Dear Editor,

I’m writing as a partner in the Pipe Up Against Enbridge campaign to ask you to help Living Oceans promote a new campaign tool we’ve launched.

It’s an interactive map called Keep It Clean: Mapping Support for a Tanker-Free Coast, that we’ll use as a visual petition to remind Premier Christy Clark that an overwhelming majority of British Columbians don’t want tankers on our coast.

We all know what the dire environmental consequences will be if several hundred oil tankers begin traversing BC’s coastal waters every year, if the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project is approved, and if Kinder Morgan doubles the volume of tar sands oil transported to Vancouver.  It’s not a question of “if”, but rather when – and where.

And we all know what it will mean to us when places we love are damaged, perhaps beyond repair.

One picture may or may not be worth a thousand words, but it can certainly tell a story. Living Oceans would like to invite Gabriolans to tell theirs. (In fact, the