Of pipelines and men

My paternal grandfather (actually, my father’s step-father, but we made no distinction) died a few years ago, having lived into his nineties. The life he lived is familiar to many Canadians of that generation. His childhood was spent on a Saskatchewan farm, attending a one-room schoolhouse. His family fled Saskatchewan during a severe drought in the late 1920s and resettled on a small, subsistence farm near Prince Rupert, British Columbia. I don’t think he finished high school. He did an apprenticeship and became a tradesman, working as a pipefitter and industrial plumber. He went wherever there was work, ending up on industrial sites all over BC and Alberta. He continued to work into his eighties, doing small jobs, one of the last being a large water-powered clock in a shopping mall in Nanaimo. He kept a small boat in his retirement, fishing for enough salmon to pot and freeze for his own use. He never had much money, but always lived within his means. He was a kind and gentle man, always thoughtful and never with a harsh word for anyone, the type of person we all want for our neighbour.

In the 1950s, he worked in what is now Kitimat, BC, where he and thousands of other workers helped build a hydroelectric dam and large aluminum smelter. Workers came from all over to work on the Kitimat project, which was carved out of the forest. I remember him showing me photos he took while hiking and fishing with an Australian co-worker on his days off. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he moved to Alberta and worked on the first tar sands development, the Syncrude facility. I deliberately use the term “tar sands” because that was what it was called, neither my grandfather nor anyone else called it anything different. “Oil sands” is a propaganda word, which was later created for the same reason those who spread waste-water treatment sludge on farmland call it “biosolids”, so that you get the impression it is something other than what it is.

Kitimat and the tar sands have consequently always had for me a connection through the memory of my grandfather. Recently, the energy company Enbridge has proposed to create a physical connection by building a pipeline between them, called the Northern Gateway. Tar sands companies would like to expand exports to the US and to Asia. A proposal to build a new pipeline from Alberta to refineries in the southern US, referred to as the Keystone XL project, is in limbo at the moment. There is considerable opposition to new pipelines in the US, especially among people living along the route who enjoy few economic benefits but must accept the risk of potential accidents. The state of Nebraska, where residents are heavily dependent on underground aquifers for water, had led opposition to Keystone XL. The US State Department, which must approve international pipelines, has required that TransCanada pipelines, the company that would build Keystone XL, provide alternative routing options. The proposal is a political hot potato. Despite a very undiplomatic amount of lobbying and pressure applied by the Canadian federal government,* the outcome remains uncertain.

The uncertainty over Keystone has the federal government and the tar sands producers eager to get working on the Northern Gateway project. Construction is not going to happen anytime soon; the proposal must first go through public consultations organized by the National Energy Board. These started last week, and approximately 4,000 people and organizations have asked to speak. Most are opposed to the project, as are most First Nations along the proposed pipeline route. In response, the federal Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, has engaged in name-calling and sowing conspiracy theories, publicly accused those opposing the pipeline of being radicals, and suggesting that wealthy Americans are behind the opposition. The heavy foreign ownership of tar sands producers or his own government’s deliberate meddling in US politics appears to have been lost on the minister. His rant caught me by surprise, and seems a bit beneath a bright, well-educated (McGill & Harvard) former investment banker like Mr Oliver.

I’d like to ignore the name-calling and look at some of the facts. Having access to Asian markets would be economically advantageous to the tar sands producers, and these companies create tens of thousands of jobs directly and indirectly in Alberta. The pension funds of many Canadians hold shares in tar sands companies, and governments receive royalties, so directly or indirectly, the economic benefits of the tar sands extend well beyond northern Alberta. Construction of the pipeline would create a large number of construction jobs in the short term, a smaller number of maintenance jobs over the longer term, and royalty payments for those along its route. Kitimat has received large, ocean-going freighters for decades, coming and going from the aluminum plant. The port already has a license to tranship liquid natural gas. Creating new port facilities to connect ocean-going oil tankers with the proposed pipeline would create additional jobs and income there.

