Victoria Tar Sands Healing Walk June 2014

June 28^th, 2014. Victoria.

The Tar Sands Healing Walk in Victoria. This walk was organized by church groups in Victoria in solidarity with the (5^th and last) Healing Walk held in the Tar Sands, north of Ft McMurray. The latter was organized by local First Nations, mostly the Ft McMurray FN, but supported by First Nations and others from all over the continent. 

I bicycled in to Victoria the previous afternoon from the BC Ferry Terminal in Schwartz Bay. The ride was good but I did not drink much. When I arrived at my friends’, Michael and Ellen, for supper, I foolishly drank only beer and wine. By the end of the evening, I was dehydrated enough that I had a headache, and no amount of drinking of water (I downed 1.5 liters in an hour) helped until hours had passed. In the morning, I was still groggy. 

The day was overcast and warm, and there was a big crowd at the waterfront (later estimated to be 250-300; I estimated 250). We walked and prayed. Prayer is always useful to get the strength to keep fighting. For once, it is the Aboriginal peoples who hold the most powerful cards. More power to them. Above, a stop in front of the Parliament Buildings. I was glad I came to be in solidarity with the people suffering from the  biggest environmental crime in Canadian history. I had a chance to talk to two Dogwood organizers along the way: Kai Nagata and Terry Dance Bellink.

The walk was not as painful as last year in the Tar Sands. Here, there was no gross smell of tar and petroleum products in the air. The city does not look like it has been flattened by carpet bombing. And there was not the enormous constant traffic of the highway going north from Ft Mac. The prayers were not as strong in Victoria for that reason. Walking through the tar sands last year was, I am sure, like walking through Chernobyl in 1986, Fukushima in 2011, Prince William Sound in 1989, the Louisana Gulf Coast in 2010, the Persian Gulf in 1991, or West Virgina mountain top removal areas in the Appalachians any time in the last 25 years. All insane assaults on the Earth.