British Columbians must learn from mistakes made following the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon oil spills and prepare oil spill community response plans, renowned U.S. marine toxicologist Riki Ott is warning.

Transport Canada, along with the industry-funded Western Canada Marine Response Corporation and the Canadian Coast Guard are in charge of oil spill response on the west coast, but recent incidents like the bunker fuel leak in English Bay show a lack of communication and spotty response can leave local governments and communities on the sidelines.

Speaking at a community workshop in Victoria organized by Georgia Strait Alliance and Living Oceans Society, Ott said the risk of an oil spill off the B.C. coast increases as more tankers and other vessels ply the crowded waters. Communities must be ready to deal with a disaster, she said.

“Oil doesn’t spill on federal and provincial land. It spills in someone’s backyard,” Ott said, warning that people also need to be educated about health hazards that come from breathing oil-laden air, diseases suffered by clean-up crews absorbing toxic chemicals through their skin and the decades-long effects on marine species and wildlife, ranging from mutations to extirpation.

“When it happens, it’s really too late. You have to put all your energy into prevention and it’s really important to have a plan,” she said.

Pipeline company Kinder Morgan has refused to release its full oil spill response plans for the Trans Mountain pipeline in Canada — even though those same plans are publicly available in the U.S. — meaning local communities and emergency responders have little to no information on how to clean up in the event of another oil spill.

An oil spill will disrupt communities and the environment long after the official cleanup is finished, said Ott, pointing to continuing problems in Prince William Sound, where the Exxon Valdez spill occurred in 1989.

“Oil on the beaches just doesn’t go away, it just goes under and every time the tide comes in, it lifts it up so the poison is rippling through the ecosystem,” she said.

Ott, a scientist, author and activist who witnessed the ecological destruction and social chaos after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and then worked in the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, shone a spotlight on the resulting chemical illnesses.

Those go far beyond the flu-like symptoms, colloquially known as the “Valdez crud,” and include central nervous system damage, reproductive problems, cancer and liver failure, said Ott, who spent years researching health implications of exposure to heavy crude oil.

In the Gulf of Mexico the situation was made worse by the use of nearly two million gallons of toxic dispersants — used as solvents to break up oil slicks — which make it easier for toxins to be absorbed through the skin, Ott discovered.

“Oil and solvent is worse than oil alone and so much was sprayed it amounted to the sixth largest petro-chemical spill in the U.S,” she said, describing the area around the Gulf of Mexico as a toxic chemical gumbo where it became common to see dead dolphins, fish or shrimp born with no eyes or crabs with dissolving shells.

The lack of human health studies was startling and authorities seemed unaware that the toxic mix was airborne, said Ott, who wants Canadians to arm themselves with information because in February the federal government passed Bill C-22, which allows for the use of the same dispersant — Corexit — in Canada.

It is an alarming decision, especially as efforts are now underway to have the dispersant banned in the U.S., Ott said.

In 2011, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency issued a directive requiring BP to identify a less toxic alternative to dispersants, acknowledging that the chemicals can be carcinogenic and mutagenic.

Incidents such as the ruptured Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline that spewed crude oil over a Burnaby neighbourhood and into the Burrard Inlet in 2007 and this year’s spill of 2,700 litres of bunker fuel into English Bay underline the lack of local planning and minimal information about health risks, Ott said.

Response to the English Bay spill was frustrated by the federal government’s decision to shutter the Kitsilano Coast Guard base, something B.C. Premier Christy Clark, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and the newly elected federal Liberal government have vowed to reverse.

Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau promised to reopen the base as well as reinvest in marine safety and oil spill response capacity in B.C. during the election campaign.

People need to know what products would be used after a spill, who gets to make that decision, where the waste will go, who will be responsible for cleaning oiled wildlife and who will be responsible for collecting carcasses, Ott said.

Canadian plans are based on the “polluter pays” principle, but that can cause problems, she added.

“Do you want the spiller in charge? … You don’t want industry making these calls, you want local government making these calls.”

A recent Georgia Strait Alliance report, “A Voice for Coastal Communities in Marine Oil Spill Preparedness,” echoes those concerns and is calling for the federal government to clarify roles and responsibilities, with an emphasis on ensuring local governments take part in risk assessment, planning and training.

