[Geography in a Photograph] The End of the Line

A photograph of the train station (foreground, right) in St. Paul, Alberta; year unknown; taken by Ron Brown, and published in the 3rd Edition of The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore: An Illustrated History of Railway Stations in Canada (Toronto: Dundurn Group, 2008): p. 41.

Sometimes, ordinary photographs have an uncanny ability to capture our attention. This one (above) captured mine. I was leafing through Ron Brown's The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore: An Illustrated History of Railway Stations in Canada, and came across this image, and my brain stumbled upon the caption: "The station skyline in St. Paul, Alberta, is typically dominated by the grain elevators. Photo by author." Grain elevators and a train station in St. Paul, Alberta!? I have been to St. Paul many times, yet I have never seen any grain elevators there. Nor had I ever seen or heard of a train station in town - this would imply passenger service. But here was a photograph of a typical prairie town, showcased in a book about abandoned train stations, chosen specifically because of its iconic prairie 'skyline' - dotted with not just one, but five of the multistory beasts! Was it possible that, despite the dozens of visits to the town, I had never come across the rail station and somehow failed to see the town's tallest edifices? Surely, a story was hiding behind this photograph, so I have spent some time trying to brush off some of the dust.

St. Paul, located about 200km Northeast of Edmonton, was settled by the Oblate missionaries in the late 19th Century as a mission for Métis peoples. The settlement was originally known as St. Paul des Métis (shortened to St. Paul in 1936, when the settlement gained 'village' status). In 1909 the settlement was opened up after the original mission project was abandoned, and the doors were opened for French-speaking families from throughout the region and Québec, as well as other European settlers (mostly from Ukraine and the United Kingdom) to move in and break ground. However, like many prairie locales, it was the arrival of the railway that really facilitated the growth of St. Paul into a town...

In the early decades of the 20th Century, even getting between Edmonton and St. Paul was a struggle. From St. Paul, one had to travel some 105 kilometers by horse and buggy to Vegreville, where one of the oldest railway lines in the province was situated, owned at the time by Canadian Northern Railways (CNoR). CNoR was started in 1895 in an attempt to compete with Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR) - the company started building track in Manitoba and thereafter spread its network East and West. By 1905, CNoR tracks had reached Edmonton through a southern route (see Figure 1), offering an alternative to the CP's route. In 1914, CNoR began construction of a more Northern route to Saskatchewan, but as the Alberta Heritage Community Foundation notes, the war effort stalled progress:

"... railroad officials claimed there was a shortage of labour, and construction stopped at Spedden in 1919, 48 kilometres short of St. Paul. As did many communities on the Canadian Prairies, they banded together, and recognizing the importance of the railway to the town’s economic prosperity, the citizens of St. Paul volunteered to complete the last stretch of track that would join their town with North Edmonton. In 1920, the first regular service train arrived in St. Paul. J.A. Fortier was the first Station Master and lived with his family in the station building, which was to become an important economic and service centre. Trains not only allowed passenger travel, they also brought mail, equipment, and merchandise. The railway also meant farmers could transport cattle and crops to larger urban centres more easily." 

Figure 1: Map of Alberta Railways, from the Waghorn Guide, 1941

This railway map from the 1941 Waghorn Guide shows an extensive passenger (and freight) rail network, owned by a number of distinct railway companies. For emphasis, I have highlighted two sections of the CNoR lines in red, and one of the competing CP lines in green (the dark black line is the North Saskatchewan River). The town of St. Paul is highlighted in yellow; Vegreville in orange; and Lavoy in blue; Edmonton is at left. Today, the tracks of the more northerly CNoR route AND the highlighted CP route have been torn out, while the southern route is still maintained (now owned by CN) and used as a major trans-continental freight line. 

By 1918, CNoR and other railway companies were consolidated into the new crown corporation, Canadian National (CN). The roaring twenties were a time of prosperity in Northeastern Alberta.At the time, CN and CP rail lines criss-crossed the countryside like the arteries of the nation. Indeed, the growth of the railway network deeper into Canadian territory facilitated the growth of the nation long into the second half of the 20th Century. As Tom Murray's Rails Across Canada notes, "in the decades after the [Second World] war, Canada became a supplier of resources to the world - lumber, grain, sulfur, potash, petroleum products - and CN [and CP] carried them."

The first half of the 20th Century is perhaps the heyday of Canadian passenger rail service. With automobiles and fossil fuels still largely commodities of the elite, trains were a necessary aspect of keeping people and communities connected. The train line between Edmonton and St. Paul, which the community members had helped to complete, was by no means quick (see Figure 2), but it was nevertheless reliable and, arguably, the common person's primary connection to the outside world. In 1946, the train was upgraded to daily service, and was by then fast enough to allow those from small lineside communities such as Bonnyville to come to the service town of St. Paul for the day, and make it back home in time for early evening.

Figure 2: Passenger Rail schedule from Edmonton to St. Paul, 1925

The schedule, from the 1925 Waghorn Guide, tells us that four return trips per week connected St. Paul and Edmonton. The train took an astonishing 10 hours to traverse 200 kilometers!