Just as the economic benefits of the tar sands are well-known, so, too, are the environmental costs in terms of land degradation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions (click here and here for links to two of many peer-reviewed scientific studies). New pipelines to Kitimat and/or the US would expand tar sands production and the consequent environmental impacts. The pipeline will have environmental impacts for residents of BC; anyone who argues otherwise is selling something. The proposed Northern Gateway route is approximately the shortest distance from the tar sands to a deep-water port on the Pacific. There are other port options (e.g. Prince Rupert, Vancouver), but these would require a much longer pipeline. As it is, the proposed pipeline would need to traverse mountains, forests, and thousands of watercourses large and small to reach Kitimat. Pipelines can and do spring leaks; there is no such thing as a leak-proof or leak-free one. Materials fails, human error in construction or maintenance can occur, and natural events that can damage pipelines, like floods and landslides, happen. The impacts of pipeline failures depend on what’s being transported; natural gas and oil leaks present different risks, the latter being of greater concern. In the case of the northern gateway, the pipeline would be transporting bitumen – an oily sludge – to Kitimat, and returning chemical thinners that are imported and used to make tar sands material more viscous. Neither would be welcome in a salmon stream.

There will be an increase in the amount of hydrocarbons spilled into the ocean waters off Kitimat if this pipeline goes through; that is not a risk but an inevitability, as shown by established research. The loading and transporting of hydrocarbons to ocean-going vessels invariably leads to spills. A 2003 study by the US National Research Council states that in the decade of the 1990s, there were 48 oil spills into US coastal waters from pipelines and 335 from marine terminals, releasing a combined volume of over 3 million gallons of oil. Even without any catastrophic spills, an oil pipeline terminal to Kitimat will release oil into the environment cumulatively through small, multiple spills on an ongoing basis. I have no way of forecasting how much will be spilled and what harm it would cause; only that it won’t be zero.

The greatest concern expressed by residents of the BC coast so far is the increased possibility of a catastrophic tanker spill, like that of the Exxon Valdez, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. Kitimat’s coastal environment is similar to that of Prince William Sound in terms of wildlife, but different in its morphology; ships must follow the long, narrow Wright Sound for over 30km before reaching open ocean. The ratio of open water to coastline means that any spill from a tanker would quickly reach shore, which is where it poses the greatest harm to wildlife. Post-Exxon Valdez studies show that animal populations can eventually recover from even large oil spills in this type of environment, but the long term ecosystem impacts persist for many, many years. This is particularly worrying for people whose diets, livelihoods and incomes depend on foods harvested from coastal areas, and there are many such families, First Nations and otherwise, along the BC coast.

There are technical requirements that can be implemented to reduce the risk of accidental spills from tankers – insisting on double-hulled tanker construction, restricting movements of ships during heavy weather, and so forth. But accidents still happen. Yesterday, a popular cruise ship struck rocks off the coast of Tuscany, along a route it has been following regularly for years, during calm weather. The BC Ferries corporation’s flagship ferry Queen of the North ran aground in 2006 along the BC coast; last year a different BC ferry crashed against the pier in Nanaimo. These are crashes involving vessels that routinely ply the same waters on an ongoing basis. The large oil tankers that would be coming to Kitimat would include vessels captained and crewed by people much less familiar with BC coastal waters. Those responsible for accidents – and the companies that employ them – always trot out a list of excuses after the fact why such events are exceptional; reality is that the risk of a shipping accident is never, ever zero. More ship traffic, more risk, it’s as simple as that.

In summary, the facts are fairly straightforward. If built, the Northern Gateway pipeline would result in greater development of the tar sands, higher levels of exports, and a corresponding increase in revenues to the oil and pipeline companies involved, to their shareholders, and to those owed royalties. There will be an increase in employment in BC and Alberta over the short and longer term. Economists will argue over exactly how much these benefits would amount to; they will be significant in any event. The costs and impacts are also significant. There will be increased extraction of oil sands, increasing the regional load of air and water pollution and land degradation, and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. There will be oil spilled into Kitimat’s Wright Sound and along the pipeline route from time-to-time on an ongoing basis. With luck and very careful construction and management, these spills will be small in volume, infrequent, and have relatively small long-term impacts on wildlife and critical resources. There already exists the chance of large oil spills in Wright Sound given the existing ship traffic; the chances of occurrence and scale of the potential impacts will be increased many-fold if Northern Gateway goes through. The pipeline creates a new risk of environmental contamination to lands and rivers of the BC interior that have not previously been traversed by pipelines. If luck and/or management practices fail, the worst-case scenario is many times worse than what happened with Exxon Valdez.

