Tanker exercise

Andrew Hopkins, News1130

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – More than 20 Vancouver high school students celebrated this Earth Day, ramping up their fight against the proposed Enbridge Pipeline across Northern BC.
    The teenagers came up with a novel way to demonstrate the risks at an Earth Day party in Grandview park.   
    Concern over tankers hauling oil along BC’s coast, from Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project spurred their effort.
    Gloria Sun says they put together cardboard models of the tankers for people to carry through an obstacle course.
    The students built mock tankers from cardboard so people could carry them around their waists, while navigating a narrow pathway between obstacles painted as islands.
    Those who took part in the interactive exercise couldn’t avoid hitting “land”.
    ”It’s good to get the message out and to people who don’t know about Enbridge, this is a good opportunity for them to get to know Enbridge and come up with an opinion about it,” Sun says.
    Their models helped draw attention to their push for signatures on a petition to stop the pipeline, and reduce the risk of an oil spill on BC’s coast.
    Christine Ganase goes to Windermere Secondary and says they wanted to show the risks of a tanker crashing and spilling oil.
    ”We didn’t want to just bring a big screen and show people the actual effects so we’re like, how about a scale model because it’s a lot of fun and and a lot of people are going to be able to see it better if they get to go through it themselves,” she says.
    The students took part in an Earth Day Parade along Commercial Drive.