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Despite years of protest from broad segments of British Columbia’s population, the plan to run pipelines from Alberta’s infamous Tar Sands across the Rockies, and through the valleys and coastal mountains of BC, some of the most rugged terrain found anywhere, to Superports on the Pacific coast is moving forward.
But the coast is hardly the end of the treacherous journey for the condensate soaked bitumen torn from the northern boreal forests in massive strip mines. Once on the coast, tankers must then navigate through a network of islands and shoals, reefs and shifting sandbars before making its transpacific journey to Asia.
Vancouver Island environmental filmmaker, Richard Boyce kayaked along the proposed route these poison-laden leviathans would traverse and discovered the islands and other natural features the oil companies failed to chart in their PR campaigns.
Coastal Tarsands: Journey to the Deleted Islands is the result, and it will be airing in a special presentation this Thursday night right up here at the UVic’s Cinecenta theatre.
Richard Boyce in the first half.
And; if you thought Jean Chretien’s Sgt. Pepper attacks against APEC protesters in Vancouver in 1997, or the massively excessive police violence that came to be known as the ‘Battle of Seattle’ two years later was appalling back then, you truly hadn’t seen anything yet. In the interim years, police in the United States and Canada have come to resemble a military occupying force more than peace officers. And it’s not just the hardened attitudes and thuggish demeanor we’ve witnessed on television, and perhaps experienced at road stops, and check points differentiating today’s police from those halcyon days when pepper spray and German shepherds were likely the worst things you’d face at a demo gone wrong. Now, the cops are armed to the teeth with the latest military grade surplus weaponry, and more.
Michael Gould-Wartofsky is a writer and researcher, scholar, artist, educator, and author. His writing has been recognized with Harvard’s James Gordon Bennett Prize and the Times’ James B. Reston Award. His articles have appeared at the Washington Post, the Nation, Salon, and the Jacobin amongst others, and his first book, ‘The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement’ is described as essential reading for “everyone interested in understanding not just the Occupy movement but recent US history in general.”
Michael Gould-Wartofsky and the two sides of war and occupation in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of what’s good to do in and around our town, and beyond there too, for the coming week. But first, Richard Boyce and a journey through the deleted islands.
