On Wednesday, October 24, Bowen Island joined communities across B.C. in a province-wide Defend Our Coast day of action to show growing opposition to the risks posed by tar sands pipelines and tankers. At Island Pacific School, the Grade 6 Humanities class gathered with 42 students and community members, linking arms to symbolize BC's unbroken wall of opposition. With banners and chants and speeches by some of the students, it was a positive event where we rallied, engaged in critical discourse about the issue and hopefully, in some way, had our voices heard.
As many of you may know, a pipeline is proposed to be built which would reach from the Albertan oil sands, to the port of Kitimat, which is the home of many First Nations and diverse wildlife. The pipeline would carry oil to be loaded onto huge supertankers which would then transport it to different places around the world. Most people have very strong views as to whether or not this pipeline should be built.
For some people, the earth is thought of like an actual being. Those people imagine that the earth can get hurt emotionally as well as physically. They imagine that the earth thinks, hears, and feels just like any other living creature. We feel that the people who live on earth, should respect our living planet, just as we would respect any other human we should meet.
One of these reasons stands out for to the people of B.C. British Columbia is prone to earthquakes, as we witnessed with the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that took place this past Saturday off the coast of Haida Gwaii. If an earthquake came, a spill could easily happen. The Enbridge company is responsible for over 400 oil spills, so how would we know that we were not in danger of an oil spill weeks after the pipeline was built?
Another reason is that the Enbridge company has been trying to tell us that the pipeline would provide jobs for people in need of them, but the pipeline would only provide jobs for a short period of time, and when the pipeline was finished, there would be no more jobs. There is a quote, said by a man named Joseph Farrell: "If you go in for an argument, take care of your temper. Your logic, if you have any, will take care of itself. "
This symbolizes that we have logic, and with 80 per cent of B.C. on our side, all we have to do is take care of our temper.
Liliana Belluk- Orlikow
and Karina Jorgensen- Fullam