For residents along the pipeline route and in Kitimat, the decision of whether to support the Northern Gateway is a tremendously difficult one. The jobs and added income would be most welcome, even if the lion’s share of the new wealth created goes to the oil companies. However, this new revenue stream comes with a potentially very nasty downside, a risk residents would be accepting for themselves and for their children and their children. Once built, you can’t go back. My grandfather, who helped build the first tar sands project and the first industrial facility at Kitimat with, literally, his own two hands, would have understood the dilemma BC residents face, and would have respected their opinions, whatever those may be. Although his upbringing was as far from Harvard and Bay Street as one can get, he would never, ever, have called people names if they didn’t agree with him, especially when their families’ livelihoods and well-being were at stake. My grandfather was a man.


*Were the American government to pull the same stunt up here, the screams of self-righteous indignation would be deafening. The extent of the lobbying is quite astounding. For example, last year officials at Canadian consulates in the US were ordered to collect names of businesses that might benefit directly or indirectly from tar sands projects, exports, or the Keystone project, and transmit these names to a database created at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. Canadian officials would then contact these people and pressure them to pressure their own elected officials to support Keystone XL. I hear these things from living in Ottawa; here's Jeffrey Simpson's more detailed commentary on it.

The geography of Tebow

There's a lot of things in the news lately about which I've been meaning to blog: the Keystone XL pipeline project, Encana accused by the US EPA of having contaminated people's wells in Wyoming whilst fracking, Canadian & US airlines going to court to prevent the EU from charging a GHG emissions tax on flights in and out of Europe, PM Harper's long-standing dream of dismantling the Wheat Board finally coming true...

But instead I'll blog about a phenomenon that's been on a lot of minds lately: Tebowmania. If you haven't heard of Tim Tebow, you probably don't follow either sports media or US media generally. He's the quarterback of the resurgent Denver Broncos, and one of the most recognizable names in American sports, in part because of his strong religious beliefs. Tebow also has a knack for rallying his team in the final minutes of games, and has brought his team back from dead last in October to having the inside chance of winning its division in the NFL and earning a playoff home game.

His story is unusual. He was born to American missionary parents in the Philippines. Serious complications occurred prior to birth, and her doctors recommended she undergo an abortion to protect her own life. She refused, and both she and Tim survived, safe and sound. He grew up to be a star athlete at the University of Florida, QBing his team to a national championship. He has also been very public about his religious beliefs, praying often before, during and after games, and speaking publicly on behalf of the pro-life/anti-abortion movement. He is very giving of his time to charity, and appears to have a sound appreciation of the fact that, at the end of the days, sports are sports and there are more important things.

He was drafted in the first round by a Broncos coach who would be fired not long after, the popular belief being that Tebow was too unorthodox to be a professional quarterback. The template for an NFL QB is New England's Tom Brady: tall, handsome, a strong arm, able to scan the opposing defence quickly, stand firm as defenders rush at him, and launch a perfectly spiralling pass over the shoulders and into the arms of a receiver sprinting downfield. Tebow is in many ways the opposite: he is a runner first, willing to dive head-first into the line of scrimmage for three yards and a cloud of dust, or to run along the line of scrimmage, drawing the defenders toward him and then pitch a short "option" pass to one of his running backs. When Tebow does throw downfield, he rarely tosses a perfect spiral, often fails to spot a wide open receiver, and at the first sign of trouble he'll scramble for whatever yards he can get.

I got to see the beginning of Tebow-mania first-hand. I was on my way to a workshop at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and decided to pop in at Mile High Stadium in Denver to see if I could get a ticket for that day's home game against the San Diego Chargers, a big divisional rivalry. The fact I could walk up to the ticket booth and buy a great seat for 1/2 price tells a lot about the state of the Denver economy. But that's another story. The Broncos had gotten off to a poor start this season under starting QB Kyle Orton, who is a more traditional drop-back QB type. Orton was unpopular with the fans, and was booed resoundingly during the first quarter of the game. His receivers dropped some easy passes, his offensive line was doing a poor job of blocking for him, and Orton's body language showed he was defeated. San Diego got out to an early lead, and things were looking bleak.

