Turn off the lights

and park your car. The Slave River is one of the few mighty rivers unspoilt in the north. I have been going down every day to watch the pelicans at the Rapids of the Drowned but today we hiked into the Pelican Rapids which are absolutely incredible. The rocks stretch out into the heart of the rapids and we were able to sit and feel the power of the boiling water raging by. I tried to get a picture that would show how wild the water is but it is hard to capture the magnitude of it all.
Because of our insatiable thirst for power and oil the corporations are trying desperately to damn the river in one of the four rapids right here. It would mean devastation for the area, the loss of habitat for the pelicans, flooding the boreal forest, submerging aboriginal burial grounds and history.. the list goes on. There was a talk by Ellen Wohl who has studied the effects of dams around the world and there is nothing good about the effect it has on everything from micro-organisms to algae blooms at the estuaries causing dead zones on the coast, loss of fish etc., etc. The most depressing thing about this whole thing is that it will primarily be built to supply power to the fracking operations in the Oil Sands which are horrendous.
It was a very emotional day for me as it is incomprehensible that they can continue to destroy the land so fast with no thought to the irreparable damage they are doing for future generations. So reduce your power consumption folks and perhaps in our own small way we can stem the tide towards global disaster.