This is part three of a three-part series on Wood Buffalo National Park featuring photos by Louis Bockner, Sierra Club BC. Find the first story here and the second story here.

When Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation elder Alice Rigney gazes at the Peace-Athabasca Delta, which has sustained her family for generations, she remembers the whitefish she and her brother caught several years ago in Jackfish Lake.

The fish was cooked in the traditional way, over an open fire, but, unknown to Rigney, there had been an upstream oil spill.

“The fat dripping from it was black,” she said.

Rigney believes the delta and Wood Buffalo National Park have been changed beyond repair by the oil industry and dropping water levels. So she is struggling to understand a proposal by Indigenous leaders to buy a section of the Trans Mountain pipeline, recently purchased by the federal government from Kinder Morgan.

Like many others in Fort Chipewyan, a tiny Alberta hamlet on the banks of Lake Athabasca, Rigney is conflicted because oil money forever changes the live-off-the-land lifestyle — and she blames governments and the oil industry for beating down Indigenous opposition to oilsands projects to the point that buying in seems the only option.

“I could not believe that my community wants to be part of this pipeline. They have forced us into a corner where we have nowhere else to turn,” Rigney said sadly.

“Just think 100 years from now what this planet will look like. They are destroying the land.”

All photos by Louis Bockner/Sierra Club BC

Robert Grandjambe checks his nets on Lake Athabasca, Fort Chipewyan, Alta.

Lake trout hauled from Lake Athabasca.

Anger at environmental damage, fears of health problems and apprehension about disappearing culture compete with modern reality and economic pragmatism as Indigenous leaders struggle to decide where the future lies.

In Fort Chipewyan, where many young people take fly-in-fly-out shifts in the oilsands, a new affluence is taking hold and traditional activities, such as a moose-hide tanning workshops, are failing to attract participants.

Worker housing in Alberta’s oilsands.

A sense of resignation is washing over Indigenous communities with the realization that, after decades of submissions to environmental assessment hearings, expensive court cases and negotiations, almost all of the more than 170 oilsands projects have been approved despite Indigenous objections.

“Even when communities are consulted and raise concerns and rights violations, projects are still approved despite admissions of irreversible and adverse impacts on the people and the land,” said Eriel Deranger, a member the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and executive director of Indigenous Climate Action.

“This can destroy the spirit of the people.”

The result is a flurry of meetings and carefully worded memos, with companies courting Indigenous support and leaders walking a precarious tightrope, hoping a seat at the table will  offer environmental and economic benefits.

The ambivalence is underlined by last month’s surprise statement from Athabasca Tribal Council — whose five members include Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation — that they are considering buying a piece of the pipeline. The proposed purchase has not yet been ratified by the communities.

For pipeline opponents it was a shock that the move was announced by Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam, president of the Athabasca Tribal Council, whose history as a prominent opponent of oilsands projects includes campaigning alongside celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Mikisew Cree Chief Archie Waquan told The Narwhal he believes he has to modernize the economy for the sake of the younger generation.

“Do we remain the same and be ‘anti-’ or get on the boat and deal with industry and be able to be part of what is happening there? I look at what is happening south of us in the tarpits and the oilsands and, if we don’t partake in it, we will be left behind and I will be to blame,” he said.

Mikisew Cree Chief Archie Waquan in Fort Chipewyan, Alta.

A playground in Fort Chipewyan overlooking Lake Athabasca.

A hunter’s cabin near the border of Wood Buffalo National Park in the Peace Athabasca delta.

A river snakes through Wood Buffalo National Park.

It is not the first foray into the industry for Mikisew Cree who, last year, together with Fort McKay First Nation, bought a 49 per cent interest in a Suncor Energy storage facility.

A pipeline share is a logical next step, Waquan said, acknowledging there are continuing concerns about industry pollution and water withdrawals, but emphasizing that a seat at the table will help put controls in place.

“I have to look to the future beyond my time here on earth. Times have changed and we have to realize that. We need to go to a modern lifestyle, which I think my First Nation wants and that means we have to deal with industry. We have to keep them in check,” he said.

“You can’t reverse it now, but in time, when all the development is gone from this territory, our land will always come back to where it used to be. It is resilient in a sense,” Waquan said.

However, other oilsands projects go beyond any contemplation of support and both Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation  and Mikisew Cree oppose the massive Teck Frontier project proposed for a site only 30 kilometres south of Wood Buffalo National Park.

The Alberta oilsands meet the boreal forest. Teck is currently proposing to build the Frontier mine, which would become the largest oilsands mine to date.

Ironically, it is likely the Trans Mountain pipeline would transport oil from the Teck development, although Teck spokesman Chris Stannell said that, if the project is approved, the first oil is not expected to flow until 2026, so shipping plans have not yet been determined.

Stannell said the company has signed agreements with 11 Indigenous groups, which include “economic and social benefits and opportunities.” That support includes Fort Chipewyan Metis Local 125, which has signed a participatory agreement with Teck in return for economic benefits and opportunities to negotiate traditional land use and environmental stewardship.

Proposed site of Teck’s Frontier mine 30 kilometres south of Wood Buffalo National Park.

Proposed site of Teck’s Frontier Mine 30 km south of Wood Buffalo National Park. If built it would be the largest mine ever constructed in Alberta’s oilsands.

Alberta’s oilsands north of Fort McMurray.

The $20 billion Teck project, which will advance to federal-provincial review panel hearings this fall, would be the oilsands’ largest open pit mine, covering 292 square kilometres, producing 260,000 barrels of oil a day over 40 years and, according to the company, providing 7,000 construction jobs and 2,500 jobs once the project is operational.