The coach eventually put Tim Tebow into the game and the crowd went absolutely nuts. Seriously, you could hardly hear yourself think. And he immediately proceeded to play the worst football you could ever imagine. He fumbled snaps, he ran around looking lost, his passes clanged to the ground yards short of his receivers. It was painful to watch. He completely stunk, no way around it. And yet, something happened. His receivers continued to try hard to get open; his offensive linemen held their blocks as long as humanly possible, and the crowd continued to roar and cheer, and no one left. On the sidelines, every Bronco save Orton was visibly inflated with extra energy.

And then in the last few minutes of the game, Tebow finally made things happen. He started connecting on long passes, he made some nice runs, and the Broncos began a furious comeback. At one point in the 4th quarter, Tebow rallied them to within a missed 2-point conversion of tying the game. San Diego ended up kicking another field goal, so when the last possession of the game wound up in Tebow's hands, he had to try and get a touchdown to win it. He moved his team within striking distance, but a hail mary pass to the end zone as time ran out failed, and Denver lost. But the myth was born. Since then, Denver's won more games than they've lost, often in the final minutes, and they sure are fun to watch.

Why is Tebow so successful? Part of it is, in my view, geographical. With a traditional NFL QB like Orton or Brady, much of the action takes place near the line of scrimmage or around the pocket (where the QB stands and throws). The defensive players (with the exception of those covering receivers) are continually moving forward, typically covering short distances in straight lines. Meanwhile, the offensive linemen are spending half their time (which is the typical frequency of passing plays) moving backwards, trying to protect the QB. Over the course of the game, if the offence fails to connect on its passes, the advantage goes to the defence. In Tebow's style of game, the offensive players are the ones moving forward in straight lines most of the time, the defenders are the ones doing more of the chasing and getting back on their heals. Even if Tebow is only grinding out a few yards at a time for most of the game, it must wear down the defenders. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if you asked defensive players after a game against Denver, they would say they're more tired than they are after playing other teams. Tired defences have trouble covering ground as the game goes on.

Of course, this advantage only goes so far, and if the opposing team is able to score lots of points (as Brady's Patriots did last weekend), it's hard for Denver to keep pace given Tebow's time consuming, grinding style of offence. As for Tebow's religion, I think it's great that he has strong beliefs and isn't embarrassed to be public about them, even if they aren't always my own. Too many pro athletes believe in nothing more than accumulating money and fame, and care little about anyone or anything beyond themselves. I doubt very much God pays attention to football, or that He takes much of an interest in how Tebow's team does. Faith probably isn't as great a factor in his success on the field as we might like to think. Just the same, it is nice to see a clean-living, God-fearing athlete becoming notorious; it's a pleasant change from the low standards we've become used to in superstar athletes of recent years.

Looking for a roadmap in Durban

It's that time of year again where the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meet, this time in Durban, South Africa. Mother Nature provided delegates with an appropriate welcome, striking the Durban area with severe storms and floods that killed 8 people on the eve of the conference. There are two main issues on the table this year: what to do when the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of next year, and what to do about a promise made in Copenhagen two years ago to create a Green Climate Fund of US$100 billion by 2020, which developing countries could access to finance clean energy projects and adaptation initiatives. Both promise to be contentious.

First to the topic of what follows Kyoto. The answer is, probably nothing for the time being. There are essentially two blocs of countries on this issue. One includes the states most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (e.g. small island states like the Maldives) plus European nations who are sympathetic and likely to meet their existing Kyoto targets (like Germany, Sweden and the UK (although Scottish emissions are up, English not)). The Europeans account for less than 15% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions last time I checked, the most vulnerable states an even tinier fraction. This bloc is ready to go ahead with a new round of emisisons reductions targets, with the vulnerable states pushing for heavy reductions ASAP. The other bloc consists of the big developed country emitters, like Canada, the US, Japan, plus Russia and several large emitters who have no Kyoto targets, such as India and Brazil. This much larger bloc would prefer to wait before until at elast 2020 to start a new Kyoto, and would be happy to wait until 2015 before even discussing what 2020 targets might look like. I don't see much happening on this front as a result. There's been some talk of Durban producing a "road map" to the next Kyoto; this is possible, these COPs always result in some face-saving document of one sort of another.

