Letter epitome of free speech

Dear editor: I must start by expressing my gratitude for the letters to the editor section, my hero James Miller, and the present city editor Joe Fries for what I believe is the epitome of freedom of speech.

In Maude Barlow’s recent excellent book, Boiling Point, she documents six large oil spills in Alberta from April 2011, until July 2015. The total of these was over 10 million litres. Moreover, in 2013, Global News reported that Alberta had averaged two crude oil spills a day for nearly four decades. Enough said.

As a fourth-generation Canadian, who has lived in B.C. for 83 years, the majority of it near the magnificent English Bay, perhaps I have a different view of an impending disaster. The five-million litre spill of bitumen in 2015, occurred in a pipeline only one year old. Please don’t try to impress me with modern technology, or the reliability of foreign-owned tankers.

I am dismayed that a recent contributor (Herald, Feb. 9) who believes that the economy of Alberta and B.C justifies the obvious threat to the environment that the Kinder Morgan pipeline presents. The other inference, that shipping raw materials out of the country, whether logs or oil, is the best approach for creating employment.

I believe that anyone with grandchildren wants to start by minimizing the damage to our B.C. water system and coastal areas, not proposing more threats to it.

By the way, as a kid, I had never heard of bottled water. Don Forsyth Osoyoos