Among the many objections to Teck Frontier, the proximity to the Wood Buffalo National Park boundary is likely to prove a major hurdle.

A petition from Mikisew Cree sparked a UNESCO investigation into threats to the World Heritage Site and the United Nations agency concluded last year that Wood Buffalo is facing threats from energy development, hydro dams and poor management. UNESCO has given Canada an ultimatum to come up with an action plan by the end of the year or risk the park being added to the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger.

On Thursday, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna announced $27.5 million in funding over five years to support the development of an action plan for Wood Buffalo National Park World Heritage Site.

Map of threats to Wood Buffalo National Park from UNESCO report.

Both Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation are preparing their cases for the Teck hearings, but, in the meantime, are negotiating with the company on concerns such as buffer zones and protections for bison and caribou.

“We have to protect the wildlife that is there and the development is getting too close to the area we are trying to protect through UNESCO,” Waquan said.

The question of how to deal with projects such as Teck is complicated, especially given the history of developments being approved despite Indigenous concerns, said Matt Hulse, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation regulatory affairs coordinator.

“There’s a lot of grey. Everyone realizes the jobs are down there (in the oilsands) and that’s where the money comes from. People don’t want the (Teck Frontier) mine to go ahead, but, because we have so little confidence in regulatory process, Indigenous communities are forced to find ways to benefit from the project to offset the impacts. There isn’t any good option,” Hulse said.

Teck Frontier would be built on key habitat for caribou and the Ronald Lake bison herd, the only disease-free, genetically pure wood bison herd in the area.

“Because we have so little confidence in regulatory process, Indigenous communities are forced to find ways to benefit from the project to offset the impacts. There isn’t any good option.” — Matt Hulse, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation regulatory affairs coordinator

Rivers will be diverted and wood bison and caribou herds will be destroyed, said elder Roy Ladouceur, who lives at Poplar Point Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation reserve, 16 kilometres from the Teck site.

“They say they will find ways of preserving the habitat, but I just can’t see it happening. No way and no how. They say they can relocate the animals — you can’t do that to any animal. You are breaking nature’s law. It’s not their home,” he said.

“You can’t seem to make the scientists and environmentalists understand. You can’t break nature’s law.”

Stannell said Teck recognizes the importance of the Ronald Lake bison herd to Indigenous communities and the Frontier project will include “comprehensive bison mitigation and monitoring actions, developed in consultation with indigenous communities, government and stakeholders.”

The project also includes environmental mitigation including a storage pond allowing water withdrawals from the river to be halted during low flow periods, he said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Deranger, an Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation member who worked closely with Chief Allan Adam for six years as he lobbied against oilsands developments said she has watched industry and government wear down Indigenous opposition.

Economic benefits agreements, with companies promising to transfer millions of dollars to First Nations, amount to bribes, Deranger said.

“The way we are allowing this to happen is absurd,” she said.

“This is the next chapter of neo-colonialism. . . . They are saying in order for you to survive in the economic system we have imposed on you, you have to join us. There’s no choice any more. The rights of industry and corporations have taken precedence over Indigenous rights.”

The system is stacked against First Nations who have fought projects all the way through the courts, spending millions of dollars and years of research time, only to be told their rights don’t matter, Deranger said.

“There’s no choice any more. The rights of industry and corporations have taken precedence over Indigenous rights.” — Eriel Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action

And those losses have taken a toll.

“I wouldn’t say it has divided our communities. I would say people are worried about the economic future and they have lost sight of the cultural future because of their economic needs,” she said.

There is a strong case against the Teck proposal because of the obvious effects on bison, caribou, water and air, Deranger said.

“I want to say that there is absolutely no way in hell this government could approve this project, but I just don’t know,” she said.

Now, an additional concern is government ownership of the pipeline, Deranger said.

“Kinder Morgan hadn’t even secured enough oil to flow through it from operators in the tar sands and they haven’t secured a buyers’ market at the other end, so my concern is (government) would want to approve this project because it would secure a substantial amount of oil to flow through the pipeline.”

Within the communities there are mixed feelings about deals with oil companies, with recurring concerns about lack of information from First Nation leaders and companies.

“Teck should be giving information to the members because they are the ones out there fishing and hunting every day,” said Jocelyn Marten, Mikisew Cree community coordinator, pointing out that it has been four years since company representatives met the members.

Smith’s Landing, on the north side of Wood Buffalo, is on Teck’s list of First Nations consulted, but the band’s lands and resources manager Becky Kostka said there has been no meaningful consultation.

“We are deeply concerned about the Teck project and the impact on Wood Buffalo National Park. It’s too big and too close to the park,” she said.

For Robert Grandejambe, the information gap lies with the lack of Mikisew Cree membership meetings, especially in light of the pipeline purchase plan.

“The community is already getting shut-up money from the oil industry. They should be telling them to put that money into protecting the environment,” he said as he hauled in fish from Lake Athabasca to feed his sled dogs.

Others, such as Rigney, believe it is already too late to protect the environment from oilsands ravages.

“I just wish this river flowed south so all the people in Edmonton and Calgary would get this shit instead of us,” she said.

The Narwhal’s reporter Judith Lavoie travelled with Sierra Club BC campaigner Galen Armstrong and Sierra Club BC photographer Louis Bockner to Wood Buffalo National Park in early June. Lavoie’s travel expenses were paid by The Narwhal, with the exception of a flyover of a section of Wood Buffalo National Park, for which she snagged an empty seat in the plane.

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.

Conservation group Keepers of the Athabasca is asking the Alberta government to review water usage rules for oilsands companies as the province struggles with unseasonably low water levels and raging wild fires.

