Huge Rallies to 'Defend Our Coast' Across BC Including Here in Powell River

Powell River turns out to 'Defend Our Coast' rally

Thousands turned out in 67 different communities across BC to rally against the building of pipelines through the BC interior to move Alberta's bitumen to the west coast and especially the tanker traffic associated with them. The rallies were co-ordinated by leadnow.ca and The Dogwood Initiative. There are many great pictures and inspiring stories from the days rallies at the 'Defend Our Coast' website, check it out, it's wonderful to see the wide range of people who all agree that moving Alberta's crap to Asia in order to further enrich the few at such a potentially huge cost to the many is wrong.

Here in Powell River about 200 turned out to rally outside MLA Nicholas Simons’ office, the rain broke just in time, spirits were high, the crowd a colorful cross-section of the Powell River community. As Betty Zaikow, who hosted the event in PR said, “That’s what the opposition is, a diverse group of people. It’s not just radical environmentalists, it’s people from all walks of life, because this is important to all of us as British Colombians.” One of the most perfect moments was when Julia Adam led protesters in a song -With These Two Hands', after which people linked arms to symbolize BC’s unbroken wall of opposition to the Northern Gateway Project, to the Kinder-Morgan expansion and to oil tanker traffic on the west coast.

David Suzuki's article 'Canadian Government Continues to Choose Dirty Energy Over Democracy', written in conjunction with the huge rally in Victoria on Monday is an excellent read in that it drys attention to some of the larger issues at play in BC's current struggle against the forces focused on extracting the planets natural resources and turning them into money as fast as possible.

Of course, NO TANKERS means no tankers, and as important as the issues are that the rallies of the past few days have focused on they mostly sailed right past the issue of the 2 tankers a week already shipping raw bitumen for international consumption out of Burnaby through Vancouver's harbour, right past Stanley Park and Vancouver's beaches, out into the Georgia Strait -The Salish Sea - a highly dangerous and stupid situation that was never authorized by any level of government and certainly not foreseen in the original half century old contracts. For there to ever be a real solution, NO TANKERS must mean absolutely no tankers.