The Green Climate Fund is going to be interesting. At this point in time, it's not clear where the money would come from, how it would be administered, etc. If the delegates expect that it will be funded as direct transfers from rich governments to some central administrator like the Global Environment Facility or the World Bank itself, I don't see it getting off the ground. Since the onset of the current European and US economic problems, deep-pocketed nations have become scarce. If there's room for private sector involvement in the proposed fund, I think we will see more progress, since the US and others are likely to hop on board. The devil is, of course, always in the details, so I wouldn't bet my mortgage on seeing the $100 billion in place on 1 January 2020.

Where does Canada fit into Durban? We're about as welcome as bedbugs. It's not enough that our government signed Kyoto but did little to actually try and meet our targets; now a rumour is circulating Ottawa that our government will announce it is formally withdrawing from it. I hope this is just someone in the PMO floating a trial balloon to gauge where the Canadian public stands on the issue, and is not actually being seriously considered. It's one thing to leave a restaurant without paying your share of the check, another to flip the finger to the other people at your table as you walk out the door. Because really, that's the symbolic equivalent of it. Wiser minds will hopefully prevail.

China has scolded the Canadian government over it's anti-Kyoto stance (can you blame them - we're telling them they should have targets when we refuse to meet our own). China seems to me to be the real wildcard in international climate politics these days. On one hand, it's one of the biggest emitters of GHGs, although China is making better efforts to control emissions and invest in cleaner technologies than many give them credit for doing. On the other hand, China is rapidly becoming a major player on the alternative energy technology scene, and stand to be key beneficiaries of any global push for GHG emissions reduction and clean energy. So it will be interesting to see what they end up doing.

All this to say, I'm glad that these annual meetings still take place, even if it is more an exercise in political science than environmental science. After all, there are many other environmental issues that receive little international attention, much less a high-profile annual conference with particular objectives being negotiated. But, at the same time, I sometimes worry that enthusiasm and momentum may eventually become lost if roadmaps and not results are all we can expect.

UPDATE: The Durban talks concluded Sunday. The Europeans have agreed to continue with emissions targets for the period between the end of Kyoto next year and 2020. The US, India and China, among others, have agreed to ongoing negotiations towards an emissions-reduction agreement by 2020 that would include all countries. A little progress was made on the Green Climate Fund to be set up in 2020, but it still remains to be seen where the money will come from. Click here for a useful summary of what transpired. The Canadian delegation was described as irrelevant or irritating, depending on which media you read.

The best defence is a good offence

It’s not often that the discipline of geography gets significant attention in the nation’s newspaper op-ed pages. A recent opinion column by Globe and Mail writer Margaret Wente ruffled the feathers of quite a number of geographers. Wente, who is the Globe’s answer to Don Cherry, never lets the facts stand in her way. The column in question takes issue with a couple of fairly well-known geographers who edited a book entitled “Rethinking the Great White North: Race, Nature, and the Historical Geographies of Whiteness in Canada”. I am quite confident UBC Press was pleased – any popular media coverage of an edited volume of scholarly essays is good for sales, even when the book is being slammed.

Wente’s issue seems to be that she is described somewhere in the book as being racist. This gets her started on a critique of the humanities generally, and geography, specifically, arguing that too many geographers spend too much time on theory, discourse analysis, and similar activities. Her conclusion is that the quality of undergraduate education suffers as a result.

One letter Wente received in response summarized her argument along the lines of (1) people in the humanities use technical language (2) I don’t understand it (3) therefore they must be wasting our tax dollars. This is certainly an element of Ms Wente’s argument, although it does leave out the stimulus for it, namely that Ms Wente’s doesn’t like being considered to be a racist.

I haven’t read the book in question, nor am I likely to. It’s not my cup of tea. I’m a Globe subscriber, and I’m also not sure I would label Wente’s writings as being either overtly or subtly racist. There’s a formula to them – find someone’s sacred cow, and take some potshots at it using what Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness” (i.e. statements that sound like they could be fact-based, but are not necessarily so). Wente’s schtick is taking opinions you’re more likely to find in the tabloid newspapers and tailoring them to be read by and rile the Globe’s readership.

