Today is an R and R day. I check in with Raymond, the barge operator, and agree to be at
the barge with our gear ready to leave at 6:30 AM tomorrow. Clifford and Kevin
have found the right location another pipe ceremony, our last, on the high rocks adjacent to
Sara and Ron’s house. It is a sunny day, the view is spectacular out onto the lake, and
we all assemble. Even though we still have to get back to Ft McKay, in many
ways this feels like the end of the journey. There is an upbeat mood among the
group and it feels like everyone has gained a great deal from the trip. I know
that I have.
Afterwards, Ron arrives in town and
he and Sara take those interested on a short walk to visit the Catholic
church, a large white, prominent building, next to an enormous square 2.5 story
red building: the now abandoned “priest’s house which housed the priest and
nuns. There was a residential school adjacent as well, which burned down
mysteriously a few years ago.
On this canoe trip, I had promised
to help Kevin work on making fire with a bow drill, a reprisal of one of the
skills that I had taught him 10 years earlier as part of a University of
Saskatchewan program called a Certificate in Ecological Education. This was
likely the only time left to do this so he, Howie, Kelly, Clifford, Kevin and I
work on making bow drills and then making fire for a couple of hours. I see more
smoke than fire but there was fire made.
Later most of us walk into town and visit the
museum. One of the strangest things there is the shell of a Ridley’s sea turtle
found on the shores of Lake Athabasca a few years ago. No one knows how it got
there. We visit the rock promontory above it, with a view of the lake and also
the site of a Sun Dance grounds.
Lake Athabasca
On the rocky prominence overlooking the lake
Sun dance grounds
At the Park office in town
I have been attempting to get in
touch with Allan Adam repeatedly, and eventually do with Sarah’s help. Howie comes
with me to get my video and recording gear and we walk over to the Band Office
to do the interview. Allan, having just arrived back from a month’s vacation, is
in the board room catching up on paperwork. He is a handsome man, 50ish, with
graying hair and a prominent scar on his right cheek. He seems blasé
about the interview, having done hundreds of interviews about his fights with
the tar sands industry to get extraction slowed down and cleaned up. I learn from him that the
Band has profited handsomely from their business interests in the tar sands,
much like Ft McKay. Also like Ft McKay, they have suffered a high rate of
illness and death in their community, and the increasing pollution of water,
fish and wildlife.
Chief Adam speaking at the Healing Walk in July
At present, Chief Adam is not
hopeful. He is not getting enough support from other First Nations nor
from Canadians in general. The band`s latest legal venture, an attempt to stop Shell
from expanding their Jack Pine tar sands mine, has been so far unsuccessful.
The local water supply comes from the lake. Not only does part of the lake
water come from the Athabasca River, but there is a current coming out of the
Embarras Channel of the river which goes directly to where the intake pipe is.
They have state of the art water treatment. Yet, one wonders if this is one of
the sources of illness here.
After the interview, I go outside
with Howie and start disassembling some of my gear. There is a man
there, in his 60s, tall and lean, who is taking a smoke break. After speaking
with him for a bit about the tar sands, I realize that I need to interview him,
and he agrees. His name is John Regney, special projects manager for the ACFN. Unlike
Chief Adam, John wants to talk. It is a while before I start recording
which is a shame because he has so much to say, and he gives me the big
picture. He moved to Ft Chip almost 40 years ago as a teacher. He moved into
other endeavours and stayed, marrying a local woman and raising a family. He loves
the area and there is anger, frustration and resignation as he describes the
changes he has seen over his time here. He describes the richness of the Peace
Athabasca Delta as it was only a few years before his arrival.
John Regney
Ten per cent of the world`s muskrat
pelts came from the delta he tells me. Unfortunately,
the delta has been under severe stress since the 1960s when the WAC Bennett Dam
in BC reduced the flow of the Peace River. The year the dam closed its flood
gates, the annual muskrat pelt harvest went from 200 000 to 2 000 and it has
never recovered. The delta continues to dry out while the BC government claims
it is not their fault. Pollution by agriculture and pulp mills increasingly
affect both the Peace and the Athabasca Rivers. Now being added is the impact
of heavy metal and PAH pollution by the enormous and growing number of tar sands exploitation projects. These
projects are also drawing down the water levels in the Athabasca River and this
draw-down will accelerate. Current projects only remove half the water that the
Alberta government has allocated to the tar sands industry. He expects that the
already severely impacted Peace Athabasca Delta will not survive in
recognizable form.
He talks about the demise of the
fishing industy. Ft
Chip has lost their once thriving fishing industry and the fish-packing plant
in town is now abandoned. The end came about 10 years ago. It happened because
fish buyers knew that Ft Chip was
downstream of the tar sands and no one would buy their fish. It is one
thing for oil industry executives and Alberta politicians who live many
hundreds or thousands of kilometers away to say that the river is fine and the
fish are safe. But it is another thing for those people who are actually eating
the fish and drinking the water. It reminds me of how much faster the insurance
industry has recognized the truth of global warming compared to the oil
industry. He makes it clear to me that the issue of fish cancers is not being
overblown by locals as I had thought. He tells me of a recent fishing trip on
the lake, something he does not do much anymore. He and his friend caught five
fish and three of them had tumours. On another fishing trip this spring, he
could not eat the fish because they tasted like gasoline. And that was not the
first time. A few years ago, a local commercial fisherman was still selling
fish to locals. John had bought some fish from him and they tasted like
gasoline. Thinking that maybe he had got a little gas from his outboard on some
of the fish, the fisherman gave John another packet of fish. Those too tasted like gas. Most of his other customers complained as well.
After 45 minutes or so, we are being
asked to leave by the cleaning staff, and we make our exit. He offers me a ride
but I decline. I have a lot to think over. So we say good bye.
I have noted lately that the most
recent approach to environmental damage of the tar sands by the industry and
government, who increasingly cannot deny it, is to say that the area will
recover after reclamation. Few scientists expect that reclamation efforts will
make much of a dent in the damage. Recovery may happen but will likely take
thousands of years.
Back at Ron and Sara`s, I complete
interviews of the canoeists with Kevin.
We do this outside. Then, my last interview is with Ron. Ron grew up here and in
the interview he, also, talks of the falling levels of water. He points to
where the lake water level used to be: much higher and closer than it is now.
That
evening we watch a pre-release version of a movie on the
Tar Sands produced by the Mikisew Cree First Nation, which features many people we have met or learned about including Ron, Chief Adam, John Regney’s wife Alice, and Eriel
Deranger, the ACFN communications director. It is pretty powerful stuff and quite disturbing. Of course, the
money pushing the industry to keep going is pretty powerful, too, no matter how
much the damage.
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