Vehicular Homicide: Killing Passenger Rail
The 1950s and 1960s marks a dramatic decrease in rail passenger demand (and supply of services) in North America, notably correlating with the post-war boom and the rise of the family automobile as the primary means of mobility. With each successive decade from the 1920s to present, a map of Canada's passenger rail service would get thinner and thinner (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Canadian Passenger Rail in the 1920s and 2000s compared

Compare the images above and below: The above 1921 map [digitally stitched together] shows CN's passenger rail service lines stretching throughout much of the country and into the United States. The map does not even include the competing service by CP, which also provided passenger service in the first half of the 20th Century. The present-day map below shows VIA Rail's only passenger service lines. Today, passenger rail does not pass through many major Canadian cities such as Calgary, Fredericton, and Regina.

The passenger rail service between St. Paul and Edmonton continued to be offered by CN into the early 1970s, but it was then quietly discontinued; the age of cheap oil had facilitated the rise of the automobile - and today the automobile is the only functional means for people to get in or out of St. Paul (aside from the Greyhound bus, which travels twice a day).

From Tracks to Trucks
For the meantime, freight services would take over as the main function of the St. Paul railway. As Brown's photograph attests, freight played an extremely important role in this largely agricultural region's economy. It is only after speaking with my partner's uncle Wayne, a longtime farmer from St. Paul, that I have come to begin to understand the centrality of the freight rail service (and the corresponding grain elevators) to the rural way of life: First, the rail service provided an efficient and cheaper way of bringing important farm inputs, ranging from fertilizers to heavy equipment, to the region. Second, the local grain elevators (and the agglomerations of farmers who owned them) provided local farmers with a sense of ownership and control over their product. They had a say in the local wheat pools, or at least knew who was serving on the regional board, and could make important decisions about their produce based on the buyer, the going price, and it's final destination (farmers like Wayne were even involved in loading their own rail cars with their own goods, for which they were paid a higher share of the product). Third, the elevators served as a rallying/ meeting point for local farmers. As Wayne put it: "We would come together and meet there, share ideas, discuss and network with other farmers." But as the past tense tone used here suggests, these important socio-economic functions of the regional freight railroad (and the grain elevators) are no longer available... they are no longer available because, within the last two decades, CN began to discontinue its freight services in parts of the region. Today, the evidence of a former era has been removed: The grain elevators have been torn down; the rails have been ripped out.

Covering Their Tracks
Now, it's one thing to discontinue passenger and freight rail service; it's quite another to rip out the tracks and dismantle the infrastructure! But this is precisely what would eventually happen in St. Paul, in a decision that Wayne describes as "beyond shortsighted". Today, the iconic prairie image captured by Brown's photograph is completely obliterated in St. Paul and many small agricultural towns like it. The previous landscape has literally been erased: The rails have been removed, buildings torn town, and power lines replaced (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: No more prairie skyline

It may be hard to believe - but this present-day photograph is taken from roughly the same vantage point as Ron Brown's original photograph above. The train station is gone; the five grain elevators are gone; the tracks have been uprooted and shipped away (by truck); new power lines have been put up to service the new housing developments; and as the photo shows, the municipality now piles excess snow where formerly there were train tracks. Photo by Laurie Krekoski, 2011.

How did this happen? Well, there are a myriad of reasons and forces which have come into play, some of which I will briefly touch on here. In some ways, the death of Brown's photograph is a parable of the local impacts of globalization. As mentioned above, the 1960s and 1970s saw the growth of automobile-based infrastructure. Similarly, by the 1980s, freight companies such as CP and CN began to feel competing pressure from the trucking industry. The rail companies began to discontinue service in more remote areas, in order to cut back on losses to the trucking companies.

The privatization of CN in 1995 didn't help either. Thereafter, CN began looking into ways of downsizing services and increasing profit margins. In 1993, as CN eyed its future fate as a private corporation requiring new sources of finance capital, it put up secondary lines like the St. Paul rail corridor for sale. The idea was to keep servicing the area, but to raise funds by selling the valuable property to municipal stakeholders. The corridor was purchased by the County of St. Paul. Nevertheless, thanks to heavy lobbying efforts by recreational snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle (ATV) groups, a plan was floated to consider turning the corridor into a 'linear park', a trail to be used for such recreational purposes. Meanwhile, the trains kept coming to St. Paul, collecting agricultural products and delivering various goods.

The final death-knell came in 1999, when CN announced it would abandon rail service in Northeastern Alberta. Two years later, the county held a referendum on the following question: "Do you support a municipally-regulated public trail on the soon to be abandoned CN railway right of way?" Three affected rural municipalities voted on the resolution, and a slight majority voted in favor - totaling the "Yes" vote to 54.1%. There was no legal requirement to obtain anything more than a simple majority, and thus the recreational park - later to be ironically dubbed the "Iron Horse Trail", began to be constructed shortly thereafter. Today, the trail is marketed as a tourist destination.

