When it comes to pipeline protests, all seems quiet on the western front, but that shouldn’t lull anyone into thinking Trans Mountain pipeline opponents have given up the fight.

Environmental groups are filling their coffers and organizing support from people who, when the shovels hit the dirt, will carry out acts of civil disobedience to save everything from whales to First Nations sacred land to the Pacific Ocean.

The 1,000-kilometre expansion project was approved for the second time by Ottawa in June, a little more than a year after the Canadian government bought it and the existing pipeline for $4.5 billion from Texas-based oil company Kinder Morgan. The pipeline is now operated by Trans Mountain Corporation, a federal Crown corporation.

Once the expansion is finished, the twin pipelines are expected to triple the flow of diluted bitumen and other oil products flowing from Alberta to the B.C. coast to 890,000 barrels a day. Trans Mountain Corporation CEO Ian Anderson has said construction could start by September.

By this time last summer, there had been repeated demonstrations, more than 200 people arrested and a daring Greenpeace stunt where activists suspended themselves from a Vancouver bridge in what they dubbed an “aerial blockade” of oil tanker traffic to Burnaby’s Westridge Marine Terminal.

So far this year the focus has been on raising awareness about the project’s risks, said Sven Biggs, a climate and energy campaigner with the environmental organization Stand.earth.

“I think people will keep their powder dry until construction starts.”

A group gathered on Burnaby Mountain Aug. 5 to protest the pipeline project days after the National Energy Board decided construction could resume at the Westridge Marine Terminal, where oil tankers are loaded for transport, and Trans Mountain’s Burnaby Terminal, where the pipeline ends and oil is stored.

Other than a few other demonstrations in B.C., the anti-pipeline movement has been eerily quiet since June, although activists on both sides of the Alberta-B. C. border say the resistance is alive and well and they are girding for battle.

Bronwen Tucker, an organizer with Climate Justice Edmonton, said the group has been ramping up recruitment and fundraising so it can oppose projects like the pipeline. This is in direct response to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s campaign promise to create a $30-million “war room” to counteract what he called “misinformation” from environmentalists about Alberta’s energy industry.

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“There’s a really big story that every Albertan is for this pipeline,” Tucker said, “Having more resources is really important to tell the story that the pipeline isn’t actually good for Alberta … and to our continued efforts to stop it from being built.”

In oil country, where elected representatives on the conservative and NDP sides of the Alberta Legislature lauded the pipeline approval, a recent Angus Reid Poll found 87 per cent of Albertans are in favour of its construction.

Proponents say the new pipeline will be a boon for the economy as more Alberta oil will get to overseas markets, creating thousands of jobs and helping close the price gap between Albertan and American crude.

On the other side of the border, Angus Reid found almost 40 per cent of B.C. residents oppose the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, colloquially known as TMX. Opponents say it is a major threat to the environment and a catalyst for climate change at a time when Canada is already struggling to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets.

In B.C., the potential for civil disobedience is “very high,” noted David Tindall, a University of British Columbia sociology professor who studies the history of environmental movements.

“It’s part of a culture that exists in British Columbia ... that a lot of people in the rest of Canada don’t really understand.”

Tindall said it has roots in the War in the Woods, when thousands gathered in Clayoquot Sound in 1993 to protest the clear-cutting of old-growth forests.

According to the Trans Mountain Corporation, a new construction schedule will be released “once the necessary approvals and requirements are in place.”

From the courtroom to the front lines, here are some of the people the pipeline will have to surmount on its way from Strathcona, Alta., to Burnaby, B.C.

The lawyer

Before environmental lawyer Margot Venton walks into a courtroom, she takes a moment to remember what’s at stake. The decisions made here can put ecosystems at risk or protect them.

By the time she stands before a judge, she has “total clarity.” She is fighting for the planet, for her 13-year-old daughter, for “our collective experience on earth,” and stacked legal teams across the aisle can’t even shake her resolve.

