Eby Heller, running through downtown Montreal, flanked by a multi-wheeled support team

(Oct 2nd) Environmental history was made last Monday morning when athlete Eby Heller ran over a small bridge spanning the Rivière des Prairies and set foot on the island of Montreal. After fevered weeks of planning, and nineteen days in the field, the “Run for our Rivers” marathon had finally reached its halfway point, bearing a message of love and reverence for Quebec’s free-flowing rivers from the edge of Cree territory, in Matagami, all the way to the province’s largest metropolis, and to the doorstep of Hydro Quebec’s head office!

There were a few moments of high drama as Eby’s run unfolded. My favorite memories include passing flyers while sprinting beside a bike convoy following Eby down Côte-des-Neiges; watching Courtney from CKUT Community Radio dash out of the station with her shoes untied to lope alongside Eby for a “running” interview, and experiencing an epiphany as Eby whipped round the corner from Parc Avenue, onto René-Lévesque and ventured into a thicket of media cameras.

Despite forecasts of rotten weather, the sky actually cleared for our brief demo, replete with whistle toots, balloons and a megaphone, in front of Hydro Quebec, that attracted twenty-some odd people.

Conspicuously absent from the welcoming party, though present in everyone’s mind, was Premier Jean Charest, without whose wrong-headed insistence on following an outmoded, 1970s-style energy policy this marathon might not have been. In a policy statement unveiled last year, known as the Plan Nord, Charest announces his intention to produce 8000 new megawatts of electric capacity by building dams on the North Shore, but he has been cagey about listing on what rivers specifically these dams will be constructed. If both the Romaine, and (as Charest has suggested) the Little Mecatina are dammed, the resulting electric capacity would still total less than 3000 MW. So where would the extra 5000 MW come from? Quebecers deserve to hear of a transparent long-term energy strategy that is based on more than hints, so as to make an informed decision about whether to support this strategy of not.

Jean Charest also needs to answer questions about the public environmental review process, the BAPE (Bureau des audiences publiques en environnement), specifically about why his government has tolerated an arrangement by which it is the promoter, and not a neutral third party, that writes the impact assesment for large-scale projects such as dams. He also needs to come clean, and explain in scientific terms exactly what he means in when he says that large-scale hydro projects, like the four proposed dams on the Romaine River, are green energy.

Because everybody, even a recalcitrant premier, deserves a chance to defend themselves, Alliance Romaine has written to invite Jean Charest to a public, televised debate about the usefulness of the Romaine project, to be held Oct 4th when Alliance Romaine reaches Quebec City. By doing this we want to encourage a culture in which energy policy, and other important questions, are exposed to full public scrutiny, and vigorously analyzed so as to favour the best option.

Although Charest has yet to take us up on our challenge, we have an ally in the National Assembly in the person of Québec Solidaire’s MNA for Mercier Amir Khadir, who has been very supportive of Alliance Romaine’s efforts, and it is our hope that in the coming days Khadir will be able to use question period to encourage Charest to try to justify himself more publically.

As these line are being written, Alliance Romaine is carrying the marathon eastward, with the goal of reaching the Romaine River on October 18th. Through the marathon, we seek to promote eight demands, including:

• a halt to the construction of four dams on the Romaine River
• a moratorium on new large-scale hydroelectric dam projects in Quebec
• an end to energy subsidies (selling electricity at below cost) to big businesses
• a reform and democratization of the public environmental review process (the BAPE)

If you would like to help in our campiagn, or for more info, please write to us at info@allianceromaine.org

Warm wishes to all!

Chris, with the Alliance Romaine marathon team

Premier Jean Charest has been oficially challenged to a debate about Quebec’s energy program, and in particular about the Romaine and other rivers. Click here to read our open letter to him (in French only at the moment).

Rick Peyser, a tireless runner from Vermont, entering the outskirts of Gatineau

Rivers for all Ages

One of the neat things about organizing a marathon is that you get to meet and interact with a kaleidoscope of gutsy, motivated and often inspirational runners at a time when they are being tested, and striving towards a far-off goal that it periodically seems impossible to reach. I’ve often asked myself what it takes to make an activist. What qualities or history would prompt a person to step out of the crowd to run 42 kilometers, say, to protect a river that the pessimists would have us believe is already lost?

As the “Run for our Rivers” marathon progressed through its third week, descending the Ottawa Valley and approaching the urban centres of Gatineau and Montreal, I found myself giving this question a lot more attention. Sometimes a biographical detail would jump out at me, but there seemed to be little underlying commonality beyond a propensity to follow quirky career paths, and perhaps a certain independent-mindedness.

