Here Come The Tar Sands

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

12 November 14

he Toronto Globe and Mail ran a happy-fun-times foto feature on the town of Fort McMurray in Alberta, also d/b/a Tar Sands World HQ, whence, with the help of Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill and likeminded poltroons who do not live on the Ogallala Aquifer. will come sluicing south through a huge death-funnel the dirtiest fossil fuel ever discovered. Look at the booming suburbs. Look at Canada's fastest-growing airport. Visit with us the Giants of Mining Theme Park. Artists! Bagpipes! See all the happy people working there, building their mini-mansions, and even tolerating their Muslim neighbors. Look, eh? Happy Muslims, praying in the local parochial school! The whole thing reads like one of those Sunday New York Times pieces about how hard life on the Upper East Side has been for bazillionnaires since we tinkered with the Immigration Act of 1924.

Now, as regular visitors to the shebeen know, I back up to nobody as far as respect for our neighbors to the North. Neil. Joni. Four-fifths of The Band. Hockey Night In Canada. National Health Care. These are substantial contributions to the human experience for which I am very grateful. But, were I putting together a photo feature about Fort McMurray, I might have cast my lens a little wider.

To be entirely fair, right there at the end, the feature does touch on the fact that, on the weekends, the town turns into Deadwood with weed and an even greater variety of prostitutes. (Look! Mounties!) And what's remarkable is that, only a week earlier, as part of the same series that includes these photos, the Globe and Mail ran another story detailing pretty convincingly that the oil-sands boom pretty much demolished whatever Fort McMurray previously had for a social safety net and a local infrastructure. Even the shiny new airport is overwhelmed. And, of course, there are those Friday nights.

The new arrivals include an itinerant population of construction labourers who live for two-week stints in remote camps but come to the city to blow off steam. That has created a rift between those who use city services and those stuck with the bills. Meanwhile, a brisk drug trade makes life for those on the fringe even harder. "We used to really look after each other," says Mo, one of about 80 homeless people seeking a hot lunch at the Fellowship Baptist Church on a recent afternoon. "Now the dope's ruined everything." After a decade of hard living in Fort McMurray, the 59-year-old widow is ready to leave. "The craziest place I ever lived, that's for sure," she reflects. "I'd like to get out of here, go someplace warm."

Still, I might have brought my cameras to a hospital or two, and see if I could shoot anyone talking about bile duct cancer.

Bile duct cancer -- also known as cholangiocarcinoma -- occurs in one out of every 100 to 200,000 people per year. It usually strikes men over sixty years of age. It is strange then, O'Connor said, that Wood Buffalo Municipality, with a population of 116,407 (2012 Census) has recorded at least 6 cases in the last decade. Last year, there were at least two cases of bile duct cancer in Fort McMurray and another in the remote hamlet of Fort Chipewyan (pop. 1,100), located downstream of the oil sands. Over the past decade, there have been four confirmed cases of the rare disease. "This represents a cluster far in excess over what would have been expected," Dr. Colin Soskolne, a professor emeritus with the University of Alberta who taught epidemiology in the School of Public Health for 28 years, said.

Or, I might have hauled my equipment out of the city proper, and gone into the back country to see why people are getting sick there, too, and why it's become dangerous to the careers of doctors who speak out about it.

When in early 2006, Dr. O'Connor suggested that cancer could be caused by the oil industry's polluted runoff from the oil sands, "all hell broke loose", as he put it. He was accused of misconduct by Health Canada, and spent the following 2 years and eight months trying to clear his name and reputation. In the end, he was cleared of all charges. He has not changed his opinion and remains determined to find out what is making his patients sick.

I don't mention all of this to be critical of the Globe and Mail, but to point out that the United States has tar sands, too, and we have a new Congress, most of whom would drink this stuff out of the ground with a straw if it meant another 500K in campaign checks. So, be warned. Happy fun time foto features about the good life in the new oil patch is coming to a neighborhood near you. So is bile duct cancer but, still, monster trucks!