Enbridge poem

We just couldn’t resist … Enbridge has walked into it yet again, this time with a poetic flourish! A whole new, softer, gentler Enbridge buying ad space for lovely pictures and a poem that discloses the depth of their misunderstanding of the ocean:

The ocean --
Vast. Deep.
A limitless pool of life.
A playground for the tiny and
giant things that live within it.
And a gateway to the other side.
The ocean should remain an ocean.
Always.

Really? We challenged our supporters to give it back to them in seven lines or less in their choice of iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets, free verse or haiku.

Here are the entries we received in the past few hours. We'll post all the poems on our web site. Or if you'd like you can send us your poem to let Enbridge know what the ocean means to you. Or what Enbridge and its pipeline and tanker proposal mean to you.

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Your poems

The Enbridge Ocean
Privately owned and operated
and never paid for
A limitless pool of life to end
As the gateway to the Northern Gateway
The Ocean should remain ours
Always

~ John H.

No, Enbridge we are not fooled by you
We are watching the devious things you do
White washing this whole dirty affair
to try to show us that you care
The ocean to you is just a road
so your filthy crude you can unload
in a far off Asian land
just to get money in your hand

~ Marilyn M.

It's up to us to protect, preserve and prepare the next generation for more than just a food supply but a place to enjoy and not pollute, a place of beauty and not bubbles of tar.

We are stewards to our children's world and ocean.
Always.

~R. Kinch

The ocean --
Vast. Dying.
We thought it was limitless.
The life that dwells there is not on vacation,
Has no other home.
No gateway to swim to greener waters.
Is an ocean without life an ocean
Always?

~ Tamara S.

The ocean
No more
How sad we will be
A limitless pool of oil and debris
No more shall life survive
In our oceans worldwide
If miles upon miles of pipeline be built
One day you will be ridden with guilt

~ Gonda T.

enbdrige--
foolish. greedy.
a juggernaut causing catastrophes carelessly.
like a repeat offender drunk driver
asking to drive the school bus.
and i'm not going to agree to that.
enbridge, you are my enemy.
always.

~ David B.

an ocean is full of life and joy, please don't destroy it with your oil.

~ Charles L.

I did some sleuthing and managed to dig up Enbridge's first draft of their poem.

The ocean --
It's in our way
But we'll cut through it like a knife
And kill all the giant and
Tiny things that live within it.
It's our gateway to the dark side.
The ocean - it belongs to us now; don't forget it.
Ever.

~ Daniel T.

Agreed, the ocean
should stay an ocean. So don't
dump oil in it.

~ Kirsten S.

It’s good to taste the ocean air;
Good to wash away the strains of the day;
So good to sense the life it holds for every one of us;
What a beautiful, mystical place: the sea.

Then, Ship Happens.

~ Philip M.

The ocean, living, breathing, conscious
Teeming with life, struggling to survive
Commands respect, despairs of man
whose folly pours grunge over all within
her embrace. She shares her bounty willingly
It is up to us to see she has something to share.

~ Aislinn

Le bleu de l'océan
Est fait pour être bleu
Il est source de toute vie
Et il porte en lui des trésors inestimable
Qui sont garant de la pureté de sa source
Et de la vie même qui est sacré
Chacun s'y ressource et s'y délecte
Dans sa magnificence sous ses vagues
Qui nous caresse le corps et berce notre âme

~ Louise B.

The ocean - vast and deep
Is home to maritime life,
Not to oil that might seep
Into every crevice and cranny
In that watery land.
Save the ocean from Enbridge
Who fails to understand
The importance of oceans.

~ Sue M.

The ocean -
A cure for anyone
Feeling at sea.
The tides predictable,
No mooning over them.
The life beneath the waves
Unseen, but welcoming.

~ Edwin T.

The ocean ---
Finite. Threatened.
A fragile pool of life.
A playground for the tiny and
giant corporations that feed upon it.
And a bellwether of human greed.
The ocean should remain an ocean.
Oil free.

~ Greg B.

The ocean shelters our life’s sustenance.
We creatures of the land are dependent on the creatures of the ocean.
The ocean is not a highway or a gateway, it is not a playground and it is not able to withstand limitless abuse.
It is precious. It needs protection. It needs to persist.
The ocean needs to persist in spite of the perverse persecution by petroleum partners.
Incessantly.

~ Gail M.

The ocean -
Vast. Deep.
The origins of life itself
Not a playground but a home
For large and small.
Our main source of oxygen
And must remain so forever.
A tanker, a spill, we crossed the line.
Oops!

The atmosphere -
Vast. Thin.
Our life depends on it.
Luck might spare our oceans
From the worst that we can do.
But the air can't remain healthy
If we safely use the oceans
to help burn our oily goo.

~ Ron

Edibles dying
Jellyfish multiplying.
What was once an ocean blue.
Now purple oil hue.
Stop, to ensure surviving.

~ Leo L.

The ocean --
Vast. Magnificent
Source of all life.
Vulnerable to the greed of corporations
and the wealth of a few.
Black, dying, choking, crying
The ocean must remain a healthy ocean
To sustain us all.

~ Dianne S.

A fool is known by their many words
Or in this case; ANY words

~ Judy C.

Ivory towers with all the powers
Corrupt politicians, media showers;
No-one is listening to the hype,
We know what you are and your type,
If you knew one jot of the ocean's worth,
You would not threaten our hallowed surf.
So keep your plan to launch the tankers,
And grow some brains, you useless wankers!

~ Colin H.

Oceans can be wild and they can be calm
they are the live blood to all who live there
and should not come to harm
The whales and the dolphins
We just stand in awe
To protect them forever should be the law

~ Marilyn M.

The ocean should remain an ocean, always.
No oil rigs, no floating islands of garbage, no dumping from ships and cruise liners, no industrial fishing.

