DePape arrested today on Burnaby Mountain. Photo by Mychaylo Prystupa/ Vancouver Observer.
The RCMP arrested 24 people on Burnaby Mountain this morning and charged them with civil contempt. They were there protesting against the 890,000 barrels per day Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline. At this hour, at least eight of those charged have been released and the others are being processed. Their court date will reportedly be in January.
The Vancouver Sun reports, “One of the women arrested was Bridget DePape, a Canadian activist and Vancouver-based organizer with the Council of Canadians, who gained national attention in 2011 for protesting in the Canadian senate. As she was loaded into the van after being handcuffed she shouted ‘It will take all of us stepping into our power to stop this pipeline’.” In the video clip of her arrest, she also says, “It will take all of us to stop this pipeline. But we can do this and we can transition to a clean and just future for all people, for my generation and for the next generations.”
The Globe and Mail notes, “Eric Doherty arrived on Burnaby Mountain to lend his support early Thursday, just before police arrived about 8 a.m. to start breaking up the camp. …Mid-morning, about 70 people were either demonstrating or watching from the sidelines, while about two dozen officers stood surveying the situation, Doherty said. He said everything had been quiet at the camp when the police arrived and immediately began reading out the court’s order.” That article adds, “Maryam Adrangi camped out overnight at the site and said she joined the demonstration to lend her support. …She said a handful of people were sitting on the pavement, linking arms, while others had been taken into a police wagon.”
The protest was taking place in opposition to the Texas-based energy company conducting survey work in the Burnaby Mountain conservation area, a city-owned public park. Their survey work has included cutting down trees and drilling bore holes for a proposed pipeline tunnel under the mountain. The City of Burnaby opposes this work and has even ticketed the survey crew, but an order from the appointed National Energy Board overruled the elected municipal council on this. The city is now challenging that NEB order in court.
Last Friday, British Columbia Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen granted Kinder Morgan an injunction to stop local residents from blocking the survey work. In his judgement, he ruled that the company faced “irreparable harm” if it could not proceed with its survey work for the yet to be approved pipeline that would generate an estimated 270 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over a 35-year period.
The Council of Canadians believes that those arrested today took courageous individual action to defend the public interest.
