"The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth" meets "The Most Destructive Project on Earth"

Alberta is home to both the famous and the infamous.

The Calgary Stampede is often heralded as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth."

The Alberta Tarsands have been deemed "The Most Destructive Project on Earth."

The joys of capitalism collide with its terror in this incredible photograph of protesters at this year's Stampede Parade:

Links:

More on the "Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil" demonstration along the parade route.

Comments

[JimBobby]

Whooee! I reckon most ordinary Alberts is like TROCanajuns and lots of 'em try to do their share for ol' Mother Earth. The bigass oil companies are doin' their best to create an "us versus them" mentality.

I'd wager that a typical oilfield worker living in a camp and riding the company bus to the scene of devastation they call a workplace has a pretty low personal carbon footprint. They make some good dough, too. A tax shift seems almost tailor-made to benefit oil patch workers. The companies are shoutin' down that inconvenient truth.

JB

[Polly Jones]

I agree - it's divide and conquer as usual. And, as an Albertan (born and bred), you are looked on as a traitor if you criticize the oil industry. But, of course, it is not a matter of devaluing the engineers, the rig workers, the geologists and so on...It is a matter of challenging the companies, and their supporting governments, which turn the work of these people into a profitable project of ecological destruction. In a (more) planned economy, the work of people would be valued as we worked towards meeting our mutual needs as opposed to stuffing the pockets of a few elites. Yahoo to that!

[Red Jenny]

I love the "Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil" idea. Nice pic. Good post.

[Polly Jones]

All the credit goes to Stop the Tar Sands (Calgary) and, perhaps, to the main group in Edmonton which is headed up by Mike Hudema who I assume you're familiar with, RJ.

Anyway, I have been hanging back from the activist scene since school kills me (terrible irony). This protest, however, is just too tempting though so I am heading out to one of their meetings shortly.

[Toban]

It's a great photo.

(I wonder if many people saw them in-person. Or maybe the photo was the main outcome? And maybe that was their intention? I'm just musing here.)

[Toban]

(Oh.. it was a parade. OK. That gives me more of an idea of whether people would see it. The whole idea of a stampede parade is very foreign to an Ontario boy like me though.)

[Polly Jones]

My understanding is that people at the parade were surprisingly positive.

I was supposed to participate in an action today, but I have a meeting and I'm trying to conserve energy as I have a blood infusion tomorrow.

You should check them out, T, on facebook - Stop the Tarsands. They have had some amazing actions, including a parody website called Travelling Alberta and a surprise entrance at a Stelmach conference.