Cinema Politica will be screening the documentary White Water, Black Gold on Thursday.
The documentary follows David Lavallee on his three-year journey across western Canada in search of answers about the activities of the world's thirstiest oil industry: the Tarsands.
As a mountaineer and hiking guide, Lavallee is on the front lines of climate change. Over the past 15 years he has worked in the Columbia Icefields of the Canadian Rockies, and has noticed profound changes in the mountains: climate change is rendering these landscapes unrecognizable.
Cinema Politica Ridge Meadows is collaborating with Pipe Up! Maple Ridge for this screening to draw attention to the proposed Enbridge pipeline.
Organizer Oosha Ramsoondar says the event builds on previous films about the oil sands including On The Line and Crude Sacrifice.
In the course of Lavallee's journey he makes many discoveries: new science shows that water resources in an era of climate change will be increasingly scarce (putting this industry at risk); first nations people living downstream are contracting bizarre cancers; the upgrading of this oil threatens multiple river systems across Canada and the tailings ponds containing the waste by-products of the process threaten to befoul the third largest watershed in the world. Additionally, a planned pipeline across British Columbia brings fresh threats to B.C. Rivers and the Pacific Ocean.
"White Water, Black Gold" is a sober look at the untold costs (to water and people) associated with developing the second largest deposit of "oil" in the world.
A discussion led by Lynn Perrin of Pipe Up! Abbotsford and Carly O'Rourke from the Pitt Polder Preservation Society will follow the film.
• White Water, Black Gold screens at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27 at Maple Ridge municipal hall. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.