In St. Paul, the rails were removed and oddly, the grain elevators and historic station building were demolished (forget heritage status!). For Wayne, the decision to rid of the grain elevators was symbolic, and could be interpreted more sinisterly as a way to pit farmers against one another and consolidate the control of large multinational grain companies. Today, small-scale farmers do not have it easy - they are likely the ones who have lost the most from the disappearing railways and grain elevators. They have to arrange (and pay for) their own private transport of such inputs and their own agricultural output (by truck). Bringing in heavy equipment is extremely difficult and costly. Rather than have a say in coordinating the flow of their product with fellow collaborators at the regional wheat pools, they are all too often "told what to do" by the companies who own farmer's debts. This is the focus of Ingeborg Boyens' Another Seasons Promise.  As one review of Boyens' book notes:

Another Season's Promise explores the farm crisis not as a series of occasional individual losses caused by poor growing seasons, but rather as a perpetual structural phenomenon composed of many villains. Family farmers face down multinational agribusiness, pressure to grow genetically modified foods, the perils of factory farming, massive dependence on pesticides, and an increasingly distant federal government more interested in pleasing international trade bodies than supporting Canadian farmers.

The loss of the local elevators and railroad have played a small (but significant) role in this complicated process... but ironically, the way out of this mess would be much facilitated by the very infrastructure which helped build such farming communities in the first place. We must recognize that these hardships are being experienced in an era of relatively cheap oil. What will happen when the price of inputs and shipping skyrockets as a result of a higher oil prices? What will happen when we decide to take climate change seriously, and enact policies that limit the amount of fossil fuel use? How are small rural Canadian towns like St. Paul going to facilitate the mobility of people and goods when fossil fuel based automobiles and trucks are no longer a viable mode of transportation? It is thus clear why a local farmer and longtime community member like Wayne would see the dismantling of the rail infrastructure as shortsighted. This is not to suggest that a recreation trail is a bad thing (quite the contrary, publicly-owned recreation areas, and people coming together to have fun and be healthy is a good way to build community). The shortsighted aspect is that the replacement of rails and agricultural buildings clearly does not take into consideration the long-term community implications of losing such crucial infrastructure - the type of infrastructure that has played a pivotal role in the foundation of rural life in Canada.

[Questioning] Is it time for legislation yet?

It's truly amazing. The day Syncrude is fined $3 million for failing to prevent the deaths of 1600 migrating ducks that landed in one of the company's tailings ponds, CBC reports that more dead ducks have been found in other Syncrude, Shell and Suncor facilitites! See the CBC story here (or copy and paste this URL: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/10/26/edmonton-more-ducks-tailings-pond.html)

This just goes to show that fines are totally fucking meaningless in Alberta's oil patch. They are especially joke-worthy when we consider who's paying the fine - the richest goddam companies in the country! These 'fines' are not deterrents in any way, shape or form. They have hardly, if at all, influenced the behaviour of oil sands operators, nor caused any major change in operations. Most importantly, the ducks (and other animals) are still dying. What do the fines do, other than raise money for the very governments that are currently working to protect the tar sands? How many dead ducks does it take for Fisheries and Oceans Canada to wake up and realize that they are completely and utterly failing to enforce legislation for which they are responsible? How many times does Stelmach's government need to mess up before Albertans revolt?

It's time to take this issue seriously. It's time for legislation and regulation of this industry, and a reevaluation on the real costs of this endeavor. It's time to ditch meaningless fines and start thinking about prosecuting the useless fuckheads who run these companies and the moron politicians who claim that they're "frustrated and disappointed" but have nothing to show for it. If anything, Renner and Stelmach should be frustrated and disappointed that clodpate, excrement-spewing, Big-Oil-apologist imbeciles like themselves have the political power to do something about this and yet fail do to so.

[Photo Essay] The Bitumen Trail

At long last, a friend and I recently made a trip to the tar sands of Northern Alberta. We both had an interest in seeing first hand what this massive energy project - the largest in the world - actually looks like. We also wanted to talk to people along the way in order to get a more nuanced understanding of what is actually going on in this province in terms of resource extraction. Dan is a fantastic photographer (see his website at http://touristiko.com/), so I've selected some of his most telling photographs from our trip and provided some annotations.

The bitumen trail
The "tar sands gigaproject" includes far more than the multiple open-pit mines located North of Fort McMurray. 80% of the "oil sand" deposits are located at lower depths and thus need to be extracted using in place - or "in situ" - steam injection wells. Altogether the resource covers 140,800 square kilometers of forest and muskeg in Northeastern Alberta! The oilsand itself is not what humans are after, however: First the sand and other natural components (clays, metals, etc.) need to be removed in order to yield a heavy hydrocarbon called "bitumen". But even the bitumen, which is almost identical to the man made substance we call "tar" (hence the term "tar sands") needs to be upgraded into synthetic crude oil, after which it is sent to various refineries throughout North America to be converted into products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other petrochemicals like butane, methane, ethane, ethylene and polyethylene. Only three oil sands companies (Suncor, Syncrude, and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd) upgrade bitumen at their respective mine sites. The rest of the companies ship bitumen from their mines and various in situ projects, by pipeline and rail, down to "upgraders" in the Edmonton region, the United States, and Ontario. Hence the whole tar sands gigaproject includes an entire network of mines, in situ projects, pipelines, railway lines, upgraders, refineries and petrochemical plants that literally span across the continent, working together in a constant whirl to satiate Canada's and America's oil addictions. Our trip from Edmonton to Fort McMurray and back followed the first leg of this bitumen trail. We went to the heart of this project - the "surface mineable area" - a place where bitumen has been known to literally ooze out of the Earth, and where First Nations peoples used to go to get bitumen to patch their canoes. And on the way back from the mines, we followed the bitumen trail Southbound to Alberta's Industrial Heartland, where Shell and BA Energy's upgraders and Dow's petrochemical plants are located, through to Petro Canada's (now Suncor's) Strathcona upgrader and refinery on the East side of Edmonton.

