Eulachon picture courtesy of NOAA

Everybody loves a good storyteller and I’m no exception.

Last week, I listened to some of the live streaming of the Enbridge hearings from Kitimaat, the First Nations village a few clicks outside the company town of Kitimat in northwest B.C.

It was the tail end of the first day and the Haisla’s Chief Councillor, Ellis Ross, was telling how Kitimaat was founded and the stories of betrayal over the years.

Now I’ve been to nearby Kitimat, and my memories are of a blue-collar town dominated by the blazing hot furnaces inside Alcan (now Rio Tinto Alcan);  the Eurocan Pulp and Paper mill spewing God knows what (now closed); and touring around Methanex  (also closed).  To be honest, I never even saw the native Indian village, on the east side of the Douglas Channel.

I’ve always known Kitimat and nearby Prince Rupert as shippers of the “dangerous and the dirty”.  If Enbridge has its way, shipping bitumen and condensate through the long fiords embracing the Northwest Coast will continue that tradition, managing to combine the  worst of both worlds: the dangerous (for the environment) and the dirty (heavy oil).

But Chief Ellis Ross and other members of the Haisla Nation took us back eloquently to the time before the “dangerous and the dirty”, before pollution wiped out the eulachon runs and when whales chased herring all the way up the Douglas Channel.

Here are three short stories from the testimony of Chief Ellis Ross, from the past, the recent past, and a possible future. His dad’s hereditary title was Haanatlenok, the founder of Kitamaat and it was a place no one wanted to live in at first, in the old days, he told the hearing.

“Everybody else is terrified to come to this territory. “Why? Because there’s a monster living at the head of the Kitimat River. Everybody knows it so everybody clears away from here, steers away.

 

“Well, Waa-mis and his hunting party are the only ones brave enough to come here and check it out and they find out it’s not a monster.

 

“It’s thousands upon thousands of seagulls all rising in unison every time an eulachon run goes up the river and then landing again to feed on the eulachon. That’s what everybody thought was a monster.

 

“I can’t imagine that. If there’s thousands upon thousands of seagulls doing that at a distance of maybe greater than seven miles viewing it, imagine how much eulachon was in the river that those seagulls are feeding on.”

Eulachons, or oolichans, are small fish with a really  high oil content that are an important part of the First Nations diet and heritage.

Here’s one of his Chief Ellis’s less happy stories, that came from when he was working for a marine company out of Kitimat trying to clean up a small oilspill.

 ”A tugboat down at one of the docks sank, dumping all its diesel into the water,” he recalled.

 

“Well, we were called in, because we were the representative for Burrard Spill (a spill response company) for our region. Optimal conditions; the water’s calm, you’re working off the dock, you got every gear that you can think of, you can pack it down.

 

“We still couldn’t pick that diesel up. In fact, most of it got under the dock and it took a year for it to all leech out, but we spent a couple days down there trying to do what we could, basically mopping it up.

 

“When we were done with the absorbent pads and booms, the first thing we found out is that, actually, nobody wanted to deal with that product.

 

“Our company had an agreement with the pulp and paper mill to burn the product in their furnace, natural gas furnace, so the higher-ups agreed to it, but when we got to the door, their workers refused us.

 

“So we were stuck outside the pulp and paper mill with these bags and bags of booms and absorbent pads. So they came down with a condition. You guys can burn it in our furnace, but you guys have got to pack it up there yourselves.

 

“So covered in diesel, soaking wet, stink, and nobody wanted to come near us, we had to do it ourselves. Nobody would touch that.”

The Eurocan pulp and paper mill closed down in 2010 and since then, the herring and the whales have started to come back to Douglas Channel. Here’s Chief Ellis’s third story, from just last year:

“Last summer around midnight during the summer I could hear a whale. Now, I spent a better part of 10 years getting close to whales on my charter boat job, so I understood how to get close to humpbacks and great whales and killer whales.

 

“Well, midnight I hear this whale and it’s right outside the soccer field.  So my wife’s house is right down the soccer field, it’s waterfront, but I can hear this whale, and I can’t understand why it’s so close. Something’s got to be wrong.

 

“So I walk down there with my daughter, my youngest daughter, and I try to flash a light down there, and quickly figured out it’s not in trouble, it’s sleeping. It’s resting right outside our soccer field.

