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| Protestors at the pipeline gates |
It wasn’t where you’d expect to see a salmon run, here in an asphalt parking lot beneath the sleek monorail station in Burnaby — just outside Vancouver.
Yet salmon had come to this place; so had a sea otter, a great blue heron.
The whales were strong here too.
Black and white orcas were painted on protest signs, including those of my group, Olympic Climate Action. Six of us had carpooled from Port Angeles, Washington across the border to Canada the night before to attend an international march against a tar sands oil pipeline project that would threaten orcas and humans alike. Two of our members walked in orca costumes. Overshadowing everything, someone had built enormous three dimensional orcas out of fabric. These were easily the size of the real deal. While orcas and salmon might not get to cast votes in elections or weigh in on opinion polls, here on the streets, they made their presence known.
The humans would do the same. The march had managed to gather 10,000 demonstrators. A group beat tribal drums; their song and chant rising above the beat.
“We won’t stop until we win!” they cried.
“We won’t stop until we win!” we answered.
“Kinder Morgan’s got to go!”
“Kinder Morgan’s got to go!”
Kinder Morgan is the Texas oil company pushing for the Trans Mountain Expansion Project— over 7 billion dollars of new pipeline infrastructure to link the tar sands of northern Alberta to port in Burnaby, near our protest site. The capacity would be 890,000 barrels of oil. For comparison, that is 30,000 more barrels than the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry.
Some may wonder why, as a US Citizen with plenty of other outrages to worry about at home, that I was bothering to protest on Canadian soil. Unfortunately, if the pipeline does go through, it will have an enormous impact at home.
All that oil will jackknife the number of oil tankers going through the Strait of Juan de Fuca by as much as 700 percent according to the Sierra Club.
That number means danger for places like Freshwater Bay near Port Angeles, where I saw my first (and only) pair of wild orcas surface unexpectedly within a stone’s throw of my kayak. If one of the tankers spills, the shoreline there will be clustered with tar balls, dead fish floating in oily water. The noise alone from all these ships promises to devastate the critically endangered population of Southern Resident orcas that rely on sound to communicate at sea. With only 76 of these whales left, it is likely that there were more whales at the protest than there are in the Salish Sea.
And then there’s climate change. Enough carbon sits locked up in Alberta’s tar sands that burning this oil would be “game over for climate,” according to James Hansen, the scientist who first brought global warming to national attention in the ’80s.
On the streets of Burnaby however, it was game on.
Thousands of marching bodies formed a pipeline of humanity as far as I could see forward and back. We filed past the gates of a rich neighborhood where a Range Rover and a sports car stopped dead to a halt as the protestors streamed past.
“Looks like they chose the wrong day to try to go anywhere,” one man remarked.
Amidst all these people, young and old, there was a surprising number of baby carriages in the crowd. Older kids marched and held signs. Only a few days later, high school kids in Port Angeles would have a walk-out to protest school shootings.
If the Parkland protests were on the mind of many in the march, so was the #MeToo movement.
“No consent? Your pipe doesn’t get laid,” was one of the more clever signs.
I reserve my favorite spot, however — for concept and execution — for the sign that read “Justin’s in Bed with Kinder + Morgan.” The painting features Prime Minister of Canada is dressed in PJs holding the covers with an expression of sleepy wonderment. On the other side of the bed, two porcine execs in suites gaze back at him, smugness writ large across their bloated faces.
The hip, compassionate, progressive image that Justin Trudeau projects didn’t carry much water with the crowd in Burnaby. No amount of rousing words or woke selfies will change the fact that He has tied his political legacy to tar sands oil. He has pushed hard for the Kinder Morgan pipeline, even as British Columbia’s government opposes it along with 17 First Nations and 20 cities and towns.
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| My favorite sign |
The show of people on the streets was only one component of a fight waged in courts, including lawsuits levied by the British Columbian government and by tribes.
Another show of resistance came from “Camp Cloud,” a trailer that activists had illegally parked in front of the Kinder Morgan pipeline station months ago. The protestors danced on the rooftop and solicited cheers from the marchers. Several of the protest coordinators were on the ground to tell people to keep moving. Kinder Morgan had won an injunction making it illegal for demonstrators to get within five meters of Kinder Morgan property. Still, the threat wasn’t enough to deter many from getting their pictures taken at the gate with defiant signs. More recently, protestors did get arrested while blocking the entrance there.
After the gate, the protest, moved on to the “Watch House” that tribal activists were building where they could set up a lasting encampment against the pipeline. This was the end of the march and the beginning of a series of speakers that included several from Canadian First Nations and US tribes who were united against pipeline.
My group lingered near the sidelines of all the speeches where people were bustling and striking up conversations with each other. As our group chatted with the various attendees, a small blond-haired girl came up to my friend Ed (he was in an orca costume) for a hug. Without prompting, she pointed at our orca signs showing that she wanted to carry one around around.
We gave her the one that said "Our Children's Future Over Profit," and she made her way around the crowd, gathering little clusters of people who would stop to admire and chat. This turned out to be some awesome marketing, because everyone wanted to pay attention to the the cute kid holding the sign.
Her mom and dad watched their daughter work the crowd with charisma and élan. Later, Ed gave her the orca costume for some more networking. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Autumn Peltier from Ontario, spoke about how important it was for her to protect water. Famously, she told Trudeau to his face, “I am very unhappy with the choices you’ve made.”
I thought about the many parents in the crowd that day who had decided it was important to show their young ones what they believed through action. When you love something, you fight to protect it.
The tragedy was that for seeing all this beauty, energy and defiance in people, I still doubted whether it would be enough to meet the darkness. The shear amount of money that the people are up against boggles the mind. We are seeing now, how unrestricted money has allowed countless dirty tricks in the U.S. election amongst other places. This monetary effluent tries to submerge all other voices and pollute democracy. Yet, the dissidents continue to say “me too” and demand a hearing.
The generations lean together, shoulders against the wheels of injustice and push back for a future that holds compassion and life.
Hopefully, that future will have whales in it too.
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