Avoiding the "Highway to Hell/Heaven"
It seems that just about anyone who has driven up to Fort McMurray will offer the following advice: "Don't take Highway 63". Two authors have written about the dangers of this highway in their respective accounts of the tar sands. William Marsden's first chapter in Stupid to the Last Drop is titled "Highway to Heaven", sarcastially referring to Alberta's "blessed" position as one of the world's largest oil reserves and the way many people have died in collisions en route to Fort McMurray while trying to pass convoys of slow-moving oversized machinery. Andrew Nikiforuk titles his fourth chapter in Tar Sands "Highway to Hell", also pointing to the high death toll (there were 1000 collisions on Highway 63 between 2001 and 2005) and the wretched aspects of living in boom town Fort McMurray. So Dan and I opt for the safer route: Highway 881. This secondary highway had much less traffic and was much more comfortable overall. Nevertheless, at one point on the return trip we did get a taste of the highway's inherent dangers when we came upon this wide load. Eventually we were given the indication to pass, while going uphill on a solid line. Driving in a small Hyundai sedan, we were clearly outsiders on this highway to heaven/hell: Although the vast majority of drivers were like us (young, white, male), the vehicle of choice in this part of Alberta is a truck with a "buggy whip", a high flying orange flag that is intended to remind the drivers of the giant oilsands dump trucks to avoid running over the one ton trucks (incidentally, last year the buggy whip on one truck at Shell's Albian mine went unnoticed by one heavy dump truck. The worker in the smaller truck was crushed to death, and the driver in the big dump truck didn't even know she had run over another vehicle!).

Fort McMoney












After 6 hours of driving we arrive at Fort McMurray. Along with a general trait of "bigness", another characteristic of the town is testosterone. The local Earls restaurant franchise in Fort McMurray is called "Fuel", a name that better suits its location and the majority of its patrons: white male oilsands workers. I get the impression that this parking job (seen above in the photograph of a truck parked across two spaces) is not necessarily an uncommon site in this town. A lot of money is showcased and spent in Fort McMurray, and high prices are merely a way of life (the cheapest hotel room I could find in town came to $160 for one night!). Many people like to flaunt their wealth with new trucks and other toys for grown ups, and the town has earned the nickname "Fort McMoney". But not everyone in town can afford to live like a high roller. The homeless rate in Fort McMurray is the highest in the province, and while walking through the streets one sees many people who are likely in need of shelter and drug addiction support. And despite the preponderance of people who are paid high hourly wages, the city is severely lacking in social services (as the local Mayor often laments). Finally, Fort McMurray is noticeably multicultural, and the service sector employees seem to encompass a large number of Arab, African and French Canadians. After grabbing a Shawarma at a local Lebanese restaurant, Dan and I head back to the hotel and get ready for our trip North to the mines the next day.

Behind the trees
It's a sunny day and we get off to good start with a full complimentary breakfast at Ace Inn. By 11am we're driving North from Fort McMurray on the famed Highway 63, heading towards the belly of the beast. Some 20 km later we spot what looks like a long hillside of dirt in the distance. It is hard to see from the highway, as a row of trees blocks the view. Determined to get a better view of the horizon, we turn onto a side road and find a hill to climb. According to a great project map made by Petr Cizek (http://oilsandstruth.org/maps-tar-sands-development) we know that this long dirt hill that stretches a number of kilometers across the horizon is part of the Suncor Millenium and Steepbank mine. The scale of the entire project becomes evident when we realize that the small yellow trucks moving in the distance are the giant heavy-haulers that are three stories high and can carry 400 tons of dirt (The photo here only captures one small segment of the panoramic view). There is only so much that one can see from the highway. The real way to view the oilsands is from the sky (but unfortunately our budget can not cover the $1300 required for a 1 hour helicopter ride!). Oilsands operations have literally reshaped the landscape of this region. Hillsides and lakes now exist where there were none before, and gigantic craters up to 70 meters deep have been unearthed in the search for black gold. This must be an archealogist's nightmare: In 1976 woolly mammoth bones were uncovered and luckily handed over to a museum, but I wonder how many ancient fossils, middens and points of archealogical interest have been disturbed in the process of digging up all of this soil.