The Canadian Association of Geographers’ listserve just about melted down from the indignant discussions about Wente’s column. Many writers seemed very upset, obviously taking her column very seriously. Others entered into long reflections about the role of canoes in Canadian culture (apparently canoes were the subject of a Wente column mentioned in the UBC volume), and so forth. My own feeling on the subject is this: Wente has a point, albeit an inadvertent one. She openly challenges geographers to make a greater difference beyond the academy. I think this is a wonderful challenge. She challenges us to ensure we give good value for money in terms of undergraduate education. Again, I think this is a great challenge. She questions the need for yet another edited volumes of essays written primarily for other academics. I think such books are still needed, but she’s right, we also need to be generating knowledge in formats more likely to be consumed by a broader audience.

There are many geographers doing fantastic research out there, but are we doing a fantastic job of disseminating it widely? I don’t think so. We have entered a period where funding for post secondary research and teaching will be more and more constrained. Scholars in all disciplines are going to be expected to demonstrate explicitly the broader relevance of their work. The traditional metrics of academic performance – scholarly journal articles and book chapters – will still be relevant for getting grants and promotions, but broader, less easily quantified public perceptions of relevance will grow in importance. Scholars whose work has credibility with (or is at least vaguely familiar to) elected officials, newspaper readers, radio listeners, and on-line communities are the ones who will succeed in this new era. So rather than wasting time complaining on listserves or writing letters to the editor in response to Margaret, I would encourage my fellow geographers to write their own op-eds about the issues they study. Or write an article for a popular magazine, or start a blog or a website. Do one extra thing to communicate and connect your ideas and research to the broader public. Don't be defensive - go out and play on the forward line.

Boulder envy

Students at the University of Colorado campus in Boulder face challenges students at many other universities do not, including my own. For example, last week a mountain lion was found on campus, forcing students to stand at some distance and snap cell-phone pictures until state wildlife officers could tranquilize it, put a tracking collar on it, and relocate it to the mountains. The problem is, you can walk to the mountains from campus, and so inevitably another lion will wander down. Indeed, a CU prof told me that they've got GPS collars on a number of mountain lions that frequent the edge of Boulder.

The mountains must themselves be a serious distraction for students. I was giving a graduate seminar today* in a room with a panormaic view of the Flatirons, and even though I was doing most of the talking, it was at times hard not to let my eyes drift off to the peaks. When my day was done, it was a quick walk along Boulder Creek to Settler's Park, past a sign warning about bears and lions, and on to trails that climb up over the city.

If easy access to trails isn't your thing, there are bicylce lanes and paths everywhere in this city - I can't imagine there is any other North American city with so many cyclists per capita. Boulder was rated the number one sports town in the US (that's participating in sports, not watching them), America's fittest city, one of the best cities for singles... it makes you wonder how anyone would have the time to do any studying here when they're having so much fun.

Boulder has a lot going for it in terms of its natural setting, but you have to give credit to the city planners as well. Beyond the bike paths, the city has given a lot of thought to quality of life issues. A long pedestrian-only stretch of Pearl Street is a central focus of the city, and it is lively, welcoming, and always busy. Ottawa's city planners should visit Pearl Street and reflect on our own city's sorry attempt at a pedestrian mall - the soulless and windy concrete canyon called Sparks Street. There is greenspace all over Boulder, with the banks of Boulder Creek having cycleways and paths. There are even ponds along Boulder Creek stocked with rainbow trout so that kids under 13 can practice fishing - talk about making sure there's something for everyone to do.

In all, it's no surprise that Boulder has also been ranked as America's happiest city. It's not all due to environment and planning - Boulder also happens to be a very wealthy and well-educated community, the university being the biggest employer. Just the same, I've visited a number of university towns that are unattractive and unappealing (no need to name them). All this to say, Boulder serves as an interesting model of the possibilities of what a well-planned city could be like. Urban planning students from other cities would be well-counselled to make a trip here and see for themselves.

*Many thanks to CU's Institute for Behavioral Studies for making my visit to Boulder possible.

On mountain towns

I’ve been spending a few days in the town of Salida, in Central Colorado’s Arkansas River valley. There are mountains in every direction, some rising above 14,000 feet. When I arrived on Monday, the valley was sweltering in 90 degree heat. Today it’s a snowstorm. Such is October in the mountains.

