ReturnToTheTarSands

The first To The Tar Sands bike trip of 2007 was designed as a fact finding mission, a story telling adventure like no other. The culmination of that trip is the recent release of a book entitled Journey To The Tar Sands and a documentary film called simply To The Tar Sands.

Come January, we will cross the country by train stopping in key cities to tell the story of our trip North to the tar sands and more importantly the stories of those we met along the way. Film screenings, book signings and public discussions will be held in major cities across Canada:

Montreal - January 4th, 7-9pm, Le Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent)
*with members of the youth delegation to COP 14 in Poznan
Ottawa - January 6th, 7-9pm, SAW Gallery (67 Nicholas St.)
*with guest Clayton Thomas-Muller
Toronto - January 7th, 7-9pm, U of T’s George Ignatieff Theatre
Saskatoon - January 12th, 5-7pm, Neatby Timlin Theatre (Arts 241), U of S
Calgary - January 14th, 7-9pm, ST 148, U of C
Edmonton - January 15th, 7-9pm, HC L3 Theatre, U of A
West Vancouver - January 19th, 7-9pm, Kay Meek Centre
Vancouver - January 20th, 5:30-7:30pm, Hennings 202 (Corner of Agricultural Rd and East Mall), University of British Columbia

Details on specific events will posted as they become available.

View the film’s trailer at www.tothetarsandsfilm.ca

The book is available through most major book stores. The publisher is James Lorimer & Company from Halifax. All royalties go to the Sierra Youth Coalition.

Click here to read a review from the Calgary Sun.

In the meantime, please explore the blog archives and news section to learn more about the issues and our adventures to the tar sands.

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Filed under: RTTTS on December 4th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

We’re about to leave Red Deer and tonight will be our last night on the road. It’s gone by so fast.

After Edmonton we stayed with Richard and Linda McKelvie in their amazing home in Ponoka. They are an example of what we need to see more of as we enter such an uncertain future. Their home was built with a hill over it that dramatically reduces energy consumption for heating and cooling. In the evening when we arrived, the McKelvies hosted a potluck supper followed by a presentation on the tremendous energy potential of geothermal heat. This could provide distributed power generation at the community level with far less need for expensive transmission lines. It seems the biggest impediment to implementing this power source is that ‘it just hasn’t been done around here’, yet the technology has been proven elsewhere in the world and Alberta has plenty of workers with the skills to drill down for heat and to build power stations. These are the kinds of green jobs we need to create but the Stelmach and Harper governments are ignoring their duty to turn in this direction.

Richard said several times that what we need are people with vision who will just say ‘it’s going to happen’ and then they do it even though there will be missteps and failures along the way. For too long we have mostly seen ruthless business people with that attitude and they have caused great destruction but we could have leaders with that same doggedness who lead us in positive directions. We need to stop listening to the ‘old boys network’ who preach apathy. Someday they will be known to be as pathetic as the racist we ran into during a rest stop. Our fossil fool government will look as stupid as the politicians who argued against giving women the vote. Turning a blind eye to the damage caused by unrestrained tar sands expansion is like ignoring the residential school problem. The repercussions will haunt generations to come.

Yesterday we rode to Red Deer to meet with a community group for dinner and a movie. We heard about how the cost of living and doing business is going way up because of all the oil money coming into the province yet many people seem to be struggling more instead of getting richer. Only the rich are getting richer. Meanwhile government support for seniors is getting cut. Crime is increasing. Quality of life is going down.

After dinner we watched the film of last year’s ride. The issues are still just as difficult as last year but we must press on. If there is another bike ride like this five years from now, I hope those riders will hear stories of responsible investment in sustainable energy, improved quality of life, human rights and treaty rights being respected, and workers feeling proud of their jobs instead of ashamed. I don’t want those future riders to choke on fumes from upgraders, to read longer lists of cancer deaths, or to hear another person say, “I support you but you won’t make any difference.”

Where to from here? Keep making noise. It appears we will have an election this fall so have to keep asking politicians what they think about the tar sands. Make it clear you will campaign against anyone who won’t take a stand against irresponsible expansion or won’t aggressively support sustainable development that helps make fossil fuels obsolete.

It’s our future. Let’s not screw it up.

(Posted by J.D. Gibbard)

Filed under: Environmental Justice, Labour, RTTTS, Renewable Energy, Trade on August 27th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

A couple of our actions this last week in Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan…

Protest outside Stelmach’s office

Guerilla Tar Sands Theatre at the Fringe

Filed under: Media, RTTTS on August 26th, 2008 | No Comments »

This is a slideshow taken from our flight from Fort Chipewyan to Fort McMurray. It shows the incredible beauty of the Athabasca Delta and the growing devastation of the tar sands.

Filed under: RTTTS on August 24th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

After three days biking in the northern woodlands, many mosquito and spider bites later, sweat-stained and with berry spots still on our palms, we have arrived in lovely Lac La Biche.  This place is a seeming pastoral paradise–sheep and cattle loose in the green, round hay-bales on the rolling hills, Saskatoon berries and rose hips along the grill of aspen, the edge between the inner, blacker forest and the open field.  This morning I dug potatoes with red-faced-drunkard skins–big potatoes, shaped like a fist, mouthwatering and ugly.  You can always tell when the potatoes are ready like this because the plant is blooming little starry flowers.  The plant blooms and goes to seed, its big, ugly potatoes storehouses for next year’s sprouting.

The weather has varied quite dramatically over our the course of our ride.  One day its sweat-breaking work to bike, and the next we look like winter children in our colorful mismatch of snow and bicycle clothes.  Under these varied conditions, I have learned the simple truth that hot weather is not always good, nor always bad.  I have seen a sunbeam go from a warming ray of hope to a sweat and burn causing death ray in the span of one hour.  Perhaps this view can lend some understanding of how I feel about oil:

I hate oil.  I hate its colorlessness trashing spruce and poplar green, water blue rivers.  I hate its smell, like money, someone told me, its factories whose smokestacks fused to the clouds, creating the overcast.  I hate its machinery and its commerce and when it gets in the blood and eyes and hearts of people, their fingers excited, covered and wriggling in the stuff like worms in mud.  I can never hate it as much as the Athabaska aboriginals who bury their cancer-ridden children between the teepees and the church under a pile of cigarette butts.

I love oil.  For everywhere I’ve ever gone by fossil fueled car, train, plane, boat, for everything I’ve ever seen through my petroleum-product eyeglasses, I am grateful.  For my bike tires, for the soles of my shoes, for the asphault smooth bikeway from here to the campsite, for the exhaust plume of the ambulance I follow through the streets, a bleeding forhead safe inside, I love oil.

Currently, from the madness I’ve seen in the North, Alberta is blinded to the true colors of oil by its love for it.  Meanwhile, oil itself keeps the nature of any lover, unruly with ambiguity.  Oil’s pros and cons are discussed exaustively elsewhere, so instead of repeating them here, I take note that Canada is the only developed nation that has no national energy policy.  I propose that Canada base its energy policy off of the humble potato plant.  It is not a stretch to imagine Canada’s oil reserves as a tuber,  not a tumor, which if managed responsibley will give forth, though their energy and revenues, to an infastructure of solar, wind, thermal and hydro energy that will sustain Canada with out defiling her.

Filed under: RTTTS, Renewable Energy on August 21st, 2008 | 5 Comments »