Current rules set out under the Surface Water Quantity Management Framework allow two oilsands majors, Suncor and Syncrude, to continue water withdrawals for their operations even when water levels are extremely low. All other oilsands operators are required to abide by set limits.

Alberta is currently fighting 65 forest fires, some near oilsands projects, that are being fueled by extremely dry conditions. Twenty fires are currently considered “out of control.” This week the government initiated a province-wide fire ban. Water bombers are currently being used to suppress the flames.

“Due to little snowfall and almost no rain so far this spring, there has been little run off into the lakes, rivers and streams,” Jesse Cardinal from Keepers of the Athabasca said. “Add in the major forest fires actively being fought around the province, and water is simply in great demand at this time.”

Cardinal is asking the province if oilsands companies are required to slow production and water withdrawals from the Athabasca River in the face of low levels.

According to Simon Dyer from the Pembina Institute, Suncor and Syncrude insisted on the “seniority of their water licences” during development of the current water use rules.

The two companies argued “their reliance on old infrastructure should allow them to continue to withdraw water from the Lower Athabasca River, no matter how low the flow gets,” Dyer wrote in a letter to Alberta Environment.    

Dyer recommended the province implement a strong ecosystem limit that would place absolute restrictions — for all oilsands operators — on water withdrawal during low flow.

The provincial government ultimately declined to place a zero-withdrawal limit on the two companies and, according to Dyer, “continues to hold Syncrude and Suncor to a lower environmental standard…putting at risk the aquatic ecosystem of one of Alberta’s most ecologically and culturally important rivers.”

The Keepers of the Athabasca want to know if the NDP will consider revising water use rules in light of extreme conditions induced by climate change. The group argues current rules are based “on our once vibrant past when water was plentiful.”

The limits placed on water withdrawals were also designed to protect aboriginal use of the Athabasca River for navigation and traditional activities. But according to John Rigney, resident of Fort Chipewyan, the water levels are too low to support traditional hunting.

“Spring hunts have been very poor due to poor navigation on the river — we simply cannot get to our hunting spots because the water levels are so low in certain areas.”

Rigney added the remote community of Fort Chipewyan is also facing difficulty importing food and supplies.

“We are a community that needs our supplies barged in and flown in,” he said. “This time of year they’re mostly barged in, but that is not happening right now, as the barge can’t navigate, as water levels are so low.”

Image Credit: Twitter

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This is the third instalment in a three-part series on Dr. John O’Connor, the family physician to first identify higher-than-average cancer rates and rare forms of cancer in communities downstream of the Alberta oilsands. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

After the story of Fort Chip’s health problems broke, Health Canada sent physicians out to the small, northern community.

Dr. John O’Connor said one of the Health Canada doctors went into the local nursing station and, in front of a reporter, filled a mug with Fort Chip water and drank from it, saying, ‘See, there’s nothing wrong with it.’

“That was such a kick in the face for everyone,” O’Connor said. “Just a complete dismissal of their concerns.”

Health Canada eventually requested the charts of the patients who had died. Six weeks later they announced the findings of a report that concluded cancer rates were no higher in Fort Chip than expected.

For O’Connor, however, the numbers “just didn’t match up.”

The small town of Fort Chipewyan can reached by plane all year round. In the summer the community can be reached by boat or by ice road during the colder winter months. Photo: Kris Krug

A sign in the Fort Chip airport terminal welcomes visitors to the “oldest settlement in Alberta.” Photo: Kris Krug

In March of 2007 O’Connor received a letter of complaint from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta that accused him of raising “undue alarm.” Three physicians from Health Canada lodged four complaints with the college against O’Connor, claiming he had failed to provide files in a timely fashion and withheld information. They accused him of engendering mistrust.

O’Connor admits that a minor scandal involving a male nurse in Fort Chip who had been stealing morphine and threatening female nurses didn’t help with submitting paperwork. But, he said, the charges were overblown, also including accusations of billing irregularities and ‘double-dipping’ on contracts.

What followed was a nationwide two-year public trial. O’Connor’s name was publicly dragged through the mud while the town of Fort Chip and members of his profession fought to defend him. The attacks on his credibility were widely seen as politicized, leading the Canadian Medical Association to pass resolution #103, to provide protection for whistleblowers like O’Connor.

In 2009, the College of Physicians officially cleared him of any wrong doing, handing along a massive summary file with the word “confidential” stamped across the front. Since then, he’s been heralded as a heroic Canadian whistleblower.

During the ordeal, O’Connor moved back to Nova Scotia for a break while another physician took over his work in Fort Chip.

“I’ve got a very strong wife. My rock. Charlene is just amazing. I don’t think I would have survived if it wasn’t for her,” O’Connor said. “I’m a much tougher person now than what I was. It was hell but I went through it.”

In the interim, a scientist had overseen testing in November of 2007 that warned of high concentrations of arsenic and mercury in the water and traditional foods. A doctor later publicly recommended pregnant women and children not eat any fish from the lake or play in the water.

Health Canada followed up on the recommendation, saying they had already recommended something similar, but the community said it hadn’t been informed.

Then in 2009 an Alberta Cancer Board study was finally released that stated the community had 30 per cent higher rare cancer rates than should be expected. The report amended the Health Canada findings from 2006 that suggested cancer rates were no higher than expected.

In light of this new report, a scientific team was assembled to put together a new study. O’Connor was asked to be a part of the team.

“The fact that we were going to have a health study at Fort Chip [was] very encouraging,” he said.

The frozen expanse of Lake Athabasca. Photo: Kris Krug

But things soon fell apart after a clause in the template of the health study mandated the oil industry be part of the management oversight committee of the research.