~ Joanne R.

Mystical, blue and forbidding
Home to so many understood by so few
Our oceans, our seas join together as one
Merged in tranquility
Rolling and lapping on far off shores
The rhythm is set
That is one thing man cannot change

~ Marilyn M.

How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?
Enbridge writes poetry
And so can I.

~ Joy T.

A Midwest Macbeth

Will mediocre poems wash this hand
Clean of corruption? No; not if it scanned More perfectly could any rhyming verse The redding of the ocean's green reverse.
Yet oilers are incarnadining out
On bloodless lines, their bloody lines to route.

~ Raf N.

This isn't an ocean, it's a network of trade routes.
These are not mountains, they're challenges.
This isn't oil, it's power.
And you tiny people have no idea
how much you need us.

~ Will K.

Enbridge lies --
Deceit. Arrogance.
A limitless pool of lies.
A corporation to contain greed
and predatory behaviour.
Your pipelines shall not happen.
Tankers moratorium remains.
The ocean is for those creatures who live in it
and have life because of it.
The ocean is no place for tankers.
The earth is no place for tar sands pipelines.
Enbridge GO AWAY!

~ Maddi N.

The oceans so sparkling and blue.
I fear enbridge will make it like glue.
Beautiful ocean your waters go so far.
The only thing enbridge oil tankers will do is is make it tar.
Lovely ocean we cant live without you.please somebody stop enbridge before it's goo.
The miracle of life lives in your waves.we could lose it all how enbridge behaves.

~ Joseph F.

The Earth,
Complex, Unique, Precious, Life-supporting,
Climate Change, accelerating, threatening the fragile ecosystem and human existence
Fossil fuel energies propelling Climate Change
Pipelines and tankers transporting the deadly fuels from Tar Sands and Fracking sites
To a future terrifying to behold.
Such Foolishness!

~ Catherine S.

Enbridge --
Huge. Greedy.
A limitless pool of avarice.
A destroyer of the tiny and
giant things that stand in its way.
And a gateway to destruction.
Enbridge should be ashamed.
Always.

~ Nora C.

The Enbridge-Gateway Way

The ocean
Ours to use
Ours to remove Islands
Ours to pollute
Ours to kill
Ours to make of no use to you
Ours

~ Tony G.

Enbridge PR Budget.

Vast, Deep.
A limitless pool of nonsense.
A playground for the petty and ambitious minds within it.
A window to those who live in a different world.
Bull$h!t will remain Bull$h!t.
Always.

~ Jay S.

Poetry about the ocean.

The Ocean,
our Mother.
How she must regret us,
who murder her other children
in merciless abandon.

With Zombie Oil, we drown her Deep,
Smearing the floor of the Palace of Life.
We fill her giving waters with tiny
merciless pellets of plastic - oil's deadly progeny -
invading the very tissues of the children of the sea
and we kill, kill, kill, for profit.  

~ Muriel

There once was a bunch name of Enbridge
Who couldn't see trees for the foliage
Though they tried and they tried ...
(Oh believe us, they cried!)
All everyone else saw was leakage!

~ Juanita H.

Crude, by any other name…

Karen Wristen is Living Oceans' Executive Director and leads our Tankers campaign that is focused on keeping Canada's Pacific North Coast tanker-free. 

When I saw the video coverage of the train derailment at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, horror quickly turned to anger.  As I listened to the fear and awe in the voices of those who escaped, describing “le chaleur…” I was instantly suspicious that this was not an explosion of conventional crude oil. A quick text to a reporter at the scene confirmed my hunch:  it was labelled “crude oil”, but it came from North Dakota. The Bakken oil shale fields in that state are producing something quite unlike the oil that we’ve known for the past century.  In fact, it more closely resembles gasoline in volatility.

Freight train derailment at Lac Mégantic (QC) this summer resulted
in a loss of life and half of the town's centre. 

But what, I wondered, was North Dakota crude of any sort doing on a Canadian train headed to a Canadian refinery? I understood it was law in the US that all crude had to be refined in the country. Looking a little more deeply into the matter, I uncovered an ironic twist in the fate of the oil industry.

When tarsands and oil shale production began to look economically feasible, U.S. refineries began the extensive refitting and reconfiguration needed to deal with heavy, bituminous oils. Anticipating the Keystone XL pipeline would be approved, the plan was to bring those heavy oils to the Gulf refineries.

Two things went wrong with that plan. First, Keystone proved to be one of the most galvanizing issues to sweep the U.S. since the Vietnam war.  Then the Bakken fields proved to be holding, not the expected heavy crude, but quite the opposite: gases and light liquids like the one that exploded that July night in Lac-Mégantic. Opened for permitting purposes as “crude oil” sites, the product of the Bakken fields is reported in U.S. statistics as “crude” and, as we now know, shipped as “crude.” And tragically, it is being shipped in rail cars that were designed for crude and not for the highly explosive product that it is.

The U.S. industrial conundrum becomes extremely pertinent for us in Canada because the product that exploded at Lac-Mégantic is the very thing tarsands producers use to thin the bitumen that they pump through the pipelines that run through our towns and cities. With a ready market for the product just over the border and the only ‘nearby’ refinery being Irving’s in New Brunswick, we can expect to see a lot more of the stuff crossing the border.

In fact, if the Enbridge Northern Gateway proposal is approved and goes ahead, several hundred tankers loaded with the same kind of product will be navigating Douglas Channel every year, bringing condensate to the pipeline for transportation to the tarsands, and back again, mixed with the bitumen. Which leads us to wonder where Kinder Morgan will be getting the condensate they need to move bitumen through the Port of Vancouver.

I know I’ll be approaching all level railway crossings with a new measure of caution.