The mountains I’m looking at as I type this attract tens of thousands of people each year to Salida and its neighbour to the north, Buena Vista. These are not plastic resort towns like Aspen or Vail, which have been carbon-copied by Whistler, Mont Tremblant, Lake Placid and their ilk. Salida is a much more earthbound place, where people who were born in the mountains still live, drive their pick-ups to the Safeway, and work at agricultural or blue collar jobs. Those who visit come not for the après-ski (there is none), but to whitewater kayak and raft, to go rock climibing, to mountain bike, to fish for trout, or to hike the countless trails.

The mountains have also inspired a disproportionate number of artists to settle here, the consignment shops of the old town centres joined by a growing number of eclectic galleries, craft-jewellers and pottery shops. Even for non-artists like me, it is hard not to be inspired by this valley, its wet western slopes green and yellow with conifers and aspens, its arid-brown eastern slopes peppered with a few pines and a lot of sage, mesquite and low-growing cacti. It’s also hard not to love the mountain towns. Deer wander down the middle of the main streets of Salida and Buena Vista in broad daylight. The town parks have first-rate climbing walls for practicing bouldering, and there are boat launches and trailheads accessible right off the main street. It lacks the glamour of Aspen, but for the visitor, life in Salida or Buena Vista is a joy.

The original non-native settlers of Salida were also drawn here by the mountains, but for very different reasons. There are veins of minerals and semi-precious gems in the high country, and an amazing amount of energy and investment went into attacking those veins. I was out inspecting some abandoned mining towns this past week, following up on research I published recently on the process of modern settlement abandonment. A particularly neat ghost town is St Elmo, a town 10,000 feet up on the flanks of Mount Princeton that a century ago had 2,000+ inhabitants. It once had a railroad, a school, a church, a main street with shops, saloons and wooden sidewalks. But the quantity and value of the ore coming out of the mountain declined, the cost of maintaining the rails became too great, and the town lost its purpose. Many of the buildings have been nicely preserved, perhaps too nicely, making it seem a bit tacky and museum-like. It is only one of dozens of such mountain towns, villages and hamlets that have been abandoned in Colorado since the late 19th century.

Salida was more fortunate than St Elmo. It’s on the main valley floor, situated where the main rail line and the Arkansas River come together. Ore from the mountain towns was brought here to be smelted, and a large relict smokestack still stands to the north of town. Jobs in mining and smelting are largely gone now from this region. These were dirty industries, and the valley’s air and water quality are much better now that they’re gone. But, though dirty, they also brought a lot of wealth and jobs into this valley. Tourism is today the fastest growing sector of the valley’s economy, but the types of jobs it creates tend to be low-paying, unskilled and seasonal. Until the US economy tanked in 2008, the valley was attracting its fair share of relatively well-off retirees. The money they brought with them helped generate additional jobs in construction and services, and contributed greatly to the modern hospital facility. However, they also helped drive up property prices, creating a dynamic common to tourist destinations, whereby people from elsewhere end up owning the nicest places in town.

Tourist visits are still strong during the summer, but the pre-recession mountain tourism gold rush may be ebbing. Home-building has slowed to a crawl, fewer wealthy retirees are investing here now. It’s far from the crisis situation that many towns and cities in the eastern US find themselves in, and I’m in no way forecasting that Salida or Buena Vista are destined to become ghost towns in the foreseeable future. What I can say with some confidence is that, while it’s drop-dead beautiful, this is a hard place to live and to make a living, and it’s not going to get any easier any time soon.

September 13th, 2001

It's coming up to the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, and the media are running all kinds of retrospective stories about that day. I was in Vienna at the time, where I was serving as Canada's Immigration Control Officer (ICO) for Central Europe and the Balkans. It was afternoon in Vienna when I joined several of the Embassy officers in a board room to watch the live images on CNN, rooted to the spot and stunned, as were most TV watchers around the world, as the 2nd plane was shown crashing into the World Trade Center.