 

“You can’t imagine what that means to a First Nation’s that’s watched his territory get destroyed over 60 years. You can’t imagine the feeling. Then to see a herring run return.

 

“And not based on anything we’d done. There’s nothing that the federal government did that brought that back. There’s nothing that we did as a First Nations that brought that back. It was just a simple exercise of closing an effluent mill that was dumping a product that shouldn’t have been dumped in the first place.

 

“And how did they get there? Well they promised that there’d be lots of jobs. Well that didn’t work out too well. They promised there’d be no negative impact on the environment. That worked out worse than the jobs promise did.

 

“It’s a cliché to make promises and then break it to First Nations, but in our territory it happened over and over and over again.

He concluded his testimony against Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project this way:

“At the very least, the very least, in assessing this project, please, just don’t regard Haisla as just this collateral damage ensuring that this product gets to Asia. Don’t just consider the economics.

 

Take what you’ve heard here. Take their pain and their emotions and apply that to your decision-making. Apply it like it was happening to your own family. Apply it like it’s your heritage because, quite frankly, it is.”

See my earlier posts:

* Enbridge releases tanker plans for Kitimat

* What if a tanker heading for Kitimat hit another vessel

* What if a containership ran aground on Nootka Island

* Tug escort rules vary in B.C.

(Posted by Alison Bate on January 21, 2012)

Sufi dancers in Omdurman (Pix: Alison Bate)

More Sufi dancing in Omdurman (Pix: Alison Bate)

The pounding beat got louder as we walked to the edges of the circle and saw what they were all watching: green, red and leopard-clothed mystics swirling and dancing in a hypnotic fashion in the middle of the circle.

Their faces told the story: blissful is the only way to describe it. The bumpy ride forgotten, all things forgotten but the compelling dancing, chanting and smiling faces.

It was Friday evening in Omdurman and I’d never seen the Sufi dancers before, despite living in Sudan for five months in 2007. At the time it seemed too touristy, and a long way to go on my one day off a week. Big mistake.

If you go to Khartoum, it’s definitely worth taking the tour arranged by the Acropole Hotel every Friday from 3pm. You don’t have to stay at the hotel to go, but pay about 30 Sudanese Pounds and you’ll see lots of sights and, most importantly, end up at the Sufi dancing in Omdurman.

To learn more about the Sufi religion, I enjoyed reading this post: Sufism in Sudan, Part One. Here’s an excerpt about the ceremony:

“The Hamad al-Neel cemetery—a vast, dun-colored cemetery in Omdurman—is the headquarters of the al-Qadiriya order in Sudan and was founded by sheikh Hamad al-Neel, who is buried at a nearby mosque.

“The expanse serves as an attraction for tourists and photographers due to the nature of the order’s rituals, which combine African heritage, dance, music and colorful attire.

“On Friday at 5 pm, the cemetery fills up with people of all ages, ethnicities and walks of life who come to be a part of the rituals, while tea sellers and pamphlet vendors surround the area around the tomb site.

“The dervishes are dressed in red and green, patchwork, leopard-prints or flowing white ‘jellabiyas’ and ‘immas’ (turbans). Some sport dreadlocks, amulets and talismans, and others don on colorful hats and enormous strings of prayer beads.

“Standing barefoot above the sand and under the heat of a sizzling sun, a few men pick up the rhythm on their ‘tambours’ (drums) and chant ‘zikr’ melodically while the crowd swells palpably, grooving to the rhythm.” ((Continued in Sufism in Sudan, Part One)

(Posted by Alison Bate on Jan.1, 2012)

The old and the new in Khartoum (taken from Omdurman).

By Alison Bate

The capital of Sudan feels a little lost and empty these days.

The distinctive Dinkas – the impossibly tall, thin Southerners – and their fellow compatriots have mostly left Khartoum for their new homeland and the deadline for the rest to leave is just months away.

After April 9, 2012, any southerners remaining will become stateless or, if they are lucky, have to get work visas like other foreigners.

The new country of South Sudan, born on the 9th of July, has taken with it the biggest chunk of Sudan’s oil revenues and Khartoum seems totally unprepared for the loss of all that money.

It will have to find new ways to make an income and meanwhile the residents of Khartoum and its sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North are hurting as prices shoot upward.

