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The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway by Arno Kopecky Patricia H View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Wilfrid Laurier University The Goose Volume 13 | No. 2 Article 13 1-21-2015 The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway by Arno Kopecky Patricia H. Audette-Longo Concordia University, Montreal Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment Commons Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres: https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée Audette-Longo, Patricia H.. "The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway by Arno Kopecky." The Goose, vol. 13 , no. 2 , article 13, 2015, https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/13. This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez [email protected]. Audette-Longo: The Oil Man and the Sea The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the pleasurable piece of travel writing and long- Northern Gateway by ARNO KOPECKY form journalism before us. Douglas and McIntyre, 2013 $26.95 The choice to make this journey by sea represents more than a bid to convey a Reviewed by PATRICIA AUDETTE-LONGO great story or adventure. Just as the proposal to build the Northern Gateway has In the summer of 2012, members of never been treated by residents, a joint Environmental Assessment Agency- government, media, or scholars solely as a National Energy Board panel flew in and out matter of moving bitumen west, or even of communities across British Columbia, opening a direct trade route to Asia for listening to local people respond to the Canada's molasses-thick oilsands oil, Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Kopecky's tale of "navigating the Northern proposal. In community halls and hotel Gateway" is not solely a travelogue. It is an conference rooms set up to look something opportunity to examine, up-close, an area like courtrooms, people shared their stories European sailors long before Kopecky and of traditional foods, water use, and land Herb described as the "Graveyard of the use. Everything said was streamed live Pacific"—the same areas tankers may have online and later made available as to navigate now that both the joint panel transcripts. As part of a second round of and the federal government have approved hearings, in places like Skidegate on the the project. Haida Gwaii islands, time limits were For the reader with limited interest monitored by a table-top black box that in how a boat actually works—how flashed and sounded at the seven-minute constant engine malfunctions are and ten-minute marks (Joint Review Panel overcome, for example—Kopecky's lengthy for the Enbridge Northern Gateway descriptions of the problems and challenges Project), rendering the personal stories of of seafaring may grow somewhat tiring. local economies and cultures legible as the However, it is the ability to show first-hand testimonies of a quasi-judicial hearing. that navigating the northwest coast is no These testimonies, it was said, would easy feat, and human and mechanical inform the three-member panel’s ultimate errors can never be completely accounted recommendation on the proposal to build a for or prevented, that best serves the bitumen-carrying line between north- book's thesis. central Alberta and Kitimat, BC, where This said, Kopecky's work should not 525,000 barrels of oil would be loaded onto be read entirely as a crusade to stop the tankers each day. pipeline or prevent heavy-duty tanker The same summer, journalist Arno traffic, either. Kopecky and photographer Ilja Herb took a Certainly, at different points, 41-foot sailboat named Foxy north along Kopecky describes his project as an effort to the BC coast, from just outside Victoria, respond to a federal government that had through channels and narrow passages, to begun "attacking environmental NGOs in Kitimat. order to defend Big Oil," a way of offering It is their journey, with its many "awareness and voice for BC's threatened stops and many people, which yields the coast," and a journey to "stop Enbridge from ruining the Great Bear Rainforest." Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015 1 The Goose, Vol. 13, No. 2 [2015], Art. 13 And nearly every story shared—plus the 16 communities, while also—sometimes— full-colour gorgeous pictures printed at the questioning the motivations of just the end of the book—puts the project and its most recent writer-photographer team to promise of unmatched economic arrive during the Northern Gateway development under the microscope. hearings. Nonetheless, to categorize These conversations, removed from Kopecky's book as advocacy journalism make-shift hearing rooms or time-keeping would be to avoid contending with the black boxes bring the reader to workshops, difficult questions he offers with regard to homes, and boat decks up and down the cross-cultural engagement and the stakes of west coast. But this is no easy feat. Critically development. assessing the art of travel writing, Carl In terms of development, what Thompson argues: comes across as Kopecky's own struggle to offer solutions is made particularly obvious If all travel involves an encounter as he draws to a precarious conclusion, between self and other that is pulling far away from his west coast journey brought about by movement to consider the Quebec town of Lac- through space, all travel writing is at Mégantic, all but destroyed in the summer some level a record or product of of 2013 when a derailed train carrying oil this encounter, and of the exploded in the middle of the night and negotiation between similarity and killed 47 people. It seems Kopecky is not difference that it entailed. (10) speaking to the converted, but to everyone who must answer to similar questions: Kopecky must somehow navigate away from portraying the region and the [A]t what point do the costs of people who live there as culturally static. At growing our economy outweigh the times, the resulting balancing act between benefits? . Seeing as we live on a acknowledging how communities and demonstrably finite planet, the economies change, while drawing upon pursuit of endless economic growth shared vocabularies for how differences seems like a risky paradigm to between First Peoples and settlers are follow. And yet we pursue it more understood in Canada, yields wince-worthy doggedly today than ever, fuelling it exchanges. Midway through his book, for with oil every step of the way. example, Kopecky relays a question he asked of a community member in Bella While The Oil Man and the Sea does Bella, BC: "What does it mean to be an its work as both a solid piece of travel Indian in the twenty-first century?" Her narrative and political journalism, its response—"That is the most asinine richness and warmth lays in the question a journalist has ever asked me"— conversations Kopecky and Herb have with provides little relief to the reader. After all, too many people to count, some named defining indigeneity is politically fraught, and some left unnamed. Kopecky draws out and, implicitly, works through testimonies quintessential turns of phrase, the odd offered over the course of the pipeline curse, and the willingness of strangers to at hearings as First Peoples throughout British once welcome him and Herb into their Columbia and Alberta explained the https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/13 2 Audette-Longo: The Oil Man and the Sea importance of local lands, plants, salmon more cross-cultural discussion, and a runs, and shorelines. Since the beginning of different kind of space and time to listen the Northern Gateway pipeline debate— than seems to have been accorded in and even in the days after the federal national debates to date. government’s decision to accept the proposal—popular discourse and court challenges have positioned First Peoples in Works Cited British Columbia as most able to provide a Joint Review Panel for the Enbridge "powerful and unbroken wall of opposition" Northern Gateway Project. Hearing (Yinka Dene Alliance) that could ultimately Order OH-4-2011. Vol. 56; Line 6060. prevent the project. On the other side of Ottawa, 13 June 2012. Online. the debate, the project has been cast as rife Leggett, Sheila, Kenneth Bateman and Hans with economic and development promise Matthews. Connections: Report of for First Peoples. the Joint Review Panel for the But in Kopecky's careful handling of Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, the stories of people living in and moving Vol. 1. Calgary: National Energy through the BC coast in 2012, he side- Board, 2013. Online. steps—for the most part—colonial Thompson, Carl. Travel Writing. New York: essentialisms that would render coastal Routledge, 2011. Print. people as symbolic of lifestyles that would Yinka Dene Alliance. Yinka Dene Alliance. be directly affected should oil ever meet n.d. Web site. 15 June 2014. water. Instead, in Kopecky's work, people <http://www.yinkadene.ca/>. speak to a range of issues and questions about what the region's future holds, PATRICIA AUDETTE-LONGO is a student in including but not limited to the pipeline and the Joint PhD in Communication Studies whether tankers can safely navigate water program at Concordia University.
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