Reclaimed forests?
As we drive further North we see a haze of smog trailing across the horizon. From the trailhead of Crane Lake Reclamation Area we see the source of this air pollution: A smokestack at Syncrude's Mildred Lake mine. The Crane Lake trail leads us through a synthetically engineered forest to a man-made lake that Suncor began building in the 1970s. I have to admit that I never would have imagined that this used to be an open pit mine. But despite the presence of ducks and native plant species, there is a strange feeling to this place: Perhaps it is the smoke trailing across the sky, or the "no trespassing" signs that block our entry to (and view of) the industrial wastelands that neighbour Crane Lake, or perhaps it is the overwhelming feeling of doubt - doubt that the miles and miles of open-pit mines will someday be fully reclaimed and restored to their "natural state" - a goal that industry claims it intends to meet and government claims is a requirement. When the boreal forest is clear cut and the natural muskeg is removed, the organic layer of mineral soil is destroyed. According to a reclamation expert at the University of Alberta, this disturbs the "vital interactions between root systems and symbiotic fungi, bacteria and algae and other micro-organisms that co-exist underground." One gets the impression that industry and government are playing God in asserting that we can rebuild hundreds of square kilometers of ancient Boreal forest. Dan reads my mind as we gaze over the mines in the distance when he says "There's no way they'll be able to reclaim all of that".

"Mordor Corridor"


We continue North. Now we are driving by one of Syncrude's tailings ponds (where the infamous "duck incident" occurred last year). The white sand is one of the final derivatives after everything "of value" is removed through separation, upgrading and pond settling. The Syncrude Tailings Dam is considered by the US Department of Interior to be the largest damn in the world by volume of construction material. It spans across 14 miles and holds 19 billion cubic feet of waste. And as Dan and I both now know, it stinks! Highway 63 makes a sharp turn and cuts right, and here one enters what I would call the "Mordor Corridor" (as there is nothing but open pit mines, asphalt, and tailings ponds in all directions). Here we are directly downwind of the Syncrude smokestack, and the stench is awful (and who knows how toxic?). The sandbank to our left is blowing across the highway, making me feel like I am in the middle of the desert. The idea of full reclamation seems even more absurd.

Sound blasts and "bitu men"
The tar sands actually have a distinct sound. One can always hear the hum of large trucks whirring down Highway 63, and the background is punctuated by the propane-fired air canons that dot the tailing lakes (which supposedly scare away wildlife). And in my case I heard a little chuckle from Dan every time we saw one of the "bitu men" - the orange clad, hard-hatted scarecrows which give the impression of a big joke: "Someone must have had a lot of fun putting those guys together", Dan says. The air canons and bitu men appear to be doing their job, as there is no wildlife in sight... but then again, if I were a duck this is about the last place on Earth I'd want to hang out!

A really sad place

Finally, we come to what one might call the beginning of the bitumen trail, about 50 km North of Fort McMurray. Here Highway 63 becomes a gravel road, leading to some of the more Northerly mines like CNRL's Horizon mine. But we're hungry, and we've had enough mine spotting. We turn and begin to head back South, planning to stop in the Fort McKay First Nation for lunch. We luck out when we spot a barbeque set up across from the Band Office building. After some inquiries we learn that Alberta Environment is hosting a free BBQ lunch picnic, but for what purpose no one around seems to know. The government employees are not there to fill us in (they appeared to remain inside their government trailer while we were there). So we eat our free burgers and set back on the road after an interesting conversation with two Fort McKay elders.

Despite signs of being uncharacteristically wealthy for a reserve (new paved blacktop, fancy buildings and new parks, etc.), it is evident that this town is a symbol of a dying community - and not just figuratively! Later on in the day we have the opportunity to meet with Fort McKay elder Celina Harpe. From her, we learn about an entire way of life and culture that has been mined away over the last thirty years along with the bitumen. Celina was born on the trap line back when there were no big mines surrounding her people's land. She tells us about the great whitefish they used to catch in the Athabasca River and surrounding lakes. When she was a child, the ecosystem was clearly thriving. There was a bounty of fresh fruit and game and Celina tells us about a trick she learned from her mother when she found herself thirsty out on the trap line - she would dig a hole in the muskeg and let the water pool and settle, and then drink straight from the Earth! Now Celina and her fellow community members know to stay clear of any fish and water in the area; The berry carrying fruit trees and bushes seem to have dissipated in direct correlation with the emergence of various noxious gases floating downstream from neighbouring oilsands mines. Celina had to fight with the oilsands companies to get fresh drinking water into her community, and she foresees - with a noticeable sigh in her throat - that the day will soon come when they can no longer hunt moose in the area. Kids in the community have developed asthma (something Celina had never heard about when she was growing up); We hear about the stench of nearby oil plants that permeates in the neighbourhood, at times lingering inside people's homes, and the incidences of toxic gases like ammonia finding their way into the townsite, causing the schoolkids to pass out! We hear about the great divide between new community leaders who see opportunity in the oilsands, and those elders who pine for a traditional way of life that is now lost.

Is this really what a union town looks like?












When we return to Fort McMurray we pass by a billboard that reads "This is what a union town looks like. Welcome to Fort McMurray". Despite the image of unions dominating the show in the oilsands industry, the Alberta Federation of Labour has highlighted a host of attacks on Alberta's unions. The Alberta Government's Bill 26 of 2008 particularly targeted the construction sector which is very heavily involved in the oil sands industry. As the pace of development in 2007 and 2008 saw construction costs soar to unprecedented levels, the Stelmach government reacted by trying to reduce the amount of unionized construction workers in the province which - in theory - would bring construction costs down. But the effect has been to make union organizing almost impossible in some sectors, causing some labour activists to question whether the human right to unionize has been taken away from some workers.