The community was outraged, O’Connor said, and the fissure that formed then has, even five years later, still not been mended.

Good intentions

To this day, independent, comprehensive baseline studies of the community of Fort Chip have still not been conducted.

However, last month the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Mikisew Cree First Nation, both local to Fort Chip, released a study conducted in collaboration with scientists from the University of Manitoba. The research showed health impacts downstream of the oilsands are “positively associated” with the development and the consumption of traditional foods.

In 2011, O’Connor was asked to participate in an Alberta government study, one of which will take place in Fort MacKay. The announcement was made publicly, among much publicity, he said. Some of the work being done in Fort MacKay was supposed to act as a template for future Fort Chip research, he said.

A signpost in Fort Chip shows distances and direction to cities across Canada. Photo: Kris Krug

But since then the study has lagged, and, according to O’Connor, his letters and phone calls to the Alberta Health Minister go unanswered. Comprehensive studies of both Fort MacKay and Fort Chip are still pending.

The community members of Fort Chip and O’Connor himself are “demanding the government keep its promise of a health study, but we’re getting nowhere with that,” he said.

Going it alone

O’Connor said for now he’s relying on the independent scientific studies that are being done in the environment downstream of the oilsands. A February 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a cancer-causing pollutant released during the extraction of bitumen in the oilsands, were likely two to three times higher than government and industry estimates.

In November of 2012 federal scientists from Environment Canada presented research that found PAHs from oilsands extraction and processing were accumulating in bodies of water up to 100 kilometres away. Yet another federal study found tailings ponds, which cover an area larger than 176 square kilometres, are seeping waste water and mining-related toxins into local groundwater.

Steam rises from a tailings pond in the Fort McMurray region. Industry estimates there are 176 square kilometres of tailings ponds. Photo: Kris Krug

O’Connor said, put together, these studies paint a disturbing picture. “And you know, all they are telling me completely contradicted what government and industry have been saying for years: that there’s no impact, no evidence of contributions, degradation to the environment from industry.”

Even the release of new research, he says, hasn’t been enough to trigger new health studies.

“So we’re trying to go it alone,” he said.

O’Connor has assembled a team of science and health experts to examine the industrial impacts in Fort MacKay and hopes he can eventually include Fort Chip.

At this point, O’Connor said, neither Fort MacKay nor Fort Chip are in any position to accept a government study on the health impacts of industry. The necessary trust relationships at this point are nonexistent.

An advocate become activist

For O’Connor, his experience working with the community of Fort Chip, and his efforts to find some accountability for their plight, has been something of a transformative experience.

“All I’m doing is my job,” he said. “I’m just… As a physician, I’m an advocate for my patients. I never realized how….” He paused, “exactly what the job meant until Fort Chip.”

O’Connor said he’ll continue fighting for the community of Fort Chip. But beyond that, O’Connor now sees himself as more than just as an advocate for his patients: he’s an activist.

“I’m now – thanks to the Alberta government and the federal government – I’m now a dyed-in-the-wool advocate. I’m an activist for my patients. Never imagined I would be doing this and I’ll do it ‘til the day I die.”

In February 2014, O’Connor traveled to Washington to testify on the affects of the oilsands industry, in light of the U.S.’s pending decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which will connect Alberta to refineries and export facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. He was invited by Senator Barbara Boxer.

Dr. John O’Connor speaking on the negative impacts of oilsands development at a press conference in Washington. Photo: EWPChairBoxer / Flickr

“It was gratifying to get the invitation from Senator Boxer’s office,” O’Connor said. “The reception there was incredible. The information that was already known. I was very happy that I was walking into a setting where I wasn’t having to start from scratch.”

O’Connor added, “I made it very firm that I’m not saying to shut things down … But there has to be a sort of a middle ground.”

He added, “I certainly hold the governments to account … But government has failed, completely failed people, betrayed people.”

Read part 1 of The Oilsands Cancer Story: Dr. John O’Connor and the Dawn of a New Oilsands Era and part 2: Deformed Fish, Dying Muskrats Cause Doctor to Sound Alarm.

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.

This is the second instalment of a three-part series on Dr. John O’Connor, the family physician to first identify higher-than-average cancer rates and rare forms of cancer in communities downstream of the Alberta oilsands. Read Part 1 and Part 3.

When Dr. John O’Connor arrived in Fort Chipewyan in 2000, it took him a little while to get familiar with the population.

The town was a bit larger than his previous post of Fort MacKay, with a population of around 1,000 at that time. Locals had few options when it came to medical care. Their town was 300 kilometres north of Fort McMurray and accessible only by plane in the summer or by ice road for a few of the colder months.

O’Connor recognized it was a close-knit community and yet hard to get a foothold in.

“You had to be trusted to gain their respect, I guess,” he said.

Most doctors hadn’t established a continuous practice up there, O’Connor said, so the community hadn’t received continuous care by the same medical expert for many years.

“What they were looking for was one pair of eyes, one pair of hands. Consistency,” he recounts.

“That was one of the reasons why I was approached to provide service. So that made it easier to get to know people and for them to get to know me.”

O’Connor immediately began poring over patient files, piecing together what a series of seasonal doctors had left behind. Patients there felt there was no continuity between what rotating doctors would say about their symptoms.

Yet, to O’Connor, the files coupled with his continuous care of individuals began to paint one alarming picture.

“What had been documented before from the patients was quite concerning. I got to know people then and people come in for various symptoms, from the day-to-day bread and butter type of practice to more serious stuff. I began to see that there are issues in Fort Chip that I shouldn’t be seeing at a practice even in Fort McMurray, with 4,000 to 5,000 patients. I wasn’t seeing anything like the pathology I was seeing in Fort Chip.”