Last year Venton, who works for the Vancouver-based charity Ecojustice, and her co-counsel Dyna Tuytel won a major legal battle against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. Now, they’re gearing up for another.

Venton has always been passionate about the natural world.

Growing up in Toronto, she saw first-hand the impact people have on the environment, from fish die-offs after heavy rains flushed untreated sewage into Lake Ontario to the slow decline of bird habitat at a Lake Huron beach she visited every summer in her youth. She saw the law as a “tangible way to advance conservation.”

She’s spent the past decade working to protect one of the west coast’s most iconic species — the endangered southern resident killer whales — and their dwindling numbers, which has captured global attention.

In the fall of 2017, Venton helped bring their struggle for survival to the Federal Court of Appeal, where she argued the National Energy Board’s review of the Trans Mountain project had failed to comply with the Species at Risk Act because it didn’t consider the risks of increased marine shipping associated with the pipeline expansion.

That case, heard alongside legal challenges launched by First Nations and the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, forced a reconsideration of the controversial project.

Less than a year later, after a new assessment, the federal cabinet approved the project for a second time. But neither Venton nor the environmental groups she represents are ready to back down.

Venton submitted a motion to the Federal Court of Appeal earlier this month asking for leave to launch a judicial review of cabinet’s approval for the project. Their decision, she argues, fails to protect endangered orcas.

“There is a deep fear, I think, right now about what we’re seeing in the world, which is an unravelling of the natural systems that support us,” she said.

“The pipeline story raises so many issues. It’s about climate change, it’s about the biodiversity crisis, it’s about defining our future.”

The legal cases, Venton said, are playing an important role in how this story unfolds.

The Land Defender

For Kanahus Manuel, the fight to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline runs deeper than one project. It’s about standing up for the rights of Indigenous people.

“This movement is reclaiming our lands, our cultures, our language,” said Manuel, a member of the Secwepemc Nation, which includes 17 First Nations in B.C.’s southern interior. “Our language and culture flows from our land, you can’t have one without the other.”

Manuel was born “into the struggle of our people,” which dates back to colonization.

“We’re freedom fighters and when you are raised in a family of freedom fighters, this is all you know,” she said. “Direct action training is something that we do just like people going to kindergarten.”

Manuel is a member of the Tiny House Warriors: Our Land is Home, a group of Indigenous land defenders based in the North Thompson Valley region of B.C. who vow to stop pipeline construction across 500 km of Secwepemc territory.

The group has established a village of five tiny houses near Blue River, B.C., about 230 kilometres northeast of Kamloops, where Trans Mountain plans to build a work camp. A sixth tiny house that will house a recording studio and radio station will open soon.

Their presence on Crown land is itself a form of resistance, challenging the land title system in Canada, said Manuel.

“They can say (it’s) Crown title all they want, but the underlying title is Secwepemc,” she said, adding that the environmental risks of the pipeline are too high.

“We lived there, we know how much snow there is, and it’s too much water to be dealing with any type of environmental or a pipeline disaster,” she said.

Manual saw 25 million cubic metres of wastewater and mining sludge contaminate Quesnel Lake after a copper-mine tailings pond broke open in 2014.

“To witness first hand the Mount Polley mine disaster was one of the most horrific sights that I’ve ever laid my eyes on,” she said. “In my whole life I don’t want to ever witness that again and I don’t want any other human in this world to witness that.”

The pipeline is “not worth the risk because we’re salmon people,” said Manuel, a mother of four.

Manuel said everyone would benefit if Indigenous title to their unceded traditional land was respected, because they are better protectors of land, water and atmosphere.

It’s a sentiment supported by the latest United Nations report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Aug. 8. It concludes that land titling systems that respect Indigenous tenure “can lead to improved management of forests, including for carbon storage.”

The Protesting Grandpa

Terry Christenson has an alter ego. His name is Tango Charlie.

“Tango Charlie will walk up and poke a sleeping bear just to see what will happen,” said the 71 year old. He’ll “look you right in the eyes and lie his ass off.”

He’s also a seemingly fearless activist who uses his climbing skills to draw public attention to the climate crisis.