Throughout our journey we have passed many work camps, where a large number of oilsands workers live. As the photo above attests, the camps tend to look like long rectangular boxes and they seem to exist in their own isolation. We hear a little bit about life in the camps from an acquaintance who meets us for dinner (whose name I will not share in order to protect his identity). He's worked in the oilsands and related industries for nearly three decades, and has a lot of experience and stories to share. Life at the camps wasn't all bad - there was plenty of comraderie and a workout and entertainment room, but nevertheless he doesn't plan on ever living in camp again - "I've done my time!" In animated form, our dinner guest tells us about a number of ways that oilsands could be more efficient, less wasteful. We get a sense from him just how many good ideas are out there floating inside the heads of the workers in the patch. But none of these ideas ever seem to come to fruition, and why not? The bottom line, he repeatedly reminds us signalling with the motion of his hands, is it's all about the money. If it's not profitable, it's not happening in the oilsands!

Back to Upgrader Alley
Our drive back to Edmonton is blessed by stereotypical prairie beauty - the contrast of light blue skies, fluffly white clouds, and the hues of greens, yellows and browns of the crops, fields and wooded areas that dot this province. But where this would have been the case some decades ago, four counties Northeast of Edmonton now have their prairie beauty marred by new industrial developments. It's called the "Alberta Industrial Heartland". The politicians and business associations of Fort Saskatchewan, Lamont, Strathcona, and Sturgeon county have come together to rebrand a 533 square kilometer area of prime agricultural land as an "industrial" corridor. To some, the AIH sounds like an extremely lucrative business opportunity, and in the frenzy of record oil prices in the summer of 2008 there were plans to build up to ten distinct bitumen upgrader plants within this industrial park (along the North Saskatchewan River) - which conjured up the nickname "Upgrader Alley". But to many Albertans it just sounds plain crazy - crazy to visualize the paving over and poisoning of the air, water and soil that has the reproductive capacity to feed the citizens of the Greater Edmonton Region.

Unwelcoming flares
As we approach Edmonton we see very dark smoke billowing across the horizon. Getting nearer it becomes evident that the dark smoke filling our field of view is originating at the Petro Canada (now owned by Suncor) refinery and upgrader. Living in Edmonton, I have come to know these flares, but rarely do they pour out such dark black smoke. The bright orange fires must have been at least 20 feet high each. As we would later find out, the black smoke was a result of a small "incident" at the refinery. Suncor's supply of hydrogen ran dry, and so the plant went into partial shut down mode (the entire process of upgrading is very hydrogen intensive). These types of incidents seem to occur all the time - it's part of the business of being immersed in a large project and trying to balance all of the inputs and outputs with timelines. Suncor claims that the black smoke that filled the skies above Edmonton is not harmful to humans. Again, I am filled with a sense of doubt. In "unrelated" news, a new report has found that large amounts of toxic gases being released in the oilsands are leading to the acidification of rain downwind in Saskatchewan. The tar sands rain has the acidity of black coffee.

Unsettling conclusions...
In the end, Dan and I are left with some unsettling questions and conclusions. The first one arises from something that we didn't see very much of along the bitumen trail - government intervention, involvement and ownership. If the people of Alberta own the resource you wouldn't know it, because the caretaker of this publicly owned treasure is camouflaged amidst the plethora of private companies profiting from Alberta bitumen. The Alberta government works far too closely with industry in the oilsands, to the extent that there is no body playing the role of protecting the public from the negative economic, social, and environmental impacts of out-of-control resource extraction. The Alberta government is deeply entrenched in the business of oil. Despite claiming to be regulating the oilsands resource with "the public interest" in mind, the Energy Resources Conservation Board appears to be an advocacy group for the oilsands developers. Much has been written about this, but two telling facts are that the government has never turned down an application from a major oil company to exploit the resource, and that the Alberta government has hired lobbyists to work on behalf of big oil in Washington D.C.
Secondly, there appears to exist a blind, messianic culture of living in the moment here in Alberta. This culture is marred by an overwhelming presence of "cognitive dissonance" - one in which people continually rationalize and justify their behaviour and involvement in the tar sands gigaproject in order to avoid changing their actions. But the long term costs of this cognitive dissonance (socially, economically, and ecologically) are likely to be enormous and perhaps even too much to handle. We are already seeing signs of the social preasures on communities - from families being split apart while the breadwinner spends weeks working long shifts, to lacking social and health services trying to keep up with the pace of Alberta's boom and bust cycle. It is impossible to put a monetary value on the social and environmental externalities of Alberta's super heavy oil industry, but whatever its value, every indication suggests it is too much.

Hope?
One of my favourite professors once explained that being a pessimist doesn't bar you from having hope. That is, you can see the glass as being half empty, but it doesn't necessarily mean you can't hope that it will be refilled. The story of the oilsands as I know it and as I have relayed it above is a sad one. But let's hope that between the actions of people like Celina, our dinner guest, and all the other critics, workers, insiders and outsiders in the oilsands we can work our way towards some solutions to this mess of a bitumen trail.

