DAY 5 / SHALE GAS PROTEST

photo : Lyne Lefebvre / Say no self protrait / Barcelona 2010
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SATURDAY SHALE GAS PROTEST
The call for a moratorium on shale gas development in Quebec through a protest walk, will be my activity and main post for today. In front of Hydro Quebec at 2 PM.

Place Corner of René-Lévesque and St-Urbain (Place des Arts metro)
Time: Saturday June 18 at 2 p.m. Walk towards the premier's Montreal office (corner Sherbooke and McGill College) leaves at 2:30 p.m.

Location
English link

Besides the walk, I will try and have the prompt 2 readings finished and ideally, briefly participate to the forum on prompt 2's subject. One thing I believe, were Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson (our suggested readings) well and alive, and in Montreal today, they would join the protest. Land ethics and environment are at stake here.

I found 2 articles on the subject regarding BC's own shale gas development,
One from a source I am not familiar with, the other in the SUN which I suppose to be one of BC daily newspaper, which defends the idea that comparison is not possible between BC and Quebec's realities in shale gaz matter... I wonder what my new colleagues would think of that.

article


Speach before leaving

Would this be the drilling's soft representation...

During the protest walk.

(publishing this part the next day.)
The day after the protest, Vice Prime minister Nathalie Normandeau reaffirmed that strategical environmental evaluation for shale gas, had been done transparently and properly.
She rejected all social group's accusations that the alleged report (the so-called moratorium that has emerged from the Office for Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE)) was just a way to calm down the opposition to this dirty energy (coalition among which 151 university researchers, Greenpeace, Équiterre, political parties such as Quebec Solidaire, and...even nun's communities naming only a few, with the citizens who took the microphone to explain the nightmare of hell they were living, night and day, since they had gas drilling in their backyards, for the past 2-3 years, sometimes more, and no say...

The coalition criticized, among others, Charest's government for allowing hydraulic fracture to go on, under research purposes. France and many countries are also undergoing the same type of protest presently.

Nathalie Normandeau tried reassuring citizens that this industry from which we ignore environmental impacts, would not allow development without the consent of the experts around the table, (EES), qualifying the process of rigorous and concerted with the -partners- (development is still going on). The coalition also criticizes the composition of this expert's comity, where the financial world and the petroleum industry are well represented.
(informations resumed and translated from various leDevoir and other press articles.)

As this series of article's title says (in french), it seems only civil disobedience is left to counter shale gas industry. Sounds like a familiar concept form our readings (Thoreau 1949).
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DAY 3

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LINKS TO NATURE AND TO PEOPLE.
This morning, while starting my readings for Prompt one, where the origin of our relation to nature is depicted in various stories (so far), I received an email from someone form our cohort, Don Osllin. He was telling me he was coming for a short stay in Montreal to visit his daughter and offered that we share a coffee. I thought it was so nice. The sense of belonging to a group with whom we will be sharing time and values became very concrete. I was delighted of course, and replied Promptly :-). It also could somehow relate to the course, to a sentence from one of the readings that were proposed to us by our instructor Peta White, for this first reflection exercise, in Richard Atleo' Tsawalk story of the Son of Raven capturing the Day (1) : The whole of life and existence is characterized by relationships that are inherent.

I then went to Don's profile, and remembered who he was when reading his interests regarding edible education and sustainability through cooking. I thought I could offer him a link to a very interesting Montreal researcher Diane Bisson's work, the Edible project.
Diane Bisson studied design, humanities and social sciences and her creation work where sustainability is key, appears to be a dialogue between design and anthropology
as it is expressed through her work and explained in her short bio. I believe it is implicit that design should consider all aspects of humanity and be sustainable, in order to be called -design-.

Today's post will be this short I believe, since I have many readings ahead. Later, I will try to think of a place Don would appreciate.

(1) Atleo, E. Richard (Umeek). Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview. Vancouver, BC, CAN: UBC Press, 2004. p 7.


Jeremie taken by her sister Julia last week.
We share the same bad habit of scratching. Her behind the ear, me back of neck.

I am adding a parenthesis to remind me, 2 years from now, that today I youngest daughter, Jeremie, left for a 2 month trip to Asia. I don't worry yet (and I don't have time to!), I will if I don't receive an email now and then...
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