It was dark out and raining when Christenson, dressed in a 3-millimetre wetsuit, set out on a mountain bike for the Burrard Inlet where he intended to climb a construction barge at Trans Mountain’s Westridge Marine Terminal in the wee hours of July 10.

By the time he reached the inlet, he was warmed up and already soaked through, so “jumping in the water’s nothing,” said Christenson, who had travelled from his home in Ontario to protest the pipeline expansion.

He watched a patrol boat, with its bright spotlight, pass several barges and dock. He didn’t see any movement on the barge where he planned to unfurl a banner that read “No Tankers.” He thought the coast was clear.

“Then the sh*t hit the fan and … I got caught,” Christenson said. He was arrested before sunrise.

Christenson is no stranger to these kinds of stunts, which activists call non-violent direct actions.

In 2012, Christenson, a trained climber, was one of six Greenpeace activists who scaled a floating Russian oil platform to protest Arctic drilling. He was arrested in March 2018 and again in April 2019 for climbing a 30-metre tree overlooking the Burrard Inlet in a “mid-air” protest of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Christenson is trying to inspire more young people to join the climate cause by taking activism to a new level.

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Climate change “affects us all, we’re all in this together.”

When Christenson appeared in court after his arrest at the Westridge Marine Terminal, he refused bail. In jail, he refused to eat solid foods.

“Ice cream was hard to turn down,” he said. But he had a point to make.

He spent 12 days in solitary confinement, in a small cell with just enough room for him to walk in a one-metre circle, where his health could be monitored as his hunger strike continued.

He hadn’t eaten solid food for 14 days by the time he was released on July 22, after another lawyer intervened in the case.

Christenson plans to be on his best behaviour until his August court date, where he is facing contempt of court charges for breaching a court-ordered injunction. “I’m going to show (the B.C. Supreme Court justice) that I’m honourable now, you’re dealing with Terry Christenson not Tango Charlie.”

But his aborted protest action at the Westridge Marine Terminal is unlikely to be his last.

The Artist

Not everyone in Alberta is behind the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and Gabrielle Gelderman has the pictures to prove it.

Alongside volunteers from Climate Justice Edmonton, an activist group fighting our continuing reliance on fossil fuels, she is putting a face to dissenting voices.

As one of the artists behind People on the Path, an art project highlighting Albertans who oppose the TMX, Gelderman is constructing eight-foot-tall illustrated portraits they plan to set up along the pipeline route.

Before the project took shape in May 2018, Gelderman said the group protested at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s town hall in Edmonton in February 2018 and dropped a 15-metre long “No Kinder Morgan” banner off Edmonton’s High Level Bridge in October 2017.

“Direct actions are a lot more intense,” Gelderman explained. “They get your message out there pretty clearly and can encourage other people to voice opposition, but they are often very focused on what you don’t want. You’re standing in opposition to something — you’re saying no to something.”

For her, that’s where this project stands apart.

Based on photos submitted by Albertans, the plywood cut-outs include excerpts supplied by the subjects — messages speaking to their vision for Alberta’s future — painted on the portraits.

Surfacing as an art installation around town, most recently at Edmonton’s Found Festival in July, several of the cut-outs were on display in Light Horse Park where they made the anti-pipeline movement’s mission more accessible to observers and even critics.

“I found myself having conversations that I don’t think are easy to have in other contexts,” Gelderman said. “This is a very non-threatening, nonconfrontational kind of setup. People come curious, and some told us that they appreciated the work even if they didn’t agree on every point.”

With 15 portraits completed, the group is planning to make a total of 25. Until recently, People on the Path was in limbo after the Federal Court of Appeal rejected the federal governments approval of the Trans Mountain expansion project in August 2018.

But in April, when Climate Justice Edmonton started raising funds for its own war room to counter then premier-designate Jason Kenney’s campaign promise for a war room aimed at correcting “perceived misinformation” from critics on Alberta’s oil industry, the group got enough support to restart the project.