“Everybody want to leave Sudan. Why you come to Sudan from Canada?” asked one resident, only half-joking.

The price of a sheep shot up to between 400 and 700 Sudanese Pounds (SP) for the Haj earlier this year – the religious occasion when every family buys a sheep.

Translating this into US dollars is not even easy, as there’s a huge gap between the official exchange rate and what you can get on the black market.

Officially, $1 US equals about 2.75 SP but on the black market, $1 US will buy you more than 4SP. That’s a huge slump compared with four years ago, when I last visited Khartoum, and $1 US was worth 2 SP.

So, oil has gone, the southerners have gone, and the UN has also largely left town. The massive bureaucracy of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) has shut up shop in Khartoum and there are fewer fancy white SUVs with their monster UN logos charging around town, and fewer well-paid jobs for the Sudanese: about 4,000 Sudanese who worked for the UN in Khartoum have lost their jobs.

In the process, UNMIS has morphed into UNMISS and headed south to Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

Paradoxically, Khartoum itself is full of new gleaming buildings, roads and bridges built with oil money. But it seems like a shell city.

Whether this is the end of an era of new growth or simply a lull before the next wave comes in remains to be seen. But right now is certainly not a good time to be a resident of Khartoum.

(Posted Dec.16, 2011 by Alison Bate)

Kassala resident near the Gash river

2. Change money on the black market, not in banks or official exchanges. As of Dec.1, 2011 you’ll get about 4.2 Sudanese pounds to $1 US on the black market, compared with only about 2.75 SP to the dollar officially.
To change money in downtown Khartoum, the moneychangers’ area is near the Al Kabir mosque, on the northeast side, where they also sell cellphones, ones that likely fell off the back of a truck. Just wander along and you’ll hear plenty of murmurings of: “Change dollars?”

3. If you are travel light or backpacking, don’t bother with a big towel (you’ll dry quickly without one) or lots of soap, toothpaste etc (all readily available and cheap).

4. If you like reading, bring a few books or your e-Reader as pickings are pretty slim for English books, and more likely of the deadly “Elements Of English Grammar” kind.

5. If you want to meet up with local people, everyone uses a cellphone in Sudan and they’re really useful. A cheap cellphone is about $10 US, then pick up a Zain SIM card for about 5 SP ($1.25 US) and a 10 SP top-up card (about $2.50).

6. Don’t freak out too much over the scary travel advisories for Sudan. Khartoum is one of the safest cities you could be in, as well as northern and eastern Sudan. For real advice, check out the Lonely Planet’s Thorntree Forum page on Sudan.

7. But don’t rely on LP’s guide to Sudan (very limited). The only one worth getting right now is Bradt’s Guide to Sudan.

8. You have to register on arrival within three days. If you want to do it by yourself, you can, but the one time I did, I waited in the blazing heat for about three hours in a massive line-up and ended up paying a “special rate”. This last time I stayed in a hotel and they did it for me for a modest fee. My total registration fee was 160 SP (about $40 US).

9. If you are in Sudan and want to go to South Sudan, there are loads of flights. But if you have a single entry Sudan visa, as I did, it’s difficult to get back to Khartoum. If Juba’s on your list of places to go, it’s much easier to arrange to fly out of Juba to Addis Ababa or Kampala.

Village just outside Kassala, East Sudan

10. I thoroughly enjoyed Kassala in East Sudan (see my post “Coffee and lamb fright in Kassala”. First, get a travel permit via either the Acropole Hotel, Global Tours (Tel: 09122 53484) or take photocopies of your passport (front and back) and a passport photo to the tourism office. A first-class bus cost 58 SP ($16) from Mina Bary bus station in south Khartoum. It’s best to buy your ticket the day before as they fill up. Buses leave early morning between 6.30 am and 7 am.

(Posted Dec.9, 2011 by Alison Bate)

Drinking Ethiopian coffee in Kassala, East Sudan

I’m in a hot little internet café up some very narrow stairs, so narrow I had to squeeze sideways to get up here, helped marginally by a wobbly rail.

The internet in Sudan is sometimes very good and sometimes very bad and slow. The connection keeps dropping, and I’ve just managed to switch out of Arabic and change the direction of type. But the owner, one of many Eritreans living here in East Sudan, has very kindly just lent me his portable, with an mDSL internet stick…much faster.

