THUNDER BAY -- There's a lot of diverse colour between ranchers, First Nation chiefs, United Church ministers, students, mayors, mothers and students but their similarities coming down the pipeline are black and white.
Lakehead University students held a photography exhibit outside of this weekend's Farmer's Market to display the work of Montreal photographer Robert Van Waarden, who traveled along the Energy East Pipeline to give a human face to its dissidents.
From concerns over the future of potentially impacted waterways to farmland and general energy strategy, the Along The Pipeline portraits express diversity among detractors of the project that would convert the natural gas line to carry 1.1 billion barrels of oil per day from Alberta to refineries in the Maritimes.
"I wanted to find out if people were believing what the industry and the governemnt were saying about the Tar Sands and pipelines in general," Van Waarden said in a promotional audio release.
"I guess it was also an opportunity to form a narrative across the country and to find out what some of those thoughts and tthose opinions were from real people. The Energy East Pipeline lends itself quite beautifully to creating that story and that journey."
Not all subjects opposed the pipeline conversion but members of the Lakehead University Environmental Law Students' Association who hosted the exhibit expressed strong beliefs along with the majority of those depicted in the six-foot portraits.
"It's 2015 and we shouldn't be investing in this infrastructure for old, extreme forms of fossil energy when we know about climate change and we have goals about staying below a two-degree average global warming," said group member Elysia Petrone.
"We should be investing in renewables and energies of our future."
Van Waarden's Along The Pipeline exhibit is also posted online at http://alongthepipeline.com/