Eventually, I concluded that the marathoners, in their diversity, basically represent all of us. There are natives and non-natives, men and women, young, old, city dwellers and country dwellers. No matter who you are, or where you hang out, you have something to gain from living in or near a province that still boasts free-flowing rivers.

Rick Peyser, a 59 year-old Vermonter, and up to now our oldest runner, put this well. “There are so few places like that left on the planet,” he told me, when I asked him why he had decided to exert himself for the Romaine. A seasoned traveller, and projects manager for a fair trade coffee firm, Rick is in a good position to make this observation.

Rick Peyser’s home state is, truth be told, a significant importer of Quebec hydro. But through the efforts of its citizens, a few years back Vermont adopted an energy efficiency programme which resulted in the state’s electricity consumption decreasing five per cent between 2000 and 2009. Now energy watchdog groups like Fondations Rivières are studying ways to import Vermont’s experience here to Quebec. Reducing Quebec’s domestic consumption of electricity by five per cent would allow us to free up as much power as is slated to be produced on the Romaine at a much lower cost than the eight billion dollars that Hydro Quebec is projecting for the Romaine project. By continuing to cultivate ties, and share info with Vermont activists like Rick, Alliance Romaine can go places!

Coming second to Rick in the category of age, but earning kudos in his own right is David Tacium, a 53 year-old language teacher and community radio host from Montreal, who scored our best time so far by finishing 42 kilometers in an incredible three hours and twenty-nine and a half minutes. David’s knack for clear-sighted analysis of problems, plus his raw determination kept him going. “This hurts, and we’re doing it because it’s worth it,” he told me. Last spring, when I showed David the online slideshow of a 2008 canoe expedition down the Romaine River, I could see his eyes lock on the screen, and I knew right away that his admiration for one of Quebec’s most beautiful rivers would carry him through the rigours of training and make him a valued ally.

Anita Roussiouk, ready to run!

On the final approach to Montreal, the Alliance Romaine message was carried by Anita Roussiouk, our youngest athlete at 16, who had the disadvantage of running in the rain, but stayed articulate and cheerful, covering the half-marathon (21.1 km) distance between St. Eustache and Laval in about two and a half hours.

Anita was the eighteenth marathoner to carry the message in an uninterrupted relay from Matagami, near the James Bay Highway where it was entrusted to us by Cree trapper Freddy Jolly. In all, Alliance Romaine is counting on about thirty-five runners to complete our cross-province trek, conveying the important lesson that hydroelectricty is not green, and that Quebec’s free-flowing rivers, while increasingly rare, can provide something of lasting benefit whether we are paddlers, commercial fishers, First Nations hunters, nature lovers, biologists, or just engaged citizens.

Stay tuned for more stories and adventures!
Chris, with the road crew for Alliance Romaine

Runner Giroflée Arsenault, followed by Geneviève Huchette on bicycle, crossing la Vérendrye Park

(Sept. 21st) As the “Run for our Rivers” marathon entered its second
week, we found ourselves in La Vérendrye Park, following the calls of
migrating geese as we headed south. It was without question an
uplifting experience to jog past dazzling lakes, dark rivers, and
soaring, wooded escarpments. But behind the curtain of natural beauty,
we could sense that something was not quite right.

Advancing at a runner’s, rather than a driver’s pace, you are more apt
to note the profusion of roadside signs announcing hunting, logging,
and, yes, hydroelectric reservoirs right in the thick of what is
formally called the La Vérendrye Wildlife Reserve. Clearcuts, both
long-ago and recent are periodically visible from the highway.

On websites, and to casual tourists, La Vérendrye is known as a park,
and roadmaps do much to maintain the illusion by coloring La
Vérendrye, and similar areas across the province, a dark green.

Montrealers out for a weekend might end up asking “What are these
environmentalists complaining about? Quebec has lots of protected
areas.” But out of the eighteen or so categories of “protected” areas
to be found in the province, only a small number, representing a
fraction of the total land surface of “protected areas”, actually ban
industrial activities like clearcut logging and dam construction that
threaten the long-term health of ecosystems.

Maintaining a perception of “green” spaces does much to ensure
citizens’ complacency, and to avoid the sort of tough policy debate
that might force a reluctant government to change its priorities.

And in much the same way that opinion-makers have been repeating
tirelessly that clearcuts and other degraded areas are “green”,
officials with Hydro Quebec and the Charest government have gone on a
PR blitz to the United States, Ontario and throughout Quebec
proclaiming loudly to anyone who will hear them that hydroelectricty
constitutes “clean”, “green” energy.