What O’Connor discovered was a strikingly high concentration of cancer in the small community. The files were actually well organized, O’Connor said, and he began to add to them, ordering new tests and gaining new patients.

“The numbers just started to mount up,” he said. “It just didn’t make sense.”

O’Connor began reaching out to other doctors and specialists, asking them if they also thought the pathologies in Fort Chip were notable. Even at that early time, O’Connor said, “there was a general agreement” that the cancer rates and rates of other illnesses were unusually high. O’Connor cautioned, though, that those were the early days: “of course, at that point, that was very early – early times of trying to figure out why.”

“And I guess, in many respects we’re still trying to figure that out, because no studies have ever been done,” he said.

“The thing that was really striking was that Fort Chip is way off the beaten track,” O’Connor said. “It’s right on the edge of the Canadian shield, in a gorgeous location. The population — less so now — but back then, probably 80 per cent of the community in one way or another subsisted off the land.”

Located in the muskeg of Canada’s expansive boreal forest, Fort Chip is located on the shores of Lake Athabasca and is surrounded by prime hunting lands. Throughout history, traditional peoples have fed themselves on a steady diet of moose, caribou, fish and other local fauna.

A river meanders through the muskeg of the Boreal Forest. Photo: Kris Krug

The frozen shore of Lake Athabasca. The Athabasca River flows north through the oilsands region and drains directly into Lake Athabasca. Photo: Kris Krug

But by the early 2000s the locals began noticing disturbing changes in the local environment.

As O’Connor documented case after case of cancer and other illnesses, he also began hearing more stories of a changing local landscape.

“I had a lot of concerns expressed by especially the elders,” O’Connor recounted, “about the changes that they’ve seen in their environment around Fort Chip in the, probably, 10 plus years, prior to me coming in.”

The thing he heard elders talking the most about, he said, was water.

“They talked about the fishing and going out on Lake Athabasca to fish, and then stopping at one of the many islands in the lake and … camping for a day or two, being able to drink the water directly from the lake and how fresh it tasted. It was really good water, and they’d use it to make tea and make soup and stuff like that. And they could no longer do it.”

O’Connor says elders described a “constant sheen of oil” atop the water, the colours of the rainbow and attributed the water’s foul taste to that. It wasn’t long before locals began asking if the sheen was connected to what was going on upstream, O’Connor said.

What sounded the alarm were the strange fish.

“They talked about the fish that they were catching with increasing regularity,” O’Connor said. “These fish had deformities and missing parts and extra parts. Fish with red blotches all over them. Fish didn’t taste the same. Many of the elders, traditional food consumers, threw the fish back into the lake.”

Robert Grandjambe Jr., a trapper and fisher in Fort Chipewyan, shows sick fish from Lake Athabasca. He explains he feeds strange-looking fish to his dogs. Photo: Kris Krug

After that the local muskrat population died off. Muskrat were consumed by locals and their pelts used or traded. Eventually they became harder to find. And when they were found, they were often dead or the meat would smell like oil and taste bad.

Plants used in traditional medicine began to disappear too. The rat root from the shore of Lake Athabasca became increasingly scarce.

O’Connor remembers one elder, Mary Rose Waquan who only recently passed away, who told him of the ducks her sons used to hunt.

“Mary Rose was a very traditional … She would eat lots. There’s very little that she would not eat. But she said the meat was bad, and she had to throw the ducks out.”

Mary Rose’s son, Archie Waquan, went on to become chief of the Mikisew Cree Nation in Fort Chip. Archie, who now owns a bed and breakfast that O’Connor frequents, has said the same thing over many late-night conversations or morning cups of coffee.

O’Connor said the community of Fort Chip, although it was suffering, hesitated to “point fingers.”

A derelict fishing boat near the shore of Lake Athabasca. Photo: Kris Krug

“They largely didn’t suggest that there was a connection with industry, but they wondered,” O’Connor said. “Most of their concern was trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

O’Connor said that the community’s multiple attempts to have fish tested by Fish and Wildlife for analysis were bungled, with samples forgotten, decayed and unfit for testing.

What was once a thriving fishery eventually disappeared.

The fishing wharf in Fort Chipewyan on the shores of Lake Athabasca. Photo: Kris Krug

Sounding the alarm

In 2003, another physician with experience in Fort Chip, Dr. Michael Sauvé, spoke up at a hearing about unusually high disease rates in First Nation communities. Afterwards the provincial Energy and Utilities Board recommended a study, funded by industry, be conducted in communities of concern, but the recommendation was never followed.

By 2004 O’Connor was leaving messages with Health Canada about what he was seeing in Fort Chip.

Things changed after an elderly patient, a school bus driver, who had lived a relatively healthy life came in to see O’Connor one day at lunchtime. All the other medical staff were out to lunch so it was just the two of them.

“I was still behind the front desk in the waiting room doing paperwork and he walked in. The lights were turned off…I saw him walking in and I came to the door and I said, ‘How are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m not feeling well, so we just need to make an appointment to see you.’ And in the dim light — there was one light on behind the front desk — he looked odd. I knew him. I’d seen him probably a few weeks before for something minor. And I turned on the light and realized he was jaundiced. I asked him, ‘What’s going on?’ He told me he just didn’t feel well. He lost a bit of weight. His appetite was off, felt a bit nauseous. So I said, ‘No, let’s get you into the examining room now.’

The patient was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare form of bile duct cancer, and died soon after.

O’Connor was intimately familiar with the rare disease — his own father, a book salesman, succumbed to it in 1993.