[Slander] What a Friggin' Jerk

Ed Sellmach: Selling-Out Alberta one Barrel at a Time

They taught me at work to "attack the issue, not the person." But, what if the person is the issue?

You see, Alberta's Premier, Ed Stelmach, is a jerk. His local monikers "Steady Eddie" and "Honest Ed" are totally inaccurate. A more appropriate nickname would be "Sellmach", as he has done his best to sell out Alberta and its people - barrel by barrel, dollar by dollar. The definition of a "jerk" is "a foolish, rude, or contemptible person." These characteristics best describe the qualities of our sell-out Premier.

How else can you explain his self-proclaimed pay raise of 34%!? While study after study shows that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer in Canada, good ol' Ed Stelmach pumps an additional $1.3 million annually into the salaries of a handful of political elites in this province - to the Speaker of the House, Cabinet Ministers and their assistants, and the leader of the opposition - the very people who just so happen to be the very ones who have the power to enact such a pay raise!

The Premier's salary was just injected with an additional $54,000 per year. That is $10,000 MORE than the average Joe makes in this province in a whole year, and even the latter statistic of the average annual salary is inflated in this province by the highly paid energy industry and related sectors. Thanks to back door, secret discussions with friends regarding his own desires, the Premier now makes $213,000 a year - more than any other Premier in the country. Oh, and did I mention that elected officials are allowed to claim 1/3 of their earnings as 100% tax free?

Liberal Opposition Leader Kevin Taft was also given a gigantic raise, equivalent to an additional $42,000 per year. This move (to give the opposition leader a pay hike) is a typical Stelmach tactic to shut-up and buy-out the opposition. Luckily Taft has a little more common sense, and he has promised to donate the extra $42,000 to charities - charities that are already fledgling in this province thanks to decades of funding cuts from a government with money pouring out of its coffers.

If you're not yet convinced that Stelmach's plan is conniving, avaricious and downright jerky, check this out: As it turns out, the retirement payouts resulting from this pay hike are an additional part of the plan. As reported in the Edmonton Journal, "The provincial formula essentially hands Mr. Stelmach another $63,000 a year in deferred payout. If he merely makes it to the end of his first term, and quits or loses office, he is eligible to collect $1.1-million."

That's right, Stelmach's new plan means he - a public servant - could retire a millionaire in just four years from now. And while the price of oil continues to climb higher, the plans to keep going with the dirtiest and most destructive oil extraction operation in the world also continue. Pretty soon we might just get another citizen's tax cheque for $400 dollars - a little "fuck you" gift from the province symbolizing the foolish selling off of our precious resources, the annihiliation of our ecology and the erosion of the public interest. Thanks Ed.

[Election Coverage] Sinking in a Blue Sea

After yesterday's provincial election here in Alberta, I am closer to understanding what it must feel like to be a Maldivian in this era of rising sea levels.

I knew that by virtue of living and working in Edmonton's Old Strathcona neighbourhood, my existence in this province was mostly constrained to the bubble of Alberta's "liberal oasis". In this area of town, almost everyone seems to be on the center-left side of the political spectrum. Before the election, NDP signs were ever present throughout the Garneau and Old Scona neighbourhoods, and indeed, our NDP candidate Rachel Notley took the seat with almost double the amount of votes as the second place Conservative Party candidate. It's hard to imagine that the Conservative-dominated legislature is just on the other side of the North Saskatchewan river - about a kilometer away.

But if you start to move outwards from my riding in any direction, the prevailing political attitudes start to shift to the right. I noticed this while watching the CBC's interactive flash player map of the city during the election coverage. Each riding was coloured-in with the shade of the winning political party. There was Strathcona in the middle of town, saturated in NDP orange. Surrounding this riding on the North West are three ridings coloured in Liberal red, and another NDP orange riding just above that. Effectively, the center of Edmonton went orange and red, but surrounding that is a deep dark sea of Conservative blue, a blue that represents more than 37 years of neoconservative, right wing, social-spending-slashing blue; a blue that conveys the secretive nature of the Energy and Utility Board, which spied on farmers concerned about plans to build power lines on their lands; a blue that connotes the Premier who decided to sue a poor university student for having bought the URL edstelmach.ca; a blue which represents a failing environmental and royalty scheme which will see the expansion of the tar sands - the largest industrial project in the world (and one of the worst emitters of CO2 and pollution on our fragile planet); and a blue which reminds me of a drunken alcoholic Premier who stumbled into a homeless shelter and humiliated the very people who's poverty he had only helped to secure.

Yet despite having been lied to, spied on, cheated on, and left to their own devices for 37 years, 41% of Albertans decided to elect - for an 11th consecutive time - the very bastards who have been doing all the lying and cheating. This has been the lowest voter turnout in the history of the province, and astonishingly, contrary to many pre-election predictions, the conservatives have gained an even stronger position in the provincial legislature, with the NDP losing half of its existing seats, and the liberals losing 7 of their 16 previous seats to the conservatives.

So here we go again - another 4 years of a bad deal. At this rate, this liberal oasis I am currently sitting on - this island of orange and red - will soon sink into the rising blue sea. It's time to light a flare in the hopes of being saved. Or perhaps, like the Maldivians, I should join a coalition of small island states.

