Actress Page slams N.S. gas storage project

HALIFAX • Actor Ellen Page is once again harnessing her massive online following to advocate for environmental issues in her home province: this time, publicly opposing a controversial project that would eventually see natural gas stored in huge underground caverns north of Halifax.

Alton Natural Gas LP intends to use water from the Shubenacadie River to flush out underground salt deposits to create the caverns east of Alton, N.S., then pump the leftover brine solution into the river. The planned has raised the ire of Indigenous protesters who have set up a permanent protest camp near the waterway.

Members of the Sipekne’katik First Nation in nearby Indian Brook argue that the project will damage the 73-kilometre tidal river, which runs through the middle of mainland Nova Scotia.

The Halifax-born Page echoed their concerns on Friday, lambasting the project in a series of tweets to her 1.4 million followers.

“This project is a massive risk to the Shubenacadie River. Alton Gas will be releasing 10 million litres of brine into the river each day,” she wrote in a handwritten note posted on her Twitter account. “Mi’kmaq and non-Indigenous allies are actively opposing the completion of the project, and they need our support.”

The movie star also tweeted out a recommendation for There’s Something in the Water, a book by Nova Scotian author and activist Ingrid Waldron, which outlines cases of environmental racism in Nova Scotia and Canada. In an interview, Waldron said Indigenous communities are the ones most affected by environmental racism — and that includes members of the Sipekne’katik First Nation.

“What binds every case of environmental racism in Nova Scotia and Canada … is the failure to consult with the communities, whether you’re talking about Indigenous communities or black communities,” she said.

Waldron, a sociologist and associate professor at Dalhousie University, is also the leader of a community-based research and engagement project on environmental racism in Indigenous and African Nova Scotian communities.

She said she’s had a conversation with Page in which they discussed ways to collaborate on getting the broader public more interested in these issues.