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Haircutting protest staged at Enbridge’s Vancouver office by group behind media hoax
News Articles | Georgia Straight | March 16, 2011
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A patch of downtown Vancouver sidewalk became a makeshift hair salon today (March 16) as part of a protest by opponents of Enbridge’s planned Northern Gateway oil pipeline to the B.C. coast.
The demonstration outside the Enbridge office at Burrard and Pender came shortly after the Calgary-based energy company was targeted by a hoax media campaign.
A group calling itself People Enbridge Ruined in Michigan (PERM) claimed responsibility for the fake “MyHairCares” initiative, which made it appear the company was prepared to use human hair clippings to clean up oil spills.
Enbridge yesterday confirmed it was not behind the phoney campaign, calling it “a cynical attempt to take advantage of public concern about the environment”.
During today’s noon-hour demonstration, people took turns sitting in a chair for a free haircut while surrounded by a supportive crowd. The scene drew quizzical looks from some passersby.
The protest organizers claim Enbridge doesn’t have adequate oil-spill response measures. They also allege the company failed to properly clean up a July 2010 spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.
“What we’re doing today is giving away free haircuts and we’re going to hopefully collect some hair and actually send it to some friends in Michigan who helped us come up with this action,” Vancouver activist Sean Devlin told the Straight.
Stephanie Goodwin, director of Greenpeace Canada’s B.C. branch, was among those who sat for a haircut. She had dressed herself to resemble an Enbridge representative and wore a fake company nametag.
Goodwin told the Straight she was “playing a representative of Enbridge to thank the community for standing up for the coast” while the company doesn’t “have the backbone to”.
Enbridge has proposed building a 1,172-kilometre-long oil pipeline link to coastal Kitimat, B.C., from northern Alberta as part of its Northern Gateway project. The plan must undergo a federal regulatory review.
The company has said it would make spill prevention a priority with the project.
The project would include precautions like safety valves to quickly shut down the pipeline and emergency response personnel and equipment placed at various points along the route, the company has said.
Enbridge spokesperson Paul Stanway said he understands the demonstrators outside the company’s Vancouver office today were “well behaved”.
“We live in a democratic country and they’re perfectly at liberty to do that,” he told the Straight by phone.
Stanway defended Enbridge’s response to the Kalamazoo River oil spill.
“Nobody welcomes accidents like that,” he said. “It’s something you try and avoid but you deal with them as well as you can. And from our point of view I think we did that.”
The spoof MyHairCares campaign included a video, websites, and news releases. PERM says the idea came about with help from the Yes Men, an internationally known activist prank group.
Tagged with: pipeline, enbridge, northern gateway, yes men
