When David Lavallee decided in 2006 to make a film about the effects Alberta’s oil sands are having on the Athabasca River and downstream communities, he never imaged it would take four years to complete.
But on Friday, March 25, after premiering in Victoria, B.C. and playing in Invermere and Edmonton, Lavallee’s documentary, White Water, Black Gold, earned him a standing ovation at Canmore’s St. Michael’s Anglican Church Hall.
Now living in Nelson, B.C., the former interpretive guide, teacher and Canmore resident dreamed up his project during a field trip with University of Calgary glaciologist Shawn Marshall to the Athabasca’s headwaters at the Columbia Icefield.
Having secured funding from LUSH Cosmetics, Canada’s National Film Board, the Banff Centre’s Mountain Culture department, Alberta Foundation for the Arts and other smaller donors, Lavallee worked with veterans such as cameramen Pat Morrow and filmmaker Alan Bibby to tell the story.
“It’s actually been quite similar to climbing mountains,” Lavallee said. “It’s like ‘yay, I’m on the summit - but that’s only half the climb; now I have to get down’. Now that it’s finished, it’s all about releasing it.”
Narrated by Wade Davis, the film will be entered in festival competitions across North America, including Vancouver, Whistler and next fall’s 2011 Banff Mountain Film Festival. It premiered as part of Dogwood Initiatives’ St. Patrick’s Day Keeping it Green event in Victoria, where the Chief of the Halalt Coastal First Nation participated on a panel discussing the potential effects a proposed 1,170-kilometre Enbridge twin pipeline from Fort McMurray to Kitimat, B.C. could have on the region.
The last part of the film focuses on that very proposal, which would send 225 tankers annually from Kitimat to the U.S. or China, following a wild, wandering, intricate waterway with several 90-degree hairpin turns.
“At one spot, the tides would at times leave only two metres of water between the hull and a jagged underwater boulder field,” Lavallee said. “The terrain is three times more complex than Prince William Sound where the Exxon Valdez hit a reef.”
The only habitat in the world to support the white Kermode “Spirit” bears, the region is also home to humpback, finback and Minke whales, Dall’s and harbour porpoises, orcas and Pacific white-sided dolphins, all of whose feeding habits are likely to be adversely affected by the loud noise emitted by the tankers.
And, said Lavallee, similar to the Japanese nuclear reactor disaster, the best science and planning in the world simply cannot guarantee things won’t go wrong and accidents won’t happen.
“Pipelines can burst, tankers can crash, tailings ponds can breach,” Lavallee said. “Just one spill in such a confined area would destroy that ecosystem. Plus, the pipeline would have to go through some of the most important salmon producing rivers in the world – the Skeena, Bulkley, Nass and Stikine rivers. People in B.C. are beginning to realize their province is going to be the doormat for the oil sands. It’s taken damaging Canada’s reputation internationally to get the Alberta government to begin to act and admit their own testing is inadequate.”
The native population of Alberta’s Fort Chipewyan is no longer alone in sounding the alarm about the oil sands, Lavallee said, as people in Inuvik, Kitimat and the Hudson Bay region are taking notice of upgraders scheduled for construction in Fort Saskatchewan. Such upgraders require enormous amounts of water to transform diluted bitumen piped from Fort McMurray, where it is mined, into oil.
“The North Saskatchewan has one-fifth the flow of the Athabasca and it’s much more heavily used to irrigate farmers’ fields in Canada’s breadbasket,” Lavallee said. “At one point, 10 upgraders were planned. It’s going to be oil versus food. I call that region a triangle of concern. That’s half of Canada’s water.”
While making the film cost Lavallee much time and his own money, he said he’s happy to have taken it on.
“I’ve followed the principle that has guided me all along – that of informed consent,” Lavallee said. “If we are to consent to this as a province, as a nation, we need to be informed about it. Government and industry tell us all about the benefits, and they couch statistics to make it sound good.
“But what they don’t tell is about the risks. Somebody has to tell people, so that’s what I’m sharing. It’s an important story that needs to be told and it hasn’t been told this way. I feel blessed to be able to do that.”
View the trailer on White Water, Black Gold’s Facebook page, or at www.vimeo.com/17123122
