Principally, I oppose the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Like a lot of other people I think it’s reckless to develop the tar sands at the rate we currently are. I think it’s reckless to look to export our unrefined resources to other countries. And I think it’s reckless to suggest we disregard the rights of First Nations communities and the wilderness they depend upon to bolster profits for a corporation like Enbridge that has, at every turn, disappointed a watchful public.
I am from British Columbia and have always lived a stone’s throw from the ocean. As a kid, my family holidayed in Tofino, where my mother introduced me and my four siblings to the secret world of tidal pools, an aquatic universe I’ve never lost my wonder for.
What we learned as kids there, on those cold shores, were the formative lessons of childhood: patience is a virtue; the best things in life are free; and you don’t build a pipeline through one of the planet’s last remaining intact old-growth temperate rainforests and flourishing coastal ecosystems.
And it isn’t a stretch to connect what happens in Kitimat or the Douglas Channel with Tofino or Vancouver Island. Just take a look at these images comparing the ‘zone of impact’ from the Exxon-Valdez disaster and a comparable spill on the BC coast:
These images are from an excerpt of Frank Wolfe’s recent documentary On the Line. In the film Wolfe travels the proposed route of the Northern Gateway Pipeline by foot, bicycle, and kayak.
Here’s the excerpt from Youtube:
