INSIGHTS: Price of the 2010 Winter Olympics

Environment News Service (ENS)

INSIGHTS: Price of the 2010 Winter Olympics - Eagleridge Bluffs

By Betty Krawczyk

MAPLE RIDGE, British Columbia, Canada, September 24, 2007 (ENS) - Greetings from Alouette Prison for Women in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. I'll be outta here tomorrow. Oh happy, happy! One's world shrinks in prison and no matter how much one tries to hold onto former concerns, after a few months of incarceration one's outside world begins to weaken and waddle. Then prison life ponies up masquerading as the real life.

Environmental activist and author Betty Krawczyk (Photo courtesy Greenpeace)

The daily prison counts, the lunch lockdown, the clatter of the dining hall, the shared showers and toilets, the close encounters with other inmates' lives in mail sharing and gassiping, the sound levels expressed in how prisoners' emotionally laden needs come screaming across the prison yard, even in just a friendly hello the voices are shrill accustomed as many are to hollering at each other on the street - all these become commonplace, even comfortable.

And because in the land of the blind the one-eyed woman is queen, I'm much in demand for advice on personal and legal matters. I'm hardly an expert on either. I was my own lawyer. And I was sent to prison, right? As for advice on relationships ... well I've been married four times.

Still, I'm the prison librarian. And as such am I primed to assume much the same role as bartender in the outside world. I listen to unending stories of assault, rape, incest, drugs, addictions, beatings, treachery and murder.

And at age 79 I am also the prison grandmother. This role is good. I enjoy it. There are several babies here, born while their mothers were incarcerated.

But at night when lights are out I think about Eagleridge Bluffs and where my continuing environmental activism has led and might lead into the future.

A pregnant doe rests on the Eagleridge Bluffs. (Photo by Ned Jacobs)

Unlike my former campaigns to try to stop, or at least help retard, the demolition of BC's remote public forests, the struggle at Eagleridge Bluffs was different. For starters, Eagleridge Bluffs was not a vast forest, but a smaller urban green space. But because it was urban, it was well known and well loved.

There were deer there and bear; wetlands complete with red legged frogs and a rare arbutus forest. And walking trails, wonderful walking trails through the wetlands and over the bluffs. And an old railroad tunnel underneath the bluffs.

Gordon Campbell, our BC premier, said this four lane highway that he was pushing over the bluffs was necessary for transportation to the Olympic Winter Games to be held at Whister Mountain in 2010.

You may have heard of our premier, Gordon Campbell. He was arrested in Hawaii in 2003 for drunken driving. He spent one night in jail and wasn't at all censured when he got back home.

I stopped construction trucks at Eagleridge Bluffs and got 10 months in prison.

Building the highway across Eagleridge Bluffs. (Photo courtesyBC Ministry of Transportation)

So, one can risk others' lives by drinking and driving without censure in BC, but one absolutely cannot try to prevent the destruction of a precious, irreplaceable ecosystem by just standing in the way without doing serious jail time. But, I digress.

This four lane highway that destroyed the bluffs wasn't even necessary in the first place. There was already a tunnel underneath the bluffs, already a railway.

And the Olympics wasn't even the reason for the destruction. The reason was a huge luxury private development project planned for the top of the bluffs. The highway would simply give our premier's friends wonderful access to their multi-million dollar homes that the citizens would have to pay for.

Oh, and the highway itself will belong to the company constructing the road, not to the citizens who paid for it - a private partnership thing.

But I will fly over these prison walls on September 25. I understand my friends are planning a big rally for my homecoming for the 26th, the day after my release. The rally will be held under the Olympic Clock in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Fitting.

I will speak only briefly as there will be other speakers and bands and things. I will talk about how we as citizens can refuse to live under corporate rule, a rule that is so death-oriented that it is snuffing out life all over this planet - about how we can and must opt for life instead.

I will also mention that my appeal is going forward, that I have a new book coming out, that I will be doing some public speaking but mostly to emphasize to people that this struggle has only begun.

{On March 5, 2007, Betty Krawczyk was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment for her role in protesting highway construction on the Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver.

Native activist grandmother Harriet Nahanee, who protested the highway with Krawczyk, was imprisoned for 14 days in January 2007. She died shortly after her release.

The Bid Book for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games shows that the road would be built through the existing tunnel, but instead it is being built across lands the BC Ministry of Transportation said in 2003 were "extremely rare, unique, highly susceptible to disturbance and regionally rare." For a map of the route, click here.

Krawczyk has published three books, "Open Living Confidential," "Lock Me up or Let Me Go," and "Clayoquot, the Sound of My Heart." Find out more here.}

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