Crowds pack Prince Rupert's streets to protest Northern Gateway pipeline

Close to a thousand people marched through Prince Rupert’s streets today as part of a rally hosted by local first nations against Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and the oil tanker traffic it would generate on British Columbia’s northern coast.

Hosted by the Gitga’at First Nation, which is based at the end of Douglas Channel and would see much of the proposed tanker traffic, the march began with beating drums and singing around 10:30 in Pacific Mariners Memorial Park and ended at the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre where speakers, dancers and singers continued into the evening.

Bob Hill, treaty coordinator and negotiator for the Gitga’at and an MC at the rally, said Saturday’s action was planned in the lead up to the National Energy Board hearings slated to visit the area later this month.

“We’ve invited all the neighbouring nations and we’ve received 100 per cent support,” Hill said as he walked from the stage at the rally. “As you well know we’re the community that managed to save the passengers off the Queen of the North.

“And it’s an example of what a small community is faced with in regards to tanker traffic — and the Queen of the North is minute compared to the size of the tankers they’re talking about.”

Hundreds Rally Against Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline

More than 600 protesters have taken to the streets of Prince Rupert, B.C., to oppose Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta's oilsands to Kitimat, a port on the northern B.C. coast.

The super-sized rally is being hosted by the Hartley Bay First Nation, a tiny village at the end of the Douglas Channel — the main access point for tankers arriving at the planned Enbridge terminal in Kitimat.

Marvin Robinson, a band councillor, says residents are worried about risks posed by hundreds of oil tankers passing their community.

Other First Nations, environmentalists, local leaders, residents and even rock artist Bif Naked are also turning out to support Hartley Bay.

Prince Rupert City Councillor Jennifer Rice is also an opponent of the project and believes taking over the city for a day is a symbolic gesture of unity.

Why not end the Northern Gateway in Prince Rupert?

It wasn’t a week after Barack Obama put the Keystone XL oil pipeline on ice for a couple of years that the Canadian proponent of the project made a somewhat surprising announcement.

TransCanada offered to reroute the pipeline around the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills area of Nebraska that had become the epicentre of opposition to the proposal. TransCanada’s new position left many perplexed; why hadn’t the company made that offer from the beginning?

The answer is money. Changing the path would mean adding an extra 65 kilometres of pipe and tens of millions of dollars to the bottom line. TransCanada decided to go direct – and cheap – and, in the process, badly miscalculated the environmental conflict its proposed route would generate. And by gambling that it could overcome any protests, TransCanada may now have lost the opportunity altogether.

I mention this as the National Energy Board hearings into Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline get under way near Kitimat, B.C. The project is Canada’s own Keystone, and the hostility toward it is being framed in the same grandiose terms: the biggest environmental showdown Canada has witnessed in generations.

From the outset, concern has centred on Enbridge’s plans to take the pipeline across northern B.C. to Kitimat, where gargantuan oil tankers would come to collect the Alberta crude and then take it out through the narrow Douglas Channel before hitting the open ocean and the far-off Asian markets for which the oil is primarily intended.