[Petition] No New Approvals!

Hey folks,

This is a quick one. Please head to http://www.nonewapprovals.ca/ and sign their online petition to stop the Alberta government from approving any more tar sands development licenses. Please, this is just one of many steps. Please also write letters. We need to convince politicians to enact climate regulations! None of this "market mechanism", "cap and trade", "carbon offsets" bullshit. We need laws, and we need to start shutting this shit down. The Tar Sands GigaProject is the largest industrial endeavour in the world! The Syncrude mine near Fort Mac is THE BIGGEST MINE OF ANY KIND IN THE WORLD! The environmental damage is abominable!

Do something now folks, even if it's only adding your name this measily petition.

http://www.nonewapprovals.ca/

[Disadvantage] Alberta's Down & Outs

It boggles my mind that here in Alberta, where it is not unknown to dip down to -40 degrees below zero (Celsius) we can sleep comfortably knowing there are nearly 2000 homeless people struggling to find shelter in the city of Edmonton alone. According to statistics from 2002, some two hundred people are forced to find a bed every night (as the shelters are all full).

A month ago, when it was even colder than that, we got a knock on our door late at night from Phil, who offered to shovel our walkway for anything in return. He and his snow clearing associate were trying to raise the $20 they each needed to afford a warm place to sleep that night. We gave Phil and his partner $40 and some water and wished them a good night (...to do anything less given the circumstances should be considered criminal).

I have come to know Phil a bit more since then. Although Phil is homeless, he is perhaps one of the most entrepreneurial people I've ever met, and has demonstrated himself to be an extremely hard worker, and he reliably shows up at our place every time there is snow to be shoveled (three characteristics you don't often hear within the stereotypical perspective of homeless people). But nevertheless, despite these virtues of his, which our society tends to consider so positively, Phil is constrained by a host of structural forces that make it extremely difficult for him to acquire a home. I'm not going to make assumptions about him or his life other than that it appears that despite his hard work ethic, his entrepreneurial spirit and his reliability as an uncontracted employee, he remains homeless because of political and economic structural forces.

Now let us shift to Mr. Steddy Eddie and his Conservative provincial government who have held power now for 32 years. Could they possibly have something to do with these political and economic structural forces? Could the years of cuts to social spending by Ralph Klein and the war against homeless people that he launched with his drunken escapade have anything to do with it?

I think that would be a safe bet.

And yet we continue to hear government propaganda about this mysterious "Alberta Advantage", like somehow we are ahead of all the other provinces, like we've got access to mountains of (black) gold and, if you could only move here and find an affordable place to stay you could pick the money off the trees yourself.

The truth is that the Alberta advantage is, as usual, concentrated in the hands of the political and economic elite.

Erin wrote an excellent article about this after attending a conference titled "The Alberta [Dis]Advantage". You can take a look at it here.

[Advice] Using Stelmach's Domain Wisely

This morning one of the main news stories in Alberta was regarding a recent cease and desist notice from cowboy, I mean... Premier Ed Stelmach's lawyers to a UofA student Dave Cournoyer, for having purchased the web domain edstelmach.ca. Dave was using the link initially to forward to his blog site (http://daveberta.blogspot.com/). The lawyers threatened to sue Dave and wanted the $20/month that he had made through adverts on the site. Read the CBC news story here. Needless to say there are hundreds of comments on the issue through Dave's blog and through the media. The following is my advice to Dave:

Just in case you haven't gotten enough useless advice that you've already considered, here's mine (sorry):

1) KEEP THE DOMAIN. I doubt they'll sue you. The cease and desist letter is an old lawyer's trick, and they particularly like using it on people they think are vulnerable and will cave in (like debt ridden university students). Even if they did sue (which they won't) there has got to be a dozen lawyers out there who would help you for free or for a very minimal fee, as well as various interest groups who would cover your legal costs - not to mention the sheer damage it would cause to Stelmach's reputation for suing a university student (which also is an incentive for them not to sue).

2) CHANGE UP THE edstelmach.ca SITE A BIT. You're just not using ...[click on link below to expand to full post] the domain very creatively (forwarding to Wikipedia - that's just boring). I say ditch the ads (so they can't accuse you of profiting with his name), and why not construct a site that is actually about Stelmach and his government's (socially inept) policies. By doing this you'd have a much better chance of arguing that you are using the domain name in line with CIRA's regulations... Just make sure you don't use the site to defame his personality, use it instead to engage us in an informed and factual dialogue about our Premier and his party. The TRUE FACTS speak for themselves: The Tories are just not good for this province, nor the country, nor our planet.

3) Try to look at the big picture here and be honest to yourself: This issue may have made the news this morning, but politically speaking it is totally irrelevant and has the effect of sidetracking our attention from this province's serious political and economic issues - such as the overwhelming problem of homelessness and unaffordable housing, the massive environmental damage being caused by irresponsible oil and gas exploitation and the overuse of coal power, the creeping privatization of our public sphere and the denigration of our democratic institutions (as noted in the example of the AEUB's spying on citizens & your case too I guess). It is my opinion that these latter issues (among others) are those that should be addressed and discussed on edstelmach.ca