I saw an advert on the TV the other night that was just too cute for words. Some guy is out wandering around through some trees while he details for the viewers just how damned wonderful the Oilsands Project folks are. He talks about how important it is to them to leave the area even better than nature itself had arranged it before they moved in and fucked up the neighbourhood. Then he points toward something the viewer is not shown, and simpers a little smirk while he says there are two squirrels fighting over a nut, and that he doesn't want to disturb them. After reading yesterday's latest from the oilsands, I now understand completely why the camera does not show the two aforementioned rodents.
Residents who dwell downstream from the Alberta Oilsands are now asking our PM to conduct a probe into the health of the fish downstream from the oilsands development. It seems that fish are showing up with discoloured bodies, deformities and rotting flesh. The request being sent to Harper says that "Fishers have noted that the incidence and frequency of unhealthy fish within their catch has increased substantially" Concerned fishermen, scientists, first nations chiefs, health professionals and residents have signed their names to the missive sent off this week to 24 Sussex Drive.
Raymond Ladouceur has been fishing Lake Athabasca and the Athabasca River for 53 years now, so one can assume he' be well acquainted with the general condition of the fish therein. He says the deformed fish only began showing about 20 years ago. On Thursday, he was at the University of Alberta to discuss the fish on display there in trays of ice. Aquatics ecologist David Schindler was there as well. He phrased a rather pithy comment that speaks directly to the health issues of those who live downstream from the oilsands. Said Schindler, "I think most of us would agree, they're not things you'd like to see on your plate when you go to a restaurant," . The people of places like Fort Chipewyan don't only see these fish at restaurants. They rely on these fish for a large part of their traditional diet. What are they supposed to do?
During the last uproar over the oilsands, contributed to by Schindler and others, the government responded by saying they would need to conduct a three-year study of their own. I'm not sure how many meals of deformed fish and how many glasses of contaminated water that translates to for the people who live directly downstream from the oilsands. I suppose I could get out my calculator and do the math. I do know, however, that whether we live in Fort Chipewyan or the farthest point from it in Canada, we should all be worried over how this whole scenario is playing out. The attitude being displayed here by Harper et al makes it clear that the dollar bill is of primary importance here. The people adversely affected here come in a poor second to the profit margin of the corporations involved. The point that needs to be understood by those who live away from the eye of this storm is that, we really do all live downstream. Pollution does not always play nice and stay put, out of our backyards. Damned if it doesn't show up in the most unexpected places, like the umbilical cords of our babies. Can any of us truly afford to treat this as just one more story on the news that we can push aside; that we can forget as soon as we finish reading the news?
It might be most interesting to see those two squirrels the guy in the advert simpers at. Maybe the reason why the viewer doesn't get to share in the pastoral delight of nature at play is because the animals are both deformed caricatures of what they human eye expects to see when looking at squirrels. Maybe those animals are already marred by drinking from the waters of Athabasca Lake and River. Squirrels with missing or withered limbs just don't make for such a pretty advert, but then again, neither would those fish on ice at the U of A.
I wonder; why don't they make a new advert? This time, instead of the narrator just pointing off camera, they could actually show some of those deformed fish splashing, happily unaware, through the waters that kill.
1 comments:
It's wonderful that there are people out there like Raymond Ladouceur who have found part of their purpose in life, and when they realize that there is something they can do to maybe help the species who can't speak for themselves, they do it.
Whether professionally, or just for fun, no matter what his background education has been, he has noticed something that people need to see. People need to become aware of, and he has tken action to try to make people see it, and make people change this situation.
Yet, the government wants to push off taking action to save lives. I thought that we were put here, as humans, in order to care for every species on the planet. Why can't we take cuts to our lifestyle as humans? W(hy)TF do we think we need so much oil, at so much cost to other life?
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