Protesters end week-long camp to stop natural gas pipeline
Posted August 12, 2012 3:58 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
HOUSTON (NEWS1130) – Yet another pipeline protest has wrapped up in northern BC.
An encampment near Houston was meant to stop work about to get underway for a natural gas pipeline.
The Pacific Trails pipeline will stretch from north of Prince George to Kitimat, roughly the same route the much more controversial Northern Gateway pipeline is proposing to take.
Toghestiy, an activist with the Unis’tot’en First Nation, says that route is precisely why they’re against this project.
“It’s the first of many pipelines that the government and industries want to force through our lands. If we let Pacific Trails in, the other pipelines can follow suit. Then they can argue that the right-of-way is already here and so there wouldn’t be much of an impact.”
Protesters were told to prepare for some civil disobedience. Instead they spent the week taking in workshops about pipelines and the environment.
“We also had presentations from a whole variety of people. There were a lot of indigenous people who came. They talked about the concept of resistance, climate change, non-violent direct action,” he recounts.
He says nearly 200 people took part in the protest camp and related caravan through the province.