The report also recommends formation of a citizens’ advisory council and additional federal funding to support local governments in preparing oil spill response plans.

“Boaters, beachgoers or local emergency services are often among the first to discover a spill and it is communities that are left with the consequences long after the response teams have gone home,” says the report.

“Yet, when it comes to marine oil spill planning and response in Canada, those who are most directly affected and have the most to lose — coastal residents and the local governments representing them — have ended up on the sidelines.”

The province is preparing plans to create a quicker, more coordinated response to land-based spills, which should be in place by early 2017, and it will also have a marine component, which should address many concerns raised at the workshop, said Graham Knox, director of B.C.’s Environmental Emergency Program.

Image: bunker fuel found on Second Beach by marine scientists Peter Ross of the Vancouver Aquarium

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None have captured the unique beauty and wildlife of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest like acclaimed photographer Ian McAllister.

A resident and long-time conservationist of the unique coastal wilderness, McAllister has intimately documented the region and its iconic species, like the spirit bear, for over 25 years. Much of the landscape — renowned for its biodiversity, including intricate networks of salmon, bears and wolves — is now endangered as energy projects threaten to transform the very existence of the ecosystem, McAllister explains.

“Canada supports the longest coastline in the world and yet we have only protected one per cent of its marine waters,” McAllister said. “And now we have oil and gas projects being proposed that have the ability to destroy everything here in a single event.”

“There is no question that the battle to protect our oceans remains among the last conservation frontiers on planet earth. And our very survival depends on how successful we are in the coming years.”

Great Bear Wild – Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest from Pacific Wild on Vimeo.

That battle is precisely what McAllister is now on the road to highlight through his new book, Great Bear Wild.

A mixture of photographs and personal narrative, Great Bear Wild celebrates the legendary beauty of the region at a time when political tensions around the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and expansion of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline are at an all-time high.

Image from Great Bear Wild – Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest from Pacific Wild on Vimeo.

Image from Great Bear Wild – Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest from Pacific Wild on Vimeo.

Image from Great Bear Wild – Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest from Pacific Wild on Vimeo.

“Everything is at stake here: our climate, our coastline, our communities,” McAllister said. “And it is our hope that these images and these stories continue to remind us of its fragile beauty while also ensuring it remains as wild and fully functioning as it has for so many thousands of years.”

Image from Great Bear Wild – Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest from Pacific Wild on Vimeo.

McAllister will be speaking in Victoria on Wednesday, November 12 at the Alix Goolden Hall.

Upcoming Great Bear Wild Book Tour Dates:

Wednesday, November 12 at 7:30pm

Alix Goolden Hall, Victoria – $12

Thursday, November 13 at 7pm

Quw’utsun Centre, Duncan – By Donation

Friday, November 14 at 7pm

Charlie White Theatre, Sidney – $12

Tuesday, November 18 at 7pm

South End Hall, Galiano – By Donation

Wednesday, November 19 at 7:30pm

Tidemark Theatre, Campbell River – $12

Thursday, November 20 at 7:30pm

Sid Williams Theatre, Courtenay – $12

Friday, November 21

Powell River – Details TBD

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

On December 12th, 1937 the night before her 56th birthday, Emily Carr jotted this down in her journal: “Fifty-six years ago tonight there was a big storm out West and deep snow. My dear little Mother wrestled bravely and I was born and the storm has never quite lulled in my life. I’ve always been tossing and wrestling and buffeting it. How little I’ve accomplished! And the precious years are flying by and never, never one minute will the clock tick backwards.”

Throughout her life Carr expressed a deep and unrelenting desire to capture the essence of her natural surroundings, something she claimed remained elusive to her, haunting her throughout her work.

“I’ve been to the woods today,” she wrote one month later. “It’s there but I can’t catch hold.”

Whatever it was Carr was searching for, her hunt carried her throughout the forests and bays of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. She felt sure the final remedy, her peace, resided in those old forests and deep green ocean bays.

Google Doodle in the style of Emily Carr.