I went to look at the striking Taka Mountains yesterday, but as is the way in Sudan, never quite made it, sidetracked by friendly people at the street cafes.

I’m in a cute little town next to the mountains called Kassala, a long, eight-hour bus ride east of Khartoum. The bare mountains that rise up suddenly out of the desert pull you toward them automatically. I was heading there when I saw a store selling all kinds of luscious desserts. So I bought a Sudanese baklava, which you order by weight (so I couldn’t just get one), and sat down to eat them.

This town is very close to the border with Eritrea and Ethiopia, and there are many people from those countries living here, bringing their coffee customs. Many fled here as a safe haven during war in their countries.

I was admiring the coffee, which comes in a tiny individual Turkish-style coffee pot with what looks like dried grass coming out the top, when a lone tourist joined me. Victor, a young Swiss guy backpacking around Sudan, has come down through Egypt and is now on his way to Ethiopia.

“You want coffee?” they asked Victor, bringing out just one coffee cup. I was seething. The men had been chatting happily with me, but once a man joined me, I ceased to exist. I understand it is the culture – not polite to talk to a woman when there’s a man with her – but it was still annoying. Victor must have picked up on my vibes, as after drinking two cups, he offered me some.

It was dynamite: very strong and tasted almost like Irish whisky..I learned later they put ginger in it, which gives it the strong, smooth taste. And the grass? It is used to filter the coffee.

Victor and I were then invited for supper by a Sudanese guy who lives in the U.S. some of the time and has a very posh villa in Kassala. We learned a lot about the history of the region, about when it was occupied by the Italians, and more recently, the fighting just over the border in Eritrea.

I’ve also eaten at a local restaurant, but must admit I wasn’t brave enough to try the “Lamb Fright” or “Barbecue Problem” in the English menu. However, I did have some really neat shish kebab and fresh orange juice.

And maybe I’ll make it to the mountains tomorrow.

Posted Tuesday Nov. 29, 2011 by Alison Bate

Khartoum shepherds feed their flock in the early morning

After a sleepless, jetlagged night, I went up to the rooftop of the Bougainvilla Guest House, where I’m staying.

It was still dark, the moon and stars were out, and a cool breeze swept across the patio. Four or five mosques started competing with each other, and the mullahs’ prayers bounced all around the darkened city.

I stayed up there until the skies began to lighten, and the sun landed on the concrete buildings below and little birds with fanned tails flitted around the dirt streets. Khartoum by day is a hot and dusty city, so it was neat to see it this way.

No one in the city seemed in a hurry to wake up. A donkey cart and drive ambled across the dirt square below, and the air smelled of burnt sand. I wandered along one of the streets, where a few sleepy people were heading to work.

And after breakfast I’ll have all the fun of sorting out registering with the police and getting a SIM card.

(Posted Sat. Nov.19, 2011 by Alison Bate)

I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching cellphones and agonizing about whether to take my beloved Macbook with me.

I’m meeting various friends in Khartoum, and everyone uses cellphones there. But of course, many Canadian cellphones (sigh) – including my own – don’t work outside North America. The cellphone with my Telus account doesn’t even have a SIM card, and I foolishly gave away my old unlocked FIDO phone, which would work overseas. I toyed with buying one of Future Shop or 7/11 ‘s unlocked phones, but all the online research drained my limited shopping energy.

So while in Bahrain on a second tedious eight-hour stopover, I bought a $27 US Nokia 1616. Hopefully, it’ll work with a Sudanese SIM card. I’m sure it will – the Sudanese seem to do cellphones better than Canada.

As for my MacBook, I couldn’t face worrying about losing it (and all my pix and personal data). So two days before leaving, I bought a cheapo HP 10.1” Intel Atom N455 Netbook for $249 plus tax from Nanaimo’s Future Shop. Asked them to load Skype and VLC to save time, and set up the Arabic version too. My friend David kindly installed a spare copy of Microsoft Office, and I was all set to go.

My other toy – definitely an indulgence – is a Zoom H4Ns digital recorder that cost $319 plus tax from Tom Lee’s store in downtown Vancouver. It replaces my fancy Sony minidisc recorder, which is basically obsolete after four years of minimal use, and had annoying proprietary software that never worked. The new Zoom seems to download MP3s easily via a USB port. Thank you, Zoom.

