In 5 Minutes This ‘Outlaw Hip-Hop Harmonica Player’ Takes Down Canada’s Climate Criminals

By Carol Linnitt

April 17, 2013 1 min. read

This article is more than 12 years old

It's not every day you get a self-described "outlaw hip-hop harmonica player" and "beatbox poet" waging a war of words against the masterminds behind the tar sands, oil pipelines and super tankers. But then CR Avery doesn't just live in the every day.

If anything CR Avery is living in the all-too present day of climate disruption, where citizens, students, grannies and punks are uniting against the companies with a vested interest in maintaining the fossil fuel status quo. Enbridge and Kinder Morgan – two companies planning on building new pipelines in B.C. to transport tar sands crude to the Canadian coast – are two of this poet's chosen targets. The risks they pose to neighbourhoods, natural systems and the climate add fuel to the spoken-word fire.

Beautifully crafted and masterfully-filmed by Ethan Miller, this 5 minute short will bring a little passion and clarity back to the cause.

Or as CR says, "With big oil manipulating government's decisions lays firm cause to pause for further inspection…"

Thief Behind The Mask from Ethan Miller Productions on Vimeo.

For more information, visit the Sierra Club BC website at www.sierraclub.bc.ca.

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Another year of keeping a close watch

Here at The Narwhal, we don’t use profit, awards or pageviews to measure success. The thing that matters most is real-world impact — evidence that our reporting influenced citizens to hold power to account and pushed policymakers to do better.

And in 2024, our stories were raised in parliaments across the country and cited by citizens in their petitions and letters to politicians.

In Alberta, our reporting revealed Premier Danielle Smith made false statements about the controversial renewables pause. In Manitoba, we proved that officials failed to formally inspect a leaky pipeline for years. And our investigations on a leaked recording of TC Energy executives were called “the most important Canadian political story of the year.”

We’d like to thank you for paying attention. And if you’re able to donate anything at all to help us keep doing this work in 2025 — which will bring a whole lot we can’t predict — thank you so very much.

Will you help us hold the powerful accountable in the year to come by giving what you can today?

I’ll support independent journalism

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