Sierra Club born too late

Canada would be pristine if it existed in the late 15th century

Re: Site C powers LNG, Letters, Dec. 7

The Sierra Club — Where were you when we really needed you?

Oh, what a pristine place Canada could have turned out to be if only the Sierra Club had been there when, in the late 15th century, French and British expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast, followed in the late 1700s by Spanish explorers and British navigator James Cook on the Pacific Northwest coast.

Surely, early environmental activism would have prevented Canada’s national “disaster” of a transcontinental railroad, poisoning and defiling its natural landscape. There would not have been a “last spike” in 1885 since there would not have been a “first spike” in 1881.

But beyond this, the early environmental opportunities for saving Canada’s planet would have been endless:

The ugly scar of the Trans-Canada Highway would not have desecrated Canada’s map; pipelines would not have been built; hydroelectric dams would not flood large parcels of land; oil & gas deposits would have stayed in the ground where they belong; mining would not have polluted aboriginal settlements; transportation would have remained where rivers flow; the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System would have been rejected as environmentally unsound; Atlantic & Pacific seaports would have merely been sleepy fishing harbours and there would have been just trees where now cities sprawl.

And, of course, Site C would have been a non-starter.

Canada would have remained pristine and untouched if only the Sierra Club had been there in the very beginning. E.W. BOPP Tsawwassen