“The tar sands have become one of the most definitive issues for youth today, for Canada’s energy policy and for the future of energy in Canada,” says Jodie Martinson. “The way I see it is that the impacts of the tar sands are not just being felt in the direct geographical vicinity where the tar sands are being developed, but in all of the Albertan towns and communities that have been experiencing spiraling effects from the developments.”
In this spirit, 20 bikers gathered at the Waterton Park Glacier on August 15 and prepared to embark on a storytelling tour across the province. Over the next few weeks, they will cycle through Alberta on a trip dubbed “To the Tar Sands,” stopping in 20 towns and cities before ending their journey in Fort MacKay on September 7.
Along the way, they will explore the impacts of the oilsands on the people of Alberta. “We’ve been planning this bike tour to talk to Albertans about their perspectives on the development of the tar sands and their experiences with the impacts, both positive and negative,” says Martinson, a Calgary-based filmmaker and tour participant.
“Most of what we’re doing is meeting with people,” she says. In Pincher Creek, they’ll visit a wind farm. In Turner Valley, they’ll take a tour led by an author who just published a book about the history of oil development in the region.
They will videotape their adventures along the way, creating a documentary about the tour and posting a regular video blog on the tour’s website. The idea behind the expedition is to learn and record stories, looking at both negative and positive impacts of oilsands development, as well as some of the progressive technologies being used across the province. “The relevance of what we see in these communities,” says Martinson, “is the engineering potential in Alberta when it’s put towards progressive things.”
The bikers stop in Calgary on August 23. During the day, they will host a public bike-along through the city, starting at North Glenmore Park. That evening, at the University of Calgary, there will be a screening of The End of Suburbia followed by a discussion forum, including panelists Dr. David Swann, MLA, and representatives from the Calgary Housing Action Initiative, on the city’s housing crisis.
The Sierra Youth Coalition (SYC), which sponsored this trip, has a long history of bike tours as a form of activism. “These bike tours are a way of finding out what are the issues on the ground,” says Alla Guelber, one of the tour’s Calgary organizers and a former executive committee member of the SYC.
In the summer of 2001, the Climate Change Caravan travelled from Tofino, B.C. to Halifax, N.S. by bike and on a bus powered by vegetable oil and solar energy. The caravan visited 120 communities and asked individuals to commit to personal goals to reduce greenhouse emissions. In 2003, the Deconstructing Dinner Caravan — 18 Canadian activists-strong — rode from Vancouver to Cancun, Mexico in order to demonstrate against the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference.
This summer, the issue of choice is the oilsands. While the group states publicly that it has “so far avoided taking a decisive position on the tar sands,” the group is comprised of youth activists and their impartiality is questionable.
Martinson admits there’s a bias. “It’s been a struggle from the beginning, the amount of objectivity and neutrality we can claim,” she says. “And it’s a trip sponsored by the Sierra Youth Coalition which has a very clear stance about oilsands development.
“All we can claim and all we can aspire to is that our intention is to hear out anyone who is willing to talk to us. But, yes, of course, we have an agenda. I mean there’s a choice in calling our trip ‘To the Tar Sands’ versus ‘To the Oil Sands’ or choosing to travel by bike rather than by bus. There’s a message in all of that, but one image that I keep going back to is that, at the end of the day, even bikers have oil on their hands — their greasy chains. This is an issue that affects all of us and to a certain extent, all of us are complicit in our oil addiction.”