“I am always asking myself the question, What is it you are struggling for? What is that vital thing the woods contain, possess, that you want? Why do you go back and back to the woods unsatisfied, longing to express something that is there and not able to find it?”

Her deep reverence for the natural world and particularly the coast of British Columbia turned Carr into an iconic artist, leaving behind a lifetime of patient, meditative paintings, her endless quest left in the paint strokes of crooked arbutus, a heavy cedar bough.

Untitled Forest Scene. Emily Carr. 1934.

“Search for the reality of each object,” she wrote “that is, its real and only beauty; recognize our relationship with all life; say to every animate and inanimate thing ‘brother;’ be at one with all things, finding the divine in all; when one can do all this, maybe then one can paint.”

Her writings reveal not only her reflections on the experience of painting and sketching the scenes before her, but give us an insight into her own experience of nature and how she envisioned a rich and nourishing relation to the natural world might deepen our bond with our landscape.

A Forest Clearing. Emily Carr. 1939.

“Go out there into the glory of the woods…Feel their protecting spread, their uplifting rise, their solid immutable strength. Regard the warm red earth beneath them nurtured by the myriads of fallen needles, softly fallen, eternally changing yet eternally the same. See God in it all, enter into the life of the trees. Know your relationship and understand their language, unspoken, unwritten talk. Answer back to them with their own dumb magnificence, soul words, earth words…”

A Rushing Sea of Undergrowth. Emily Carr. 1932-35.

“This perhaps is the way to find that thing I long for: go into the woods alone and look at the earth crowded in growth, new and old bursting from their strong roots hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed according to its own kind expanding, bursting, pushing its way upward towards the light and air, each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights on the earth. Feel this growth, the surging upwards, this expansion, the pulsing life, all working with the same idea…life, life, life…”

Left: Boles. Emily Carr. 1935. Right: Heart of the Forest. Emily Carr. 1935.

In her writings Carr doesn’t give the impression that she finally came to know the great mystery of the forest she so longed to grasp. Yet, she expresses a maturing sense of contentment with the world around her as she aged. “Autumn does not dismay me any more than does the early winter of my body. Some can be active to a great age but enjoy little. I have lived,” she wrote in September of 1939, six years before her death.

Loggers' Culls. Emily Carr. 1935.

There is more fulfillment from Carr’s years of searching to be found, perhaps, in the legacy of her work and the enchantment with Canadian wilderness, First Nations’ totem poles and culture, the deep woods and dark waters she left behind. Maybe Carr was more like the forces of nature she tried so hard to understand. In her own way she brought something into this world the beauty of which she couldn’t know or comprehend, the lasting effect of which would outlive her entirely.

Shoreline. Emily Carr. 1936.

“Has a root or bulb the power to look up through itself and see its own blossom? Or must it live always in its own dark domain, busily, patiently sucking its life from the earth and pushing it up to the flower? How terrific the forces of nature are! To see root spilt stone appalls one. I think that has impressed me more than anything else about the power of growth. An upheaval is good, this digging about and loosening of the earth about one’s roots. I think I shall start new growth, not the furious forcing of young growth but a more leisurely expansion, fed from maturity, like topmost boughs reflecting the blue of the sky.”

Scorned as Timber Beloved of the Sky. Emily Carr. 1935.

On her birthday December 13, 1940, Carr wrote “I do not mourn old age. Life has been good and I have got a lot out of it, lots to remember and relive. I have liked life, perhaps the end more than the beginning.”

The main force behind her painting, she reflected, was its use “as a means of expressing myself, putting into visibility what gripped me in nature.”

Big Raven. Emily Carr. 1931.

Emily Carr died in 1945 at the age of 74 in her hometown Victoria, B.C.

Before her death she wrote: “Dear Mother Earth! I think I have always specially belonged to you. I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down on to you in my sorrows. I love the look of you and the smell of you and the feel of you. When I die I should like to be in you uncoffined, unshrouded, the petals of flowers against my flesh and you covering me up.”

An exhibit of more than 40 of her forest paintings will go on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery on December 21, 2013.

Quotes excerpted from "Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr." Clarke, Irwin & Company Ltd. 1966.

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