In the December issue of Alberta Views, my buddy Fred Stenson takes a run at the oilsands, gleefully regurgitating misinformation in the form of comic movie titles and scenarios all based on James Cameron’s visit up here.
Aside from the many repeated myths, I wonder why Alberta Views (winner of the Canadian Magazine of the Year Award 2009 and supposedly representing the views of Albertans) didn’t first investigate how Cameron found time in his busy schedule to get away from all the eco-troubles in his hometown of Malibu, to fly in with celebrity-aid to Alberta?
Malibu, or “Humaliwo” as originally known by the native Chumash native American tribe, is today a popular home to the stars, and its beaches to surfers. At the time of white contact, Chumashian numbers were estimated at 10,000 to 20,000. But now celebrities outnumber natives thousands to one. Today the census indicates that only “27 native Americans or Alaskans” live there. Perhaps it is survivor-predator guilt like this that drove Cameron north to chat with some of our local disgruntled First Nations about the oilsands.
Kind of him to spend time with those from Fort Chipewyan, however, he didn’t spend much time talking with the several hundred First Nations people gainfully employed at the oilsands. While they may have left behind their ‘Dances with Wolves,’ they are also not living a ‘Dances with Dependency’ on social assistance either. Most are working in highly-paid, highly-skilled and well-respected positions, many in management.
Facts like that might skew the Avatar story of big, bad oil leaving defenceless, peaceful tree-worshipping natives helpless.
The Bu, as Mr. Cameron’s new home town is fondly known, might also be aptly renamed The Poo. Malibu, home of rich and famous people, is also renowned for its inability to solve the fundamental problem of sewage management, something most grown-up cities in the western world dealt with long ago.
For years, the area has insisted on allowing only septic systems — which has lead to biological waste contamination of seawater, right where people like to surf!
Great. James Cameron comes to critique the oilsands for its environmental impact while at home every flush goes out to sea?
This is not rocket science! It’s an easy problem to solve — use a sewage treatment plant — but Malibu residents, possibly Cameron himself, object because they are afraid such a device would attract more residents to their exclusive area. Oh yes, and they might have to pay more taxes! So instead they’d rather poison surfers and decimate ocean biota.
Sounds environ-mentally ill to me.
Surfers Against Sewage ... links sewage contamination to, “bacillary dysentery, pneumonia, botulism, hepatitis A, meningitis and septicaemia” outbreaks throughout the world — The Los Angeles Times reports surfers like Ken Seino have had serious health complications resulting from contact with raw sewage. “He paddled through while surfing at Surfrider Beach in Malibu. ‘I smelled it, I tasted it, and it was ugly,’ Seino, 53, said. ‘I regurgitated before I could paddle to the sand. I will die before my time because of this infection.’ ” http://kylenedd.com/?p=134
A bit rich that Cameron comes to investigate supposed leaks in the Great White North when there’s clearly so much of it in the Great Brown Surf of the South.
Further, his predecessors in Malibu managed to completely kill off a lagoon, efforts to restore it failed, and it releases pollutants to a favourite local beach where “the state beach has sediment that exceeds pollution standards and water that the state has considered impaired for nearly 20 years.” Cost of such a cleanup might be as high as $7 million — small change for Mr. Avatar. And absolutely nothing compared to what Alberta’s oilsands developers spend on environmental management and reclamation every year.
The ‘oil’ from the oilsands has always been part of the river — the Athabasca River runs through it and it through the sands.
It’s the crap from foreign do-gooding eco-warriors that really needs cleaning up.
That and Alberta Views. Save your satire for self-righteous saviours like Cameron. I note Alberta taxpayers (i.e. oilsands workers) fund Alberta Views magazine through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. I’m sure those hard-working, hard-drinking boys from the oilsands would be disgusted to know that part of their VLT money goes to your magazine, so you can make non-factual fun of their hard work, hard work that, unlike Cameron’s filmmaking, actually produces something real. Something real that makes it possible for Cameron’s art and your magazine to exist.
Oil.
Dirty word, ain’t it?
So Avatar – call home. The Bu ... or the Poo needs your talents more than we do.
Michelle Stirling-Anosh is a freelance writer based in Ponoka.