Keep the Stories Coming…
To The Tar Sands was designed as more than a bike trip. It was a story telling adventure like no other. It was our attempt at creating dialogue around what is quite possibly one of the largest and most pivotal energy projects of our time. The tar sands are huge, and in a time of climate crisis they affect just about everyone.
Their development comes at an opportune point in our history. We stand at a crossroads. We must choose between a hard path, characterized by unchecked growth, indiscriminate consumption and dirty energy, and a soft path, characterized by voluntary simplicity, greater efficiency and renewable energy.
Of course, the decision of which path to take is unclear. It is confounded by our daily realities, our struggle to put food on the table, our inability to break free from the traps of consumerism, our delusions of wealth and happiness, our innate fear of change.
From August 15th through September 7th, we cycled north across Alberta to the belly of the beast, the biggest mega-industrial project in the world. We wanted to know how the tar sands were impacting your lives, be it for good or bad. We wanted to see it for ourselves. We wanted to share it with others. We wanted to hear your story.
We have since returned to our respective homes. The sights we have seen and the stories we have heard require time for pause and reflection. Many of our ideas and preconceptions about the tar sands have been fundamentally challenged, but our ideals remain intact. The status quo is unsustainable, the pace of development is alarming, oil has peaked, and the climate is in crisis. We must dream of something better.
For now, this website remains as an archive of our trip. We hope that it will not gather dust, but instead that it will continue to serve as a forum for discussion on Canada’s energy future, in particular the Alberta Tar Sands. Canada has been without a National Energy Plan for far too long. Let the ideas generated on our trip and on this blog serve as sketches of a road map to guide us down the path of just transition and towards a new sustainable energy economy.
Filed under: RTTTS on June 8th, 2007
Good Luck!
This realy grabbed my attention. Sounds like a great adventure that will tell a fascinating story…I hope it will really stand out! Looking forward to the results.
I am so proud of you guys! Thank you for doing this, I can’t wait to see the results.
Aug 19/07: What a great bunch of responsible individuals you are. It is you and your next generations whom will be left with the consequences of today’s industrialists greediness.
The unchecked growth of the tar-sands development has created enough of a housing crisis in the major cities that seems to be hurting more Families whom are evicted from their houses than it is worth the gain for the wealthy few that won’t care regardless.
Maybe we ought to change our Premier’s name from (Good Eddie) to Plundering Eddie, as he is incapable of managing a sustainable growth for this tar-sands exploitation.
We support you fully in your cause to manage your future more responsibly.
Thanks for staying at our place and sharing your cause.
What a fantastic group of people who’ve come together to take this important journey. Good luck with everything - and know that you have many people supporting you from afar. Courage!
How inspiring your journey is. I am a veteran of many cross country cycling trips and have completed graduate studies in project management at the University of Calgary, concentrating on environmental responsibility at the project planning stage.
I certainly wish my graduate studies were taken two decades earlier at the time of my bicycling adventures. It would have been a wonderful experience to have participated in your activities.
If my email address is visible to you on the team, please keep me updated on your experiences.
All the best.
Joel
NICE WORK. Standing up for the most vulnerable and for what is right is a very noble and honorable thing to do. Please keep it up, we need people like you to inspire us, motivate us, wake us up, and expose THEM for what they are doing at what cost to the environment. You should be very proud of yourselves, not too proud that you become greedy and self obsorbed like THEM. May the road rise to meet you and the wind be always at your back. And may the God who loves us all, hold you in the palm of his hand.
I read an article about your journey this morning and my first thought was that I wish I was there to help, and that I wish I knew. So I just signed up with Syc
I’m very thankful that there are groups out there like you who are doing just what you should be doing with your lives, making things better. And we definetly need that here. thankyou very much for your dedication, I wish you all the best of luck!!!
Thanks for all the happy thoughts, guys. We have you in mind with each stroke of the pedal!
I just saw you folks on Breakfast Television this morning and at first I was impressed with your drive and motivation. Then I realized you’re hiding your agenda.
If you’re against the oil sands project then at least have the fortitude to say so. If you want to make a documentary, like Michael Moore, raging against the oil companies, profits, environmental damage, George Bush and so forth then make it known to those you interview.
To do otherwise shows a lack of character. As much as I dislike Moore, at least he has the guts to come clean with his intentions.
Oh well, good luck anyway and be safe!
We would like to offer our support to these people. More effort is needed to bring the attention needed to this industry and the damage it has and continues to cause. We have a number of oilsands workers as active members that have been fighting for change, but are met by threats and termination once they speak out. Some have been made ill by the chemicals used in production. This then enters the Athabasca River and harms everyone upstream.
If you would like to see some of the damage first hand, here is a link to our website. http://oilbusters.googlepages.com/
Keep up the fight for a cleaner greener Canada
Why don’t you do a tour of the coal mining areas of China? The oilsands contribute very little to Global pollution and shutting down Canadian industries would make no difference, all it would do is destroy the economy. How much of the stuff you are using is made in China, the world’s biggest polluter?
