Yesterday, I had the delightful experience of attending the Arts Alive exhibit at the Burnaby Art Gallery. The theme was Place and Home. I was particularly enthralled and impressed with the schools from the Burnaby Mountain area because their projects, without fail, creatively emphasized the natural aspects of their home – the conservation area, the wildlife, trees and flowers, the salmon-bearing streams.
Today was the anniversary of the first spark that lit the Fort McMurray fires. I couldn’t help revisiting in my mind the exhibit yesterday and wondering when the first spark will send our mountain into an inferno. There is no country on earth that would allow the expansion of a tank farm in a heavily populated, densely wooded community – except Canada.
I wonder if the politicians would go to these schools and explain to the students why they think their projects are worth more than these children’s “place and home.” How would they explain the need to put the children’s lives at risk?
The inferno of Fort McMurray was unstoppable, and I wonder if it was because the community had no adequate barrier between homes and forests. Here in Burnaby, the argument is the tank farm was put on the side of the mountain in the 1950s. Sparse population in the ’50s doesn’t mean we should perpetuate the error in the 21st century and increase the risk.
What happens when a careless cigarette or sunlight refracting off glass on the mountain ignites the forest during a dry spell and it becomes uncontrollable? There are those tanks sitting on the side of the mountain right beneath the only access to the mountain. How are our firefighters supposed to control that and how are the people to be evacuated?
We live in an earthquake zone. The pipeline rupture in the North Saskatchewan river last year was due to “movement of the earth,” and that was not an earthquake! What happens when we have a 6.3 magnitude like they had up north today? The earth will move, and with the planned route through the mountain, whose home or park will need to be excavated to find the spill?
Our elected politicians, provincially and federally have failed us. Trudeau had the audacity to claim only communities give permission and then approved the pipeline expansion. Clark sounds off on jobs and economy. Let us not forget that the spill response plan that satisfied one of her “conditions” is paid for by our tax dollars. The economic advantage that supposedly satisfied another of her conditions appears to be to the Liberal party coffers.
When you cast your ballot in this election, please think of our children and our children’s children. They are our most important asset.
Elan Gibson is a Burnaby resident.
