Freezing My Butt Off At Thirty Four

Monday was my birthday! I’m thirty four this year! Monday was also the day the National Energy Board was back in town for the ongoing Joint Review Panel to talk about piping dirty tar sands oil to the coast to be put on tankers for Asia. I spoke at the JRP last May when they were here last.

I was so impressed with how many people came out for the rally because it was a miserable, rainy, cold weekday! It was a really wet kind of rain. If you weren’t in a rain jacket and rain pants, you were getting wet. I came home cold and wet having neglected to wear my rain pants! I need to find some sort of hand warmer I can still manoeuvre my camera with. My fingers were frozen by the time I got home.

There were a lot of signs supporting the islands erased in Enbridge’s promotional video. An 1000 square kms of shoreline has been erased making the the proposed tanker route a much easier prospect than it really is.

This day, Jen Rice presented Enbridge with a petition with an incredible 45,000 names on it asking Enbridge to remove this misleading video from their website.

A number of people spoke at the rally with inspiring words, stories about visiting one or more of the islands in an effort to reassure us that they do exist or more serious stories about the significance of those islands to the first nations people who live near by. The speakers were Jen Rice, Art Sherritt, Joe Daniels, Joy Thorkelsson and a number of people were interviewed by the media that came out this day.

After the rally, the kids went with Cam to get a hot chocolate while I mingled with friends. That night my family got all dressed up, and told me I had to do the same, and took me out to a fancy restaurant for supper where I was given hand made cards and delicately embroidered crafts. I felt pretty lucky.

I should probably add a recent photo of myself to this post about my birthday but the only one I have is one Leif snapped of me after letting me take some pictures of him! I’ve dropped the ball on making the time for self portraits. I really need to get back on this project. It made me feel so good to dedicate a little time to honouring myself when I took them. So here I am saying hello to you, dear reader. A little dishevelled and mostly in focus.