We won the battle for Marie Lake, thanks for all your support!!! The rally in Fort Saskatchewan was a turning point for us, getting the premiers attention.
Hopefully this will be a sign of things to come from the new Stelmach government as it get’s it’s feet under it.
Keep going strong on your journey.
A little change from what you do here can make a huge difference in our future!!
That’s great to hear, Chris! Will pass that news along the other bikers.
Darcy: We’re Canadians getting to know an integral part of the Canadian economy and society. Maybe one day we’ll go looking in other parts of the world, but for now we’re content to work to understand the problems we face here.
Mike: Thanks for your concern about our honesty. I don’t speak on behalf of the official documentary, but my understanding is that it will be nothing like the Moore-ian attacks on specific groups. It won’t be raging against the tar sands like that.
Belly of the beast? Geez, you don’t get out much, do you? I’ve lived up here for three years and Fort McMurray is a beautiful community to live, in part because of the trees and rivers. The people here seem a lot friendlier in places like Edmonton (where I grew up), Calgary (where I lived for three years) and Toronto (a year), in part because they come from all over Canada and the world. Because Fort McMurray is so isolated, you need to pull together if you are going to live up here. Now, if you want to go to the belly of the beast, try some of those new ugly Legoland subdivisions that have spilled out on to productive farmland on the south side of Calgary or Edmonton. That’s more destructive than anything done up here and the scarring to the Earth is permanent. At least the oil companies up here actually reclaim the land. And I’ll bet a fair few of SYC members grow up in those well-manicured suburban outbacks. The oil sands are an easy target, but people don’t need to bike up here to look at the belly of the beast to make changes. They can start in their own backyards, starting with fertilizers, pesticides and gas-powered lawn tools without any emissions controls.
Hi Bryce.
Thank you for your comments.
The “beast” is the global capitalist economy that continues to spur our collective demand for oil. With proven reserves greater than even Saudi Arabia, the Alberta Tar Sand (or Oil Sands, if you prefer) are the belly of this beast.
I get out plenty. I think that’s my problem. I am well too aware of the impacts of our actions here in Canada on other parts of the world.
I grew up in Moncton, New Brunswick, a city of about 100 000 residents. I first got involved in activism (and journalism) as a high school student, when I became aware of the damage being done to a local river, the Petitcodiac, by a poorly conceived engineering structure called the causeway - an entrenched river crossing that’s been slowing choking the once mighty Petitcodiac to death.
I’ve since worked on many issues, big and small, including pesticides, climate change, nuclear power, sustainable and active transportation, environmental justice, youth engagement, social isolation, food security and most recently urban agriculture.
I have tried hard to change my personal behaviour and curb my consumption in an effort to slow the wave of environmental destruction I see before me, with the hope that subsequent generations might have some kind of a future to look forward to.
The idea for this trip came from a realization that the work we were doing on the climate change file was futile, unless we also addressed the unsustainable development of the Alberta Oil Sands. Tar Sands oil produces 2 1/2 times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil. Meanwhile, with a planned fivefold expansion, the Alberta oil sands are soon to be Canada’s top greenhouse gas emitter. We can not have both a fivefold expansion in oil sands production and a stable climate. The one precludes the other.
I am a firm believer in acting locally, but sometimes you also need to shake the tree up at the top, so that the fruit can trickle down to the ground.
That’s what we are doing with this project. We’ve looking to spark debate, to shake those good ideas from the tree and to get moving on the transition away from dirty oil and towards to the new sustainable energy economy. Like it or not, that’s where the world is headed.
We all know of the economic benefits of oil sands production. There is no need to remind us. But what are the costs? To The Tar Sands is about covering all sides of the story, laying out the facts and hoping that people will come to a sensible conclusion. The gain in the tar sands is short lived, we need to dream of something better.
This government will keep on pumping toxic crap in to the river and ft chipewyan is standing there watching the people die ! when is something going to happen? 2008,2009,2010,2050? 10,20,30,40,people have to die first ? our people? I’m ready to make a move to stop this , even if it cost my life in the process !! am’I the only one that will NOT stand here and let people die? my own mother is sick, up in ft chipewyan!!I know I did not grow up to watch this so called canadian government kill my people !!!!….
In response to Jason’s Nov 29th comment.
I just wanted to say that reading your note had a large impact on me. It’s easy to intellectualize the issues around the tar sands, and forget that it is literally making somebody’s mother sick downstream. I cannot imagine how difficult this must be for you and your community.
When I get into conversations with people about my bike trip in Alberta last summer many ask me if I saw any examples of resistance around the tar sands area. I usually tell them that there is a strong force in and around Fort McMurray that’s working on making positive change and creating community - but to be honest I am at a loss for stories of overt resistance from the area. I - and I think many other Canadians - are interested in somehow supporting efforts on the ground to resist what is happening in the tar sands. I recently heard about a call to action from a coalition called Keepers of Athabasca. Do you know about them? Are there other ways to support your community that you can suggest to the rest of us?
Geen tea…
Thanks for the post. I couldnt agree with you more….