Former student activist Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is donating the money he won for his Governor General’s Literary Award to a group fighting against the TransCanada Energy East pipeline.

“We are in a serious situation now in Quebec. We have a very, very important choice to make around that very controversial Energy East TransCanada pipeline,” Nadeau-Dubois told CBC’s Daybreak.

His book Tenir Tête won the $25,000 prize for non-fiction in French. It’s an account of the mass student strike in the spring of 2012.

He announced on the Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle that he was donating the money to an awareness group called Coule pas chez nous. He also challenged Quebecers to add to the money he donated.

Twelve hours later, donations topped $143,000.

The Energy East plan would convert an existing natural gas pipeline from Alberta to Ontario to carry oilsands bitumen.

The company would then build a new section of pipeline into Quebec and New Brunswick.