“I’d never thought I’d see it again,” O’Connor said, referencing the bile duct cancer. “And then turning up in Fort Chip, realizing how rare it was, it was a shock.”

Artificial flowers decorate graves in the Fort Chipewyan cemetery. Photo: Kris Krug

In retrospect, O’Connor said he feels being there to recognize that uncommon cancer is significant. “If I had to think of why, why did I come to Canada? This might sound corny or something [but] I truly believe that this was the reason.”

It was this experience with such a rare disease that led O’Connor to reach out to Health Canada. He said he wanted assurances that he shouldn’t be worried. “But there was never a response,” he said.

In 2006 a CBC reporter named Erik Denison was told to investigate the health of people from Fort Chip by a local businesswoman Frances Jean, according to O’Connor.

When that reporter contacted O’Connor, it was the first time he stated publicly that he felt what was happening in Fort Chip was a public health issue.

“He reported it and it went everywhere. It was the most astounding thing … life for me has never been the same since.”

Read Part 1 of this series: John O’Connor and the Dawn of a New Oilsands Era. Read Part 3: The Spotlight Turns on Fort Chip Doctor.

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.

This is the first instalment of a three-part series on Dr. John O’Connor, the family physician to first identify higher-than-average cancer rates and rare forms of cancer in communities downstream of the Alberta oilsands. Read Part 2 and Part 3.

The day John O’Connor landed in Canada from his native Ireland,* he had no idea how much he would end up giving to this land, nor how much it would ultimately demand from him.

“I had no intention of staying in Canada,” he told DeSmog Canada in a recent interview. “The intention was to go back.”

“But I got enchanted with Canada.”

That was back in 1984 when O’Connor first arrived in Canada for a three-month locum.

With a large family practice already well established in Scotland, O’Connor had no real intention of settling in this foreign land where, in a few decades, he would find himself embroiled in a national conflict — a conflict that would pick at so many of our country’s deepest-running wounds involving oil, First Nations and the winners and losers of our resource race.

No, when O’Connor landed in Canada he was just planning to fill a temporary family physician position in Nova Scotia. Soon after his arrival, however, his light curiosity about Canada transformed into a newfound passion. He was hooked.

“It was just a perfect match for me.”

After nearly a decade, O’Connor decided a shift to Alberta made sense for him and his growing family. He travelled there in search of what so many still do: opportunity.

“The kids were getting to the point where I realized I would probably like to look at opportunities in terms of careers that may not have been available in the Maritimes. So I came out to Alberta in 1993.”

O’Connor landed in Edmonton, rented a car and explored four practices with openings for new physicians.

“Fort McMurray was the last destination, and it looked the most attractive of all of the options,” he said.

Back in ’93 Fort McMurray was an entirely different place. With a population of around 30,000 people, the community was far from a boom town. It was under-doctored, said O’Connor, and extremely friendly. Within a few weeks, the O’Connor family made friends with patients who had kids of a similar age. They joined sports teams and attended good schools.

“It was good. Don’t regret it for a second,” O’Connor said.

New beginnings

At the time, the oilsands were hardly a topic of conversation, O’Connor remembers.

“You could certainly see what was being emitted from the smokestacks in the distance,” he said. Once, O’Connor even drove toward the smoke, trying to catch a glimpse of the source, but he never spent much time thinking about it.

Emissions rise from industrial facilities in the oilsands region. Photo: Kris Krug

Many of his patients were working in the oilsands.

“I would listen to their descriptions of work and everything else. And it was fascinating, but I really didn’t have time and probably not, at that point, the interest in knowing more about it,” he said.

In 1998, O’Connor travelled out to Fort MacKay, home of the Fort MacKay First Nation, for the first time.

A road sign directs traffic to Syncrude operations and the community of Fort MacKay along the main highway in Fort McMurray. Photo: Kris Krug

“It was an eye-opener,” he said, “realizing how close the community was to development. How much the community depended on the tar sands.”

When he first arrived the medical centre was no more than two double-wide trailers pulled together. Within two or three years, the band had built an impressive new centre for the community.

“[There was] obviously a very important connection between the community of Fort MacKay and industry for socio-economic reasons,” O’Connor came to recognize.

It was the dawn of a new era for the region, O’Connor said. Things started to get busier.

“This was the beginning of the two or three booms that we’ve seen over the last about 14 years or so. Just to be there as an observer of this and not directly dependent on the mystery…” he said of the oilsands boom.

“But realizing its importance, that it was a…” O’Connor trailed off with a sigh.

He picked up again: “I’m going to write a book on this.”

“My wife has grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said, ‘Do it,’” he laughed.

“We’ve talked about it for a few years and that early time that I’m trying to describe to you, it was fascinating and very important for what came later.”

Dawn of a new oilsands era

The ’90s were a transformative time for the Alberta oilsands. New advancements in technology improved the economic prospects of extracting and processing the resource and led to an ambitious industry and government strategy to dramatically increase production in 1995.

Highway 63, also known as the “Highway of Death” for its dangerous and busy conditions, runs through Fort McMurray. Photo: Kris Krug

As a part of this new strategy the Canadian and Albertan governments dropped royalty and tax rates in an effort to generate interest in the resource.

What’s contained in the tarry sands of northern Alberta is a heavy hydrocarbon called bitumen. As industry describes it, unprocessed bitumen has the consistency of “peanut butter” and, as a result, requires tremendous amounts of energy to extract, process and upgrade into lighter fuels.

Before the technology existed to essentially melt the bitumen out of the sands, oil companies expressed little interest in the region.

But all that changed with new methods for extraction and upgrading and some of the lowest royalties and taxes in the world.

