Several thousand people gathered outside B.C.'s legislature yesterday to protest Enbridge Inc.'s (TSX: ENB) proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and the planned expansion Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline.
The Defend Our Coast day of action drew a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 individuals.
Protest organizers painted the day as "an unprecedented display of unity," in an account of the event on the Defend Our Coast website.
"Three hundred people unfurled a 230-metre banner, the size of a supertanker and risked arrest by staking the banner to the grounds of the legislature and standing with it for hours," the website claims. "They risked arrest to show our provincial and federal governments their commitment to stop tarsands pipelines and tankers from being forced through local opposition."
Jolan Bailey, one of the event's organizers, termed the protest a "victory," and described its participants as a very mixed group.
"They were Canadians of every imaginable kind – fishermen and nurses; mothers; grandmothers and children; students and professionals; teachers and tradesmen and retirees," he said.
"They were Canadians who had made the decision to take a stand against a development in the tar sands that benefits only the smallest and wealthiest portion of the population, but leaves everyone alive on this planet with a diminished future and dire climate consequences."
