Sure enough, people in the Gulf are sick, wildlife is sick, tons of oil is still everywhere, and the government and oil industry are working together to minimize the appearance of damages and BP's response costs."

Ott found this same story of deception and harm is repeating in Michigan communities after the Enbridge pipeline tar sands spill in July 2010. Ott is working with community organizers in Michigan to launch a pilot community health survey in areas impacted by the tar sands spill. "In Michigan, we're dealing with incredibly toxic oil – pretty much the same stuff that the Canadian government wants to bring through BC. Tar sands oil is concentrated in the heavy particulates that harm the respiratory system, the reproductive system, immune function, the central nervous system, the stomach, bladder, liver, skin, and more. The diluents – the chemicals used to dilute the thick tar sands – also are linked with a host of human illnesses."  

 "I want to share these stories and experiences with people in British Columbia because you still have a chance to prevent the harms that have happened in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and Michigan. It's far better to fight to stop the pipelines and tankers now than to loose your health, your traditional foods, and your families after a spill."