Athabasca oilsands was one of the hardest stories
Reporting on a tiny community downstream from Alberta’s Athabasca oilsands was one of the hardest stories I have worked on in my life.
It was not the 200-kilometer drive to Fort Chipewyan on the ice road, infamously known as the 'roller coaster,” nor was it the blistering 50 below cold, nor the fact that government officials who constituted half my story didn’t show up. It was coming to terms with the reality that Fort Chip would not fit neatly into the suspecting black and white narrative of oilsands activists verses oilsands developers.
What I found was not a community rife with conflict but one rich with complexity with an investment in the environment, treaty rights, human rights and the economy.
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation elders told me they used to run between huge white spruce trees as children, but those timbers were cleared for oil production.
Some, like Alice Rigney witnessed the oilsands deposits in Alberta bloom to the size of New York State. A survivor of cancer, Rigney believes the oilsands are in part to blame for the high rates of cancer in the community. She also worries the fish are too toxic to eat, that wild game has been pushed out and the kids are no longer able to swim in the water, since the boon of big oil.