With the federal approval of the pipeline expansion in June and construction expected to begin this fall, Climate Justice Edmonton may have an opportunity to revive the original vision for its activist art project.

“I would love to see it go up on the (pipeline) path,” Gelderman said of the art project. “But if that doesn’t happen, it’s already given us so many really beautiful moments and points of connection.”

The Plaintiff

At 18 years old, Olivier Adkin-Kaya is already an experienced protester on city streets.

A recent graduate of Strathcona High School in Edmonton, he was one of hundreds of local students who walked out of class this spring to march on Alberta’s Legislature, where they demanded immediate action on climate change.

But after the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was approved by federal Liberals again in June, Adkin-Kaya changed tack and took the fight indoors, to the corridors of power, where he hopes to challenge the approval in court.

“The ultimate goal is to stop the pipeline from being built,” he said. “Something like this is so big that we need to stop it just to have a chance in the fight against the climate crisis.”

Alongside three other young climate strikers from across Canada, he’s applying for leave to the Federal Court of Appeal for a judicial review of the approval.

They’re arguing that added pipeline capacity will lead to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions — which cause climate change — from expanded oilsands operations, refining and fuel consumption.

If Canada is going to honour its commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep the global temperature increase under 2 C, the expansion doesn’t make sense.

“We are literally are trying to hold the government accountable,” Adkin-Kaya said.

But they’re concerned about more than just Canada’s commitments to the 2015 climate change accord. They’re also fighting for their rights.

According to a recent report from Environment and Climate Change Canada, even if Paris signatories keep their commitments, Canada will likely experience a range of consequences, including rising sea levels, receding glaciers and Arctic ice, a higher risk of summertime water shortages as well as more frequent droughts, floods and wildfires.

That future, the applicants argue, violates the rights of young people to equality and life, liberty and security of person, which are guaranteed under Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“We’re in this case because it specifically matters to us,” Adkin-Kaya said. “A lot of the older generations, they won’t be around when the worst effects of the climate crisis come about, and that’s why it’s really important that we’re representing ourselves here in this case.”

The Disrupter

For Miranda Wallace, there’s no time left for half measures.

If Canada is truly committed to curbing carbon emissions and slowing global warming, governments need to take aggressive action against climate change instead of increasing the amount of oil flowing out of Alberta.

“I can’t think of a single reason why it should be built,” she said of the pipeline expansion project. “It is the absolute opposite of what we need to be doing if we want to have a chance of … meeting our Paris agreements and keeping us in a place where we can survive.”

Since April, Wallace, 34, has been a member Extinction Rebellion Edmonton, the local chapter of a global movement using nonviolent civil disobedience to fight for climate justice.

Across the Atlantic, UK members of the movement have been making waves since November, blocking bridges, closing roads and snarling traffic in London to demand urgent government action against climate change. Their alarm-raising efforts have led to more than 1,000 arrests in April alone.

To date, Extinction Rebellion’s activities in Edmonton haven’t been as disruptive. They have delivered pamphlets to drivers at roadside demonstrations, dropped banners on Ada Bridge and City Hall and performed public “die-ins,” where members pretend to have perished from extreme weather ailments like heat stroke.

And while dialogue is as important as disruption, Wallace noted that without more concrete and timely action, the group will ramp up its efforts.

“We’ve written letters and we’ve met with our representatives and we’ve done all the things that you’re supposed to do,” she said. “So we’re moving into a phase where — if we’re not being listened to — we are going to become more disruptive as time passes.”

How that will look on the ground remains to be seen, added Wallace.

Climate scientists forecast irreversible environmental effects by 2030 without drastic and rapid changes to global carbon consumption and emissions, and Wallace is worried about the world her kids will inherit.

“I don’t want them growing up in a world where we’re all fighting over resources because we’ve killed the bees and the fish are full of plastic and the birds are full of those fish,” she said. “I want them to have clean water. I want them to have clean air. I want them to have a future.”

With files from Alex Ballingall, The Canadian Press and The Associated Press

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