The ICO was at that time the gatekeeper of Canada's overseas immigration program, as opposed to the much more numerous visa officers whose job it is to facilitate the movement to Canada of immigrants, visitors, international students and temporary workers. I use the past tense with respect to the term ICO, as things have changed since I left the foreign service, and there are now new and different positions overseas today. The ICO's responsibilities varied according to the posting and region. All ICOs typically performed interdiction work - that is, working with airlines to prevent improperly documented passengers from boarding flights to Canada. In some places, the interdiction work was primarily to train airline staff, but in others the ICO might be at the airport monitoring flights on a regular basis. In some locations, ICOs might also liaise with local law enforcement officials on movements of organized crime. In countries with active terrorist groups ICOs might also be involved in security screening in some way; similarly, if there were war criminals in the area, the ICO might be involved in preventing their movement to Canada. In still other regions, the ICO might work on countering the trafficking of women and children. In Central Europe and the Balkans at that time, the ICO portfolio included all of these.

On September 11th 2001, North American airspace was closed immediately after the attacks. Vienna Schwechat airport was a significant hub for passengers traveling from the Middle East to North America, with daily flights coming in from places like Beirut and Tehran. Many of these transit passengers found themselves stuck in the airport because they lacked visas to enter Austria, and had to sleep on the floor for a couple days. Also stuck in Vienna was Al Gore, who had been in Europe given public lectures. There was great interest in getting him back stateside ASAP, so it was decided that one of the first international flights to be allowed to enter North American airspace would be Austrian Airlines' Vienna-Toronto flight, with Mr Gore among the passengers. Once on the ground in Toronto, he'd travel by ground to Buffalo, New York.

One of my tasks that day was to oversee the security screening of that flight. As you might expect, it was pretty chaotic at the airport generally, and the Toronto flight was a particular headache. A large chunk of the passengers were in transit from the Middle East, and their luggage was being searched with a fine-toothed comb. There was also a large group of Austrian hunters on the flight, their luggage including a fair number of firearms. Fortunately, ground security was being handled by a truly first rate airline security contractor, and was going along as smoothly as possible under the circumstances - I mostly had to stand back and offer advice and guidance.

I never met Mr Gore, and he isn't what I remember most from that day. Instead, it was one female passenger who sticks in my mind, who uttered words airline security staff don't want to hear at the best of times, and certainly not from a transit passenger who was en route from Beirut to Toronto on September 11th. When asked if she packed her luggage herself, she said 'no'. She said that just before she left Beirut, her brother-in-law had given her an extra suitcase to check in, saying it contained gifts. She had not opened the bag, and could not say what it contained. She was travelling alone with her three kids, they'd been stuck for a couple days, were exhausted, scared, and just wanted to get back to Ontario, where they were permanent residents.

Airport security did not know what to do with her. An x-ray was not sufficient under the circumstances to determine if the bag was safe, and staff could not open the bag to do a hand search for the obvious reason that if its contents were dangerous, their safety was at risk. They obviously could not put the bag on an airplane, nor under travel regulations could the woman be allowed to travel and leave her bag behind. What to do? The answer was actually straightforward. I asked the woman for her permission to destroy the bag and its contents, which she immediately granted, so long as it would enable her to get home to Canada. I then asked the airport police to treat the bag as if it contained explosives, and take it to the bomb disposal facility to be destroyed. So they did, and the woman and her kids joined Mr Gore on the plane to Toronto. So did the hunters, once we were assured their weapons were properly packed and stowed. Actually, for sake of clarity I should say that Mr Gore joined them on the plane. He was being kept out of sight in a private waiting area until the aircraft had pushed back from the gate and was out on the tarmac. At that point it paused, the front steps were suddenly lowered, and Mr Gore was hustled on board. The aircraft then resumed taxiing.

Why write this all down now? In the coming week Canadians will watch on TV reminiscences of how the people of Halifax, Gander and other cities hosted so graciously passengers whose aircraft en route to the US had to be diverted. Less likely to be recalled by the media are the many more people who spent the following few days sleeping on airport floors all over the world in their sweaty clothes, not entirely sure what was going on, desperate to get to their homes, but at the same time worried that the plane they'd be boarding might also be used as a weapon by some crazed lunatic. While it obviously pales in comparison with experience the victims of the attacks, their families, and of New Yorkers generally, I suspect there's a lot of people out there who will be glad to forget their air journey of a decade ago.