Interview with Jean L’Hommecourt at Fort McKay

Our final day in the tar sands began with a very wet, intimidating, and somewhat toxic lap by bicycle around the Reclamation Loop itself. In many ways, this represented the end of the bicycle leg of the journey. Afterward, there was one more journey further north to make—the 60km drive to Fort McKay and an interview with Jean L'Hommecourt at her home.

This was the far point of the entire trip. Everything from here on would be the journey home. We would leave Anzac later that day, bidding "Grandma" and "Grandpa" Woodward farewell, and by the evening we would be in Lac La Biche, halfway to Edmonton.

But in Fort McKay, one of the most powerful interviews of the pilgrimage awaited us, surrounded on almost all sides by tar sands extraction sites. Beyond what appears in the interview below, Jean had other stories, such as times when their local school had to evacuate (with bloody noses to boot) due to an ammonia gas release by the industry. Derek Hoshiko of our group had his own experience when he used the restroom inside Jean’s house and realized if he washed his hands, he would get the same lesions that many of the locals got from their tap water, and contemplated his privilege in being able to decide to wash his hands back in town.

As with some of the other interviews, I've done a minimum of editing because there was no need for it. I was not going to clip or edit her story, and felt no need to create a narrative beyond the one she tells.

Although the pace of videos has slowed, there are more yet to come. Next, we will skip a few days to another great interview with Ceno Loyie at Slave Lake, Alberta.