And, of course, when I got to Khartoum (just last night) all I wanted to do was write longhand in a ruled notebook . . .

(Posted Saturday, Nov.19, 2011 by Alison Bate)

By Alison Bate

Talks between the maritime employers and dock foremen in British Columbia are deadlocked, the organisation representing employers said Friday (Oct.28)

“Nothing’s happening. We’re at an impasse, ” said Greg Vurdela, vice president of marketing for the B.C Maritime Employers Association.

He also accused dock foremen in Local 514 of the International Longshore Warehouse Union of “dirty tricks” in delaying ship handling at the end of the third-quarter.

Foremen aren’t supposed to work more than 624 hours in a quarter, but nearly always exceed that, according to Vurdela. If they weren’t bargaining, at the end of this September they would have brought in more foremen, as usual. Instead, a group of foremen decided to stop at 624 hours.

This meant one cruise ship left late, one container ship lost an entire graveyard shift and several vessels loading logs bound for China were delayed a couple of days.

The 450 dock foremen in ILWU Local 514 traditionally finish negotiating after the main longshore unions have settled their contract.

In this case, the main ILWU longshore contract was settled – with great fanfare – in May. It was heralded as a historic deal, covering eight years and involving approximately 4,500 workers in five ILWU Locals in Vancouver, New Westminster, Vancouver Island, Prince Rupert and Stewart.

The Canadian government was heavily involved in the talks, appointing two federal mediators even before both contracts ran out on March 31, 2010. For a while, the mediators batted back and forth between the main longshore negotiators and negotiators for the foremen in ILWU 514.

However, Vurdela said although the federal mediator hasn’t officially booked out, the last talks involving ILWU 514 were held Sept. 15 and nothing much happened then or has happened since.

“We’ve made our final offer, and the negotiating committee is not willing to address it.”

Vurdela claimed there were several sticking points involving wages, benefits and languages changes that when added up meant the ILWU 514 folks wanted a richer settlement than the main longshore agreement.

He said foremen make on average, including benefits, about $200,000 a year, and a significant number make $250,000.

“I’m left not understanding why guys who make $250,000 are not signing onto this,” he added.

ILWU Local 514 has not returned email or phone requests for comments to date.

© Alison Bate, 2011.

UPDATE: Agreement finally reached (Jan.31, 2012 press release)

By Alison Bate

Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards came second to Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding in the
big contract deal announced today.

In a nutshell:

Seaspan workers celebrate winning big government contract at their North Vancouver home on Nov.2, 2011

2nd: Seaspan Marine Corp, British Columbia. $8 billion to build non-combat vessels.

Out of luck: Joint venture between Quebec’s Davie shipyard, SNC-Lavalin and Daewoo (technology).

Seaspan CEO Jonathan Whitworth put a brave spin on it immediately after the announcement: “While we felt we were more than capable of building the combat ships, we are honoured to have been chosen to provide non-combat vessels for the men and women of the Royal Canadian Navy and Coast Guard,” he said in a press release.

Seaspan's Jonathan Whitworth

MORE INFO:
* Jubilation greets $8-billion shipbuilding contract for B.C.

* For background on Seaspan, read my article “Kyle Washington: Prince of Tides

* Government of Canada Press Release

The first one, Armada rescues trapped New Yorkers, was based on extensive phone interviews with tugboat owners with Reinauer Transportation and Moran Towing, as well as officials with U.S. Coast Guard Activities New York and Vessel Traffic Services New York.

The second article Escape from the 91st Floor followed an interview with Claire McIntyre – a staffer with the American Bureau of Shipping – and described her dramatic escape from the north tower of the World Trade Centre.

Both articles were printed in Seattle-based Marine Digest magazine, a magazine I edited at one time, which has since changed its name to Cargo Business News. The articles are also on this website under Maritime.

Related 9/11 boat rescue links:

* List of 9/11 Rescue Boats

* Moran Crews Cited for 9/11 Evacuation Endeavors (Sep. 2005)

*Who Was in Charge of the Massive Evacuation of Lower Manhattan By Water Transport on 9/11? (Sep.2002)

© Alison Bate, 2011