 Environment - March 1, 2008 |
|
| Oilsands target of rally |
By Kevin Ma
Staff Writer
|
Stephanie Courtoreille holds just one of the many signs at this rally at the Alberta Legislature Saturday. Hers shows the face of her cousin Grant, who died last month of sarcoma cancer just days after his 28th birthday.
Grant isn’t the only cancer victim in her home of Fort Chipewyan, Stephanie said. Three of the six people who died there this year died of cancer, as have many others in recent years in the town of 1,200. "You can’t feel safe," she said. "You don’t know from one day to the next if you’re going to get cancer."
Locals suspect pollution from upstream oilsands projects is the cause, but she said she isn’t sticking around to find out — she plans to leave home for the safety of her children. "Why do I have to leave my home when my family has been there longer than the oil companies?" she asked, on the verge of tears. "Why is it fair we have to lose so many people while they are doing noting about it?"
Stephanie was one of about 250 people who gathered at the legislature this weekend to protest the province’s oilsands policies. She is one of several environmentalists and aboriginals who suspect that arsenic and other pollutants from oilsands development have caused elevated cancer levels in Fort Chipewyan and are threatening their traditional life.
Grant was a healthy, athletic young man who respected his elders and worked in the Suncor oilsands mines, his uncle Steve told the crowd. "He was the kind of young person every parent dreams of," he said. He died just three months after he was diagnosed with sarcoma, a relatively rare form of cancer. "I’m wondering who’s next."
It’s tough to say whether the cancer deaths around the oilsands are unusual or connected to them, said Kevin Timoney, a researcher who published a study on health and oilsands pollution in the region last year. An Alberta Health study found the town had about 510 cancer cases per 100,000 deaths, about 29 per cent higher than the provincial non-aboriginal average of 405 per 100,000, but did not consider this a significant difference for statistical reasons. The region also appears to have an unusually high number of rare types of cancer, as well as high levels of arsenic and mercury in its fish. Mercury levels in four types of fish were found to exceed Health Canada’s safe-consumption guidelines 70 to 100 per cent of the time.
Whether it’s the oilsands or not, said rally organizer George Poitras, there’s something strange happening around Fort Chipewyan, and the province has an obligation to find out what. He and others at the rally called for a baseline health study of the region and a temporary halt to new oilsands development. The chiefs of Treaties 6, 7 and 8 unanimously supported a moratorium on new oilsands expansion at a meeting last month, he added.
Steve said he wasn’t out to pin blame for his nephew’s death on anyone — he just wanted to know what caused it and how to live with it. "How many people will have to die before something is done?" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Navigate |
|
|
|
| More News |
|
|
|
| Contact Us |
|
|
|
|
