Pipe Dreams
- Authors
- Poitras, Jacques
- Publisher
- Viking
- Tags
- politics
- Date
- 2018-09-25T00:00:00+00:00
- Size
- 4.02 MB
- Lang
- en
******* ** *Winner of the 2018 Writers' Federation of New Brunswick Book Award for Non-Fiction* * ** **** **
Shortlisted for the 2018 Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing
****Shortlisted for the 2019 JW Dafoe Book Prize* * **
A timely chronicle of how Canada's oil pipelines have become hotbeds for debate about our energy future, Indigenous rights, environmental activism, and east-west political tensions.
*Pipe Dreams* is the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the Energy East pipeline and the broader battle over climate and energy in Canada. The project was to be a monumental undertaking, beginning near Edmonton, AB, and stretching over four thousand kilometres, through Montreal to the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, NB. Conceived as a back-up plan for the stalled Keystone XL pipeline, it became the crucible for a national debate over the future of oil.
In a cross-country journey, Poitras talked to industry executives, prairie ranchers, First Nations chiefs, mayors, premiers, cabinet ministers, and refinery workers. He also explored Canada's perplexing oil relationship with the United States: our industry is literally tied to its American counterpart with sinews of steel. The Energy East pipeline represented a new direction, designed to get Alberta oil sands crude to lucrative world markets. Yet it was promoted in explicitly nationalist terms: the country was said to be reorienting itself along its east-west axis, tying itself together, again, with a great feat of engineering.
By the time the journey ended, the story had become a kind of whodunit: Poitras witnessed the slow-motion killing of the fifteen billion dollar project. Unfolding in tandem with clashes over the Trans Mountain pipeline, Energy East's demise heralded a potential turning point not just for a single proposal, but for Canada's carbon economy.
Entertaining, informative, and insightful, *Pipe Dreams* offers a clear picture of the complicated political, environmental, and economic issues that Canadians face.