Editor, The Times:
Be forewarned! There is a environmental protest tsunami wave surging throughout B.C., focused mostly in the Lower Mainland, against the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
The pipeline corridor goes through many opposing B.C. towns, Indian reservations and all through lands considered
First Nations Treaty territory. First Nations have lived in harmony with the land for generations and value its protection as a result but other B.C. residents also have a special attachment to the land which few in Canada appreciate or understand.
Why? Stand outside any B.C. home and you may see mountains, forests, lakes, glaciers, rivers, hills and/or ocean.
We are reminded every and all day of our special relationship and closeness with nature.
For most Canadians this simply is not their reality. Their reality is usually concrete or the house across the street.
The most crucial issue with KM is with gargantuan oil tankers plying the ocean tides, and currents through Burrard Inlet, along Stanley Park, past the beaches of English Bay, out into the Salish Sea, threading through the pristine Gulf Islands and out through the Straight of Juan de Fuca.
In no other city in the world can you ski in the morning and play golf or go sailing in the afternoon.
Vancouver’s pristine natural setting in unprecedented.
Tens of thousands of B.C. men, women and children value their attachment to nature will simply not allow chemically laden bitumen to threaten B.C.’s natural environment.
Remember the protests, and often the arrests, surrounding the Great Bear Rain Forest, Carmanah, Clayoquot Sound, Lyall Island, Meares Island, Slocan valley, Gustoffson Lake controversies?
The KM pipeline protests will make the Standing Rock protest look like a Boy Scout picnic.
What is Beautiful B.C. worth? Most of the people of this unique province will never allow their pristine natural environment be destroyed by an oil spill.
Be prepared for a protest, the likes of which we have never seen or imagined. Kinder Morgan will never be allowed to happen.
Nelson Riis
Geographer and former MP
Ottawa, ON