A folkstorm is brewing
CBC RADIO-The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright, October 10th, 2010
“Listen to the CBC podcast: “A Folkstorm is Brewing” follows an interview with Margaret Trudeau and is played during Hour Two.”:http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/2010/10/october-10-2010.html#hour2
You can also find the documentary at http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/2010/10/october-10-2010.html#hour2
Michael Enright introduces Karin Well’s documentary “A Folkstorm is Brewing” during Hour Two:
The other day, the pastor of the Mountain View Alliance Church was talking to a friend in the A & W in Kitimat , B.C. “I do want this Enbridge pipeline to succeed,” he said. “I like business to succeed. But then a little bell goes off in the back of my head. What about that Gulf Oil spill? What if something like that happens here?”
That’s the dilemma facing a lot of folks on the coast of British Columbia these days.
The Calgary based Enbridge Corporation, backed by a consortium of oil companies, hopes to build a massive pipeline to carry oil from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat. From there, the oil would be transported in supertankers to Asian markets. That would mean about two hundred massive oil tankers per year traveling the coastal waters off Britiish Columbia. It would also mean much needed jobs and an economic lifeline for some desperate towns.
Not surprisingly, communities are divided.
Ten days ago the chiefs of B.C. first nations told the federal government to cease and desist on the proposal. On the same day the B.C. federation of municipalities did much the same. Environmentalists have moved into high gear.
So have the people of Hartley Bay. This tiny first nations community of 150 people on the north coast is hoping that the power of celebrity will help their cause. They’ve invited some of the best photographers in the world to come and take pictures of the pristine beauty of the place where they live - a place whose existence, they feel, is threatened by big oil.
The photographers have conducted what they are calling a RAVE - a rapid visual assessment expedition. They are veterans of environmental battles all over the world. They come, they snap, they champion.