It might be helpful if these bright lights would slow down to define
what they actually mean when they say that hydroelectricity is
“green”. Do they mean that it doesn’t emit greenhouse gasses? This
would be patently false, because hydroelectric reservoirs produce
large quantities of methane from the decay of submerged vegetation. Or
do they intend to say that reservoirs don’t impact biodiversity?
Again, they would be wrong, because dams alter the downstream flow of
oxygen and nutrients, resulting in an impoverished aquatic
environment, and damaging the entire food chain up to and including
the commericial fisheries of the St. Lawrence and other large water
bodies.

Mr. Charest may succeed in pulling the wool over Quebecers’ eyes for a
while. But in the end rhetoric is no substitute for hard science, and
if our government persists in its current course of damming the
Romaine, and potentially the Little Mecatina and other rivers,  our
province will eventually face a hard awakening which will come in the
form of degraded ecosystems, a reduced quality of life, and lost job
opportunities in sustainable forestry, ecotourism, fisheries, and
other sectors.

That’s quite a message to bring out of the woods! But Alliance Romaine
is determined to pursue our run, and we believe that if a large number
of citizens stand and act together and speak with one voice, we can
achieve political momentum to block the Charest government’s
wrong-headed energy policy.

Together, we can promote our own vision, based on responsable
consumption, diversification of energy sources, and ecosystem-based
management.

Together, we can still avoid the worst.

Champion Rocky Decoursay after his run

(Sept. 17th) Alliance Romaine’s “athlete of the week” award goes to
Rocky Decoursay, a remarkable 36 year-old man from the Anishnabe
(Algonquin) reserve of Rapid Lake, located in La Vérendrye Park.

Soon after the “Run for our Rivers” marathon reached Val d’Or, we
encountered a major problem in the form of a participant who backed
out. A flurry of cell phone calls failed to resolve the problem, and
by Monday evening we were facing the prospect of remaining stranded
for an extended period in Val-d’Or without a marathoner to carry our
important message further south.

But luckily, as we were leaving the municipal library that evening, we
received an unexpected call from a Montreal supporter, who told us how
just a few days earlier she had met Rocky, a part-time runner (and
former gym teacher) from Rapid Lake. Rocky, it turned out was already
aware of our campaign to save Quebec’s remaining large rivers from
hydro-electric development, and by a twist of fate he was currently in
Val d’Or and was interested in helping us.

A few moments after taking that call, we were on the phone with Rocky,
who confirmed that, though he had never completed a full marathon
training, he enjoyed running, and would give it his best shot.

We met Rocky at 7:30 Tuesday morning outside the Native Friendship
Centre, and from the moment we shook hands with him, we were blown
away by his determintation. “I’ll run till I drop,” he told us (or
something very like it.)

It was a true inspiration to see Rocky take off, his limber body
moving beneath an orange jersey as he led our by-now trademark vehicle
with canoe-cum-message mounted on the roof  through the streets of Val
d’Or. When we reached the outskirts of town, he cut suddenly up the
hill to run on the bike path above us, and for a moment it looked like
Rocky was actually flying!

Rocky’s enthusiasm is impressive, but not wholly surprising when you
consider his history. For three generations Rocky’s community at Rapid
Lake has been dealing with the unwelcome consequences of a dam which
created the Cabonga Reservoir on their former hunting grounds. Since
the federal and provincial governments reneged on a resource-sharing
agreement in the 1990s, Rapid Lake has been besieged by logging
companies, and remains mired in factional divisions maintained and
exploited by the federal authorities in order to divide-and-conquer.

Broadly speaking, Rocky’s experience would corroborate first hand the
message that Alliance Romaine is trying to spread to all Quebecers,
namely that hydroelectric dams are not clean energy, because they
inflict grave and long-lasting harm on both ecosystems and
communities.

By mid-afternoon Tuesday, Rocky had completed his 42-kilometer
marathon (with some intervals of walking), but rather than stop, he
pushed on for a victory lap of 5 more kilometers!

During our first week on the road, Alliance Romaine has been touched
by the spontaneity, drive and courage of many people like Rocky who
have come forward to help us in different ways in our campaign to
protect Quebec’s rivers.

It is our hope as we continue our marathon to gather as many stories
as possible from communities across the province that have been
impacted by hydroelectricity, and to craft our demands and strategies
together so as to become a political force.

A marathoner’s greeting, and warm wishes to all of you!
From on the road, in La Vérendrye Park
The team of Alliance Romaine