Action in Time

Photos by Mark Teasdale.

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by Rafe Mair

If there was ever the slightest doubt in the faraway recesses of my mind that Kinder Morgan must be stopped, it was dispelled by the June 4 editorial in the TORONTO GLOBE & MAIL which applied bullshit to the bread and called it peanut butter. All the usual ersatz Central Canadian definitions of nationhood are trotted out. One of those definitions you would think would be preserving BC’s rivers, harbours, seas, islands and channels not to mention the several breeds of whale including the truly iconic killer whale, seals, sea lions, porpoise, dolphins and most surely the 7 species of Pacific Salmon upon which so many of our First Nations depend for food and livelihood. Apparently when sacred sites are added up, pristine environments don’t matter. What does matter is that those who own, finance and tax the world’s most noxious chemical, deadly poisonous in the Ocean and Atmosphere, condemned by every world leader but Donald Trump and Trudeau, minor, and by the latter when he was using his Paris platform to primp his pretty image before getting his orders from the oil industry, can ship endless tankers of bitumen, the spills from which cannot be cleaned up, through the highly vulnerable waters of BC, to be thrown into the atmosphere where they can join LNG from Squamish in further damaging the world’s climate and impairing people’s health. Don’t forget, in fairness, that the safety of this murderous gunk has been subjected to “rigorous” testing by that paragon of fairness, independence, scientific acumen and political independence, the National Energy Board, one of Trudeau, minor’s, favourite whipping boys in the 2015 election.
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Kinder Morgan protest in Vancouver (Photo: Lu Iz/Facebook)

by Rafe Mair

Those who think that the feds and Alberta have got the only quiver with arrows in the Kinder Morgan fight are very sadly mistaken indeed.

The overriding factor is the deep resolve of an angered British Columbia to keep out what are seen as almost foreign despoilers of their land. Damned near everyone is a British Columbian whether born here like I was or recently arrived, a dedicated convert of which there are thousands. The love of the British Columbian for the West Coast is very deep indeed and Kinder Morgan can’t be just counted as were environmental outrages of the past. We’re not talking here about beehive burners, leaky sewer pipes or distasteful, unhealthy and stinky garbage dumps. We are talking about something that is the heart and soul of British Columbia much like St. Paul’s Cathedral is to Londoners. If you think this is a stretch, please bear with me.

One could say that St. Paul’s is simply a church dome and not even as big as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and nowhere near London’s oldest building.

Tell that to the Londoner who sees this fairly recent icon as the soul of his city, indeed an effort to destroy a beautiful edifice for a development would bring inconceivable reactions from a normally peaceful people – at least when they are civilians. Continue Reading »