“It’s that driving force of the almighty dollar that’s making us all sick.”

-Jean L’Hommecourt
Fort McKay First Nation

The Pilgrimage to bring the tar sands home

At the 2014 Whidbey Bioneers conference held at the Whidbey Institute at Chinook, a presentation about the environmental devastation and human rights abuses at the Alberta tar sands left a big impression on me. That evening, my good friend Derek and I were digesting the day when we looked up how far away all of this was from our home. We were surprised to find out the distance was 1000 miles. Not close by, but not too far either.

In 2011, I had ridden my bike with some friends to San Francisco as a fundraiser for another nonprofit, The Ndoto Project. The journey was 1000 miles and took two weeks. It turned out that a ride to Fort McMurray, Alberta, and the open pit tar sands mines would be nearly 1000 miles away on the dot. The next day, we made the decision to do a bicycle trip to the tar sands to show that the issues were close enough to home to reach under pedal power: we would demonstrate just how close they were to our home by riding bicycles there!

This project became known as The Road to Athabasca, and over the next year evolved into a life changing experience for all involved.

The first revelation was learning of the existence of the (then) Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline and the project to expand it. We learned quickly how much information stops at the Canadian border. The pilgrimage intended to visit the tar sands, but we hadn’t realized that the tar sands in fact came HERE every day into Washington State through our waters, and even through a spur leading to Anacortes. We hadn’t realized that the plan was to turn our own home waters into a Persian Gulf of tanker traffic. Suddenly what we were doing took on more urgency and scale.

The focus became much broader, putting as much emphasis on what we learned and witnessed on the route itself as what we’d find at our destination. Luckily, the route we had already picked followed the pipeline all the way to Edmonton, Alberta. We would now talk to anyone with a story to tell. We interviewed over 50 Indigenous people, community members, oil pipeline workers, activists, environmentalists, and subject-matter experts. In Fort McMurray, Alberta, we had been invited by members of the Fort McMurray First Nation to participate in a Healing Gathering, a local yearly pilgrimage on foot to points at the extractions sites attended by local Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan peoples alike. What followed each day revealed layers of an epic, life-changing story that bound us together.

Learn our story on the blog

As I ride my miles in May 2021, I’ll be telling some of the story of what we found on the road in 2015, who we talked to, tales of the land and water and mountain passes, and finally, what we found at our destination.

Learn more about where we went, what bitumen is, and why it matters!