Saturday August 9 Canoe Trip begins in Ft Mac at the Snye

Saturday August 9     Canoe Trip begins in Ft Mac at the Snye

We start our journey on August 9^th. For breakfast (and lunch for that matter) I try to choke down some surplus overcooked cous cous from last night. I had bought and packed trip food for three of us: Brittany, my nephew, Evan, and myself.  I had assumed that Evan, a husky guy who stands 6’ 3, would eat twice as much. In fact, he is eating less than me, and we have way too much food.  After a morning and early afternoon of picking up last minute supplies in Ft Mac, arranging for a place to leave vehicles (left them at McMurray Aviation and took a taxi back to the Snye where our canoes and part of our group are waiting), and a way to get the canoes and us back from Ft Chip (we will fly and Raymond Ladouceur will again barge our canoes back on a bigger barge that he is now operating but he cannot take us as well due to insurance issues), we are finally ready. I have tried without success to arrange meetings today. It is a little disappointing, and by the time we leave it is now 4 PM.

We start out and right away I end up behind because I keep stopping to film. I begin to realize that my Innova canoe is less than ideal for filming because of its rocker (curved bottom useful in rapids because it turns easily). As soon as I stop paddling to film, it begins to rotate due to its lack of directional stability, making it awkward to film from. However, I am getting some interesting footage. 

Cliffs bearing oil sands

About 1 km downstream from our starting point, I pass an attractive, well-kept farmstead and decide to go on to do a bit of filming and see if there is anyone there. The others, no doubt impatient to get somewhere, do not wait but push on.

There is a small house and a red barn and a few assorted out-buildings. There is an older couple (around 70) working in their large garden. They are Jack and Mary-Jane Peden. I talk to them for a couple of minutes and tell them what I am doing. Jack does most of the talking. They are not at all interested in being filmed or recorded, although Jack is pretty upset and has a lot to say to me. He is very distrustful of journalists as he has been interviewed many times. In spite of his cheerleading for the oil sands, coverage that comes out is inevitably negative by those he has talked to, and he does not understand it. Jack’s father, he tells me, is Claire Peden, the first mayor of Ft McMurray, when the population (62 000 in 2011, having doubled in the previous 15 years) was about 800 (it surpassed 1000 in the early 50’s). 

According to Jack, who grew up poor, who ran cattle in his younger days and has worked for Syncrude for 40 years,  the oil sands is the best thing that has happened to Ft Mac. It has the best environmental regulations in the world, and there are no environmental problems. If the oil sands shut down, the whole country would be out of work. He was responsible for the bison herd in the middle of the oil sands development that is Syncrude’s environmental show piece. He tells me that the bison are very carefully monitored and that they contain no contamination. I was intrigued, and asked in honest curiousity, how I could see the bison tissue data. At the moment, I was thinking that perhaps this data was going to contradict everything I had learned about the oil sands. However, Jack informed me with indignation that the data belonged to Syncrude and that since they had paid for it, they had no obligation to share it with anyone. He was in no mood to listen to anything, so I did not point out to him that if Syncrude had data showing that animals living in the middle of the open pit mines of the oil sands were not contaminated, Syncrude would have been sharing that data far and wide. Very far and wide. 

Clearly, Jack’s mind was made up, and like many others who are profiting from the oil sands, he did not want to be confused with the facts. He also told me that he continued to fish in the river, and that in fact the fishing was better than ever, because “the natives” were no longer fishing in the Athabasca River. It did occur to me that this stretch of river was upstream of all the oil sands tailings ponds (vast toxic man-made lakes would be more accurate) which were leaking into the river, so that this area would be likely less contaminated. It also occurred to me that the only other people I had found this summer or last who ate fish out of the Athabasca River in the vicinity of the Oil Sands, was Cathy and Larry McGinnis. They ran the outfitting business downstream at Embarras Portage until this year; Larry is dying of cancer.  I did speak to the McGinnis’ son-in-law last summer, a Victoria doctor, who was visiting with his family and was returning with his son from fishing when I spoke to him. He was emphatic that eating the fish out of the river was out of the question. 

Jack also informed me that there are more bears than ever in the area. (This may be more appearance than reality, as all of the industrial activity in the area is pushing the bears, changing their routines, and possibly putting them into more contact with people, of which there are a lot more than ever before in wilderness areas.) He also mentions that there are very few songbirds anymore but is quick to add that this has nothing to do with the oil sands and is probably due to an increase in magpie numbers. 

Finally, Jack makes a quick dig at Dr John O’Connor, saying that the doctor is stirring up false rumours of cancers in the area, and proof that it is all false is that the doctor has been charged. This is the good PR work of Alberta Health , since although the investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta  has been dropped, O’Connor has never actually been cleared, and his reputation is in a kind of limbo: useful if you want to imply that he is untrustworthy without any evidence.

I paddle on, but the others are out of sight, having continued without me. I do not blame them as it is getting late. I find out later that they have left a message on my cell phone but it is turned off and packed away. I continue to film the high banks, up to 50 meters high, in which you can clearly see the layers of oil sands. Chunks of the tarry stuff are to be found along the shore. I continue to stop and film from my inflatable white water canoe. Bringing the inflatable was a way to get another canoe here without a third vehicle, but it has its shortcomings. It is slow especially solo. More irritating is the fact that, because it turns on a dime, it has no directional stability. As soon as I stop paddling to film, the boat starts rotating. 

First campsite on the river

An hour or two later, I catch up to the group who has already stopped to set up camp on an island. Camped on a 100 meter long sand bar island with a dense willow thicket in the middle, this trip takes on the character of any northern boreal forest canoe trip. I relax a little and we make supper. The water flows fast in the channel between sand bars and it is soothing to watch and listen to, and I sleep well.