First Puker

Almost two weeks ago we went to Fort McMurray’s aviation centre to do a fly-over of the main tar sands plants: Syncrude, Suncor, Albian Sands, and CNRL. Our pilot, Karen, was younger (not to mention more female) than I’d expected. She’d been flying for two years, and told us that some pilots don’t like doing tours, but she does, because “you get to meet all kinds.”

I’d never been in a small, 4-person plane before, but she talked us through the headphones and the seatbelts and I felt fine. Once we were in the air, at a height of about 1000 feet, there it all was. It’s hard to describe the miserable lack of optimism I felt upon looking down on the earth sucked dry and the grey, mucky pools of her former life spit out, never to breathe again. My stomach was resistant to unexpected movements and every time I turned my body to take a picture of the blackness I felt profoundly ill. Eventually I puked into a bag expressly for that purpose. Karen, to my surprise, instructed me to fling it from the window. Much to Macdonald’s glee, I had puked on the sands. If everybody flying over did the same, what chance would the monolith oil companies have? But when I asked Karen if a lot of people puked in her plane, she shook her head. “You were my first,” she smiled. It follows then, that there’s still much to be done before Synpuke and Barfcor can safely take over the massive responsibility that is “securing Canada’s energy future.”