Marching Forward From An Age Of Bitumen Pipelines And Dirty Oil

By Delila Jahn-Thue – NAL’s Voice from Canada’s Mid-West

It’s still February as I write this and my deadline is two days away. I’m thinking about March, the month in which you’ll read this, the notion of moving toward something – a procession, progress through a season.

A few days ago Farmer and I called the children to count fat prairie chickens through our dining room window during another Alberta Clipper. Sheltered by the trees, they happily foraged the berry patch while our bird dog Pepper lay clueless on the porch floor.

 I’m thinking about Farmer, last night in bed. I woke him from the verge of sleep to quiz him about prairie chickens. I’d never seen them so big, only the smaller ones and pheasants. “No,” he said, “what you saw before were partridges or huns.”

 I thought it so incredibly sexy that he knew his wildlife and kissed him to prove it.

Half way through the night, I got up to finish reading William Marsen’s Stupid to the Last Drop – How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem To Care). Big title, big picture history of oil development in North America.

 As I read, I decided this was the last book I’d feature in my farm column that sounded alarm bells. Being shocked was growing tiresome.

Marsden was telling me North Korea wasn’t the only country to detonate nuclear blasts underground, contaminating groundwater and rendering petroleum resources unusable. It’s been done in North America and the Russians too have gone nuking for oil.

Marsden’s oil-history shows how nuking was once thought to be a method for extracting tar sands oil in Canada too, and how the current method is having much the same results. I keep promising myself this is the last time I’ll write about Armageddon.

What Harper and company think of as black gold. Is this all Canada has to offer the world anymore?

Solutions, that’s what we need now. Yes, it’s important to know that the United States is currently run by powerful lobby groups like the National Petroleum Council (NPC) made up of about 189 members representing oil companies who finance political campaigns. Marsden names them. Some are even “Canadian” oil companies.

The bitumen pipelines are a done deal, as is the Athabasca, anyone or any animal relying on this complex water network for sustenance, and any groundwater near a CMB well. The oil industry protects itself, monitors itself and is insulated from scrutiny by governments that reside in its pocket. Marsden lists land owners whose wells have been poisoned, including a Weyburn area family. He lists toxic petro-extraction chemicals that have shown up in their water and he shows how the onus in still on polluted landowners to prove their case while they’re accused of not taking care of their own water wells. In short, Canada’s water is a done deal too.

 I read all night. Farmer called me some kind of loon when he got up to put his coffee on and let Pepper outside. I scrawled notes on a page Princess had taken from the recycling bin. She’d drawn pictures of herself and her brother on it in crayon, but left me enough space for notes on both sides.

Is it really possible that Canada is wasting all this energy to recover the dirtiest oil, selling resources super cheap internationally (while Canadians subsidize production) and simultaneously ignoring the fact that we live in a cold climate and the best quality, easiest to access oil is already gone? I’m battling disbelief and this question rises often: Can our government really be so stupid?

 Kim Jong-un is testing nuclear weapons and the world condemns him because his own people starve while he seeks international recognition. In Canada that couldn’t possibly happen. But I read on about the rare cancers, fish that taste like gasoline, covered up oil spills, a threatened Fort Chip doctor who tried to figure out whether it was oil sands, uranium mining contamination, pulp mills or a combination of these pollutants that grew rare cancers and lupus in a community that had never seen such anomalies. Heath Canada is now high on my do not trust list too.

 Marsden paints a picture of Canada mining for money and marching off a cliff. While Athabasca is drying up and its fishery is dead, Canada may also be running out of natural gas.

 I’d put off reading this book though I’ve known about it a while. I’d heard many of the particular facts from other sources and didn’t need another holocaust account to convince me that we live in an oligarchy and democracy has become a distant and theoretical ideal in Canada.

 Like I said, this is my last alarm column. Awareness of the problem’s magnitude makes me want to throw up, but I’m not sounding alarm bells anymore, for two reasons.

First, if Canadians want to know the truth, it’s available; not on the local news mind you, not in your local newspaper either. Those are paid for by advertisers, the biggest ones lobby governments, threaten scientists and can afford the most expensive and polished PR.

Marsden explains that Under NAFTA, Canada is obligated to keep supplying cheap energy to the U.S. and simultaneously bound to continue ignoring and covering up its own environmental destruction.

 I still do a little substitute teaching. Last time I stood with the children to sing O Canada, my heart was heavy. I love Canada but mercy, is she in pain. Treaties with our own First Nations are trashed because NAFA agreements require environmental destruction while First Nations are poisoned eating traditional foods.

 Second reason: in order to survive according to my conscience, my entire being must be focused on living from the farm, protecting the farm, marching on, appreciating and nurturing the little eco-system from which I live. I believe this is doable, sustainable, despite the wholesale train wreck that is the current world economic system.

 If Marsen’s book holds any truth, Canada doesn’t have a great future. Premier Brad Wall acknowledges only the PR problem, and appears clueless about the environmental disaster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwHzedtpHUk&feature=youtu.be .

Perhaps it’s time for those of us who live here, conscious and still not poisoned, to march in a new direction.

 Delila Jahn-Thue is a teacher, columnist: Living from The Farm and author of Advice Between Kingdoms – How the Hays Moved Trash Mountain (Balboa Press 2012).

She is involved in ecological causes including farmers’ rights, water quality and creating rural recycling opportunities. Passionate about the land, Delila travels to communities and schools sharing awareness of how our daily actions affect the land that feeds us.

We encourage you to visit Delila’s website at  Livingfromthefarm.com .

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