By 1995, Alberta announced a new goal of producing one million barrels a day from the oilsands by 2020. They passed that goal 16 years early in 2004. Plans now involve producing up to 5 million barrels a day by 2030.

Retired machinery forms part of a roadside display along the ‘Syncrude Loop’ in Fort McMurray. Photo: Kris Krug

While these transformations took place, O’Connor’s business steadily grew, as did the need for him in downstream and local communities, especially First Nation communities.

O’Connor began to see the oilsands at this time as a “two-edged sword.”

“Couldn’t possibly live without it,” he said, “but at the same time, having to contend with the fact — no doubt — about the impact; the adverse impact on environment and life in general.”

O’Connor said that in those early years the impact of development wasn’t yet visible, but by the early 2000s things started to change.

Read Part 2: Deformed Fish, Dying Muskrats Cause Doctor to Sound Alarm. Read Part 3: The Spotlight Turns on Fort Chip Doctor.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated O’Connor was from Scotland. Image Credit: In 2011 author Carol Linnitt travelled to the oilsands region and Fort Chipewyan with photographer Kris Krug. All photos by Kris Krug.

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.

A health study released today by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Mikisew Cree, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Manitoba, is the first of its kind to draw associations between environmental contaminants produced in the oilsands and declines in health in Fort Chipewyan, a native community about 300 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, Alberta.

The report, Environmental and Human Health Implications of Athabasca Oil Sands, finds health impacts for communities downstream of the Alberta oilsands are “positively associated” with industrial development and the consumption of traditional foods, including locally caught fish.

Dr. Stéphane McLachlan, lead environmental health researcher for the report, said the study’s results “as they relate to human health, are alarming and should function as a wakeup call to industry, government and communities alike.”

Findings include generally high concentrations of carcinogenic PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and heavy metals arsenic, mercury, cadmium and selenium in kidney and liver samples from moose, ducks, muskrats and beavers harvested by community members. A press release for the study says bitumen extraction and upgrading is a major emitter of all of these contaminants.

The Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Program has released data about the increases in these contaminants, but fails to address and monitor impacts to First Nations traditional foods,” said Mikisew Cree Chief Steve Courtoreille. “We are greatly alarmed and demand further research and studies are done to expand on the findings of this report.”

The First Nations worked in concert with University of Manitoba scientists, blending “western science and traditional ecological knowledge” to evaluate contaminant levels and potential community exposure, according to the press release.

“This is the first health study that has been conducted in close collaboration with community members of Fort Chipewyan,” McLachlan said in a recent interview.

“The results are grounded in the environment and health sciences, but also in the local traditional knowledge shared by community members. Unlike any of the other studies it has been actively shaped and controlled by both the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Mikisew Cree First Nation from the outset.”

The report comes on the heels of the fifth annual ‘healing walk’ in the oilsands region, during which Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said the report would “blow the socks off industry and government.”

Concerns over high rates of rare forms of bile duct, cervical and lung cancers have worried residents of Fort Chipewyan, a small community 300 kilometres downstream of the oilsands, for years.

A government report in March 2014 found elevated rates of the three forms of cancer in Fort Chip, but suggested overall cancer rates fall on par with cancer rates elsewhere in the province. The report’s author, Dr. James Tablot, chief medical officer for Alberta health, said there was little evidence environmental factors played a role in the elevated cancer rates.

The report was treated as largely inconclusive and confirmed the need for further, independent study.

An editorial in the Calgary Herald argued the report confirmed the need to “settle the matter once and for all” and called for an independent study.

“Only then will the nagging fear — whether founded or unfounded — that the Alberta government is too closely linked with the oilsands to provide objective data and conclusions, be put to rest.”

The community of Fort Chip has struggled for years to have a comprehensive, baseline health study conducted.

In March, Chief Adam suggested it was “time for a real study, that is peer reviewed and done in partnership with our communities.” He suggested the government report was conducted to “ease the public response to this and garner more support for approvals of more projects in the region.”

Today researchers and community leaders called for further investigation of contaminant concentrations, as well as community-based monitoring and improved risk communications from government and industry.

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Organizers of the Tar Sands Healing Walk, a 14-kilometre spiritual walk through lands impacted by oilsands (also called tar sands) extraction in northern Alberta, have announced this year’s Healing Walk on June 28th will be the last.

“It was a difficult decision to make,” admits Jesse Cardinal, co-organizer of the Healing Walk. “We felt the original goals of the healing walk of letting local communities know that they had support for the issues of mass industry in the territory and gaining further attention of the issues of tar sands development in a way that was non-aggressive were achieved.”

“Our work will continue in the territory, with the people and communities, but, will look different, so I wouldn’t really call it an end, as a new beginning,” Cardinal told DeSmog Canada. Cardinal is a member of the Kikino Metis Settlement in northeastern Alberta.

The Healing Walk is the only grassroots event to bring people face to face with Canada’s oilsands, one of the largest oil reserves and industrial projects in the world. Participants in the annual event walk through the industrialized landscape, passing by active oilsands facilities releasing toxins into the air, chemical tailings ponds the size of lakes and a barren land in an otherwise lush and green region of Alberta's boreal forest.

But all this is secondary to the Healing Walk’s core theme: hope that the land, water and people drastically impacted by two decades of rapid oilsands extraction will one day heal.

Healing Walk is Not a Protest or a Rally

“We're not going out there for yet another protest, yet another rally. We're out there to be together, to heal, and those two things are very appealing in a context of seemingly endless struggle,” says Chelsea Flook, a Healing Walk organizer since 2010.

“[For participants] the focus on the space being primarily a healing space is a very strong draw,” Flook told DeSmog. Flook is originally from Ontario, but she is currently based in Edmonton and works for the Mother Earth Action Cooperative.

Organizers have been clear from the beginning that the Healing Walk is not a protest. No one shouts out political chants during the walk that takes place just north of Canada’s famous oil town, Fort McMurray. The only banner present is the one leading the procession with the words “Stop the Destruction. Start the Healing” painted on it.

Healing Walk procession in 2013. Photo by Zack Embree.

Instead, participants are led by First Nations elders along the so-called ‘Syncrude Loop’ (oilsands company Syncrude has an operation nearby) as they pray and make offerings in the four directions: north, south, east and west. To complete the loop on foot takes about six hours.

“Making prayers to the four directions woke up the spirit of the land, the water and the people. It has awoken a creative force within the people that will suffocate the destructive force that is the tar sands. That is a pretty powerful warrior to deal with,” says Clayton Thomas-Muller, MC of this year’s Healing Walk and Idle No More campaigner.

Clayton Thomas-Muller with Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (left) and Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Lubicon Cree Nation (right). Photo by Zack Embree.

The Healing Walk is a 3-Day Gathering: Workshops, Communal Meals, Camping

The two days prior to the actual walk have the outward appearance of festival. Tents cluster together (camping is free for participants) in a field on the shores of Lake Gregoire, also called Willow Lake. Communal meals and workshops covering a wide range of oilsands-related issues, from First Nations treaty rights to pipelines, take place at the campsite — an hour’s drive from the starting point of the Healing Walk at Crane Lake Park.

“You come as an individual but you leave as part of the whole which is part of the beauty of the Healing Walk,” says Thomas-Mueller, who is a member of the Missinipi Ethinewak or Big River Cree in Manitoba.

A participant of last year's Healing Walk. Photo by Zack Embree.

“This year, we are focusing mainly on local voices. Some of the people we have speaking, have never been heard of before, but are concerned about what is happening in the Fort McMurray indigenous territory. So more going back to being a grassroots event,” Cardinal says.

Local indigenous voices will include Matthew Whitehead, a traditional knowledge carrier from Fort Chipewyan, Annette Campre and a resident of Fort McKay, who will lead workshops on education and spirituality. The physician who first noticed and researched high rates of cancer among Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation members – Dr. John O’Connor –will speak as part of a health panel.

Last year’s Healing Walk attracted well over 500 people, the largest turnout thus far. Internationally known speakers such as 350.org founder Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein were among them.

Naomi Klein speaking at last year's Healing Walk event. Photo by Zack Embree.

“At last year’s walk, I saw a fundamental shift in energy that let me know we have already won,” Thomas-Muller told DeSmog Canada.

Will the land ever heal? Organizers are optimistic

For many a ‘win’ for First Nations as well as non-indigenous Canadians over the oilsands industry is hard to see. Despite a few pipeline project delays – notably Keystone XL in the U.S. and Northern Gateway in B.C. – the oilsands industry has expanded rapidly and relatively unimpeded under the current federal government.

And yet Healing Walk organizers believe one day the land they have guided hundreds of people through over the last four years will heal.

“I do believe so, but not in my lifetime," Cardinal says. "The destruction is too big. But way down the road when our existence here is different, and more people have demanded an energy future that isn't destructive to the land, air, water and all living beings will we achieve harmony." Cardinal is a coordinator with the Keepers of the Athabasca, the main organizing group behind the Healing Walk.

A sign designates an industrial area under restoration. Photo by Zack Embree.

“It will take a couple of lifetimes for the land to recover, but a metamorphosis will take place and create new life. Indigenous people will be a part of this and those who do not follow their lead will be left behind. The circle of life will continue,” Thomas-Muller says.

Healing Walk organizer Chelsea Flook, who is not indigenous, believes the only way to get there and avoid the catastrophic effects of runaway climate change at the same time is to follow the lead of indigenous peoples.

“We need to take direction from indigenous communities, to honour their ways of knowing and being. It might mean some awkward dancing between worldviews, it might entail some moments of discomfort,” she says.

“But by supporting Indigenous communities' struggle to protect the land [in the oilsands], we can also fight back against the 'business as usual' plans of industry that entail a six-degree climate warming scenario,” Flook said.

Image Credit: All photos by Zack Embree.

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Dr. David Schindler, the scientist who sounded the alarm on tar sands contamination back in 2010, has suddenly found his research backed by an Environment Canada study recently published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The federal study, which confirmed Schindler’s hotly-contested research, has reignited concerns over the pace and scale of development in the Athabasca region, an area now beset with a host of ecological and human health concerns. 

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If you ask an Environment Canada media spokesperson about contamination resulting from tar sands operations, they will not tell you the federal government has failed to adequately monitor the mega-project's effects on water.

They most certainly will not say outright that the federal government has failed to monitor the long term or cumulative environmental effects of the world's largest industrial project. They won't say it, but not because it isn't the case. 

The tar sands are contaminating hundreds of kilometres of land in northern Alberta with cancer-causing contaminants and neurotoxins.

And although federal scientists have confirmed this, they are prevented from sharing information about their research with the media. 

The result is an overly-monitored process that causes burdensome delays in media-scientist interactions. The overwhelming consequence is that the media has stopped talking to the country's national scientists.

No federal studies have researched contamination in furbearing mammals living near the tar sands, although species decline – as is evident in the disappearance of caribou – is becoming an increasing problem.

The Alberta Cancer Board confirmed in 2008 that higher than normal rates of rare cancer were present in the small community. The government refused to remove the charge of alarmism from O'Connor's file until late 2009, despite express wishes from the residents of Fort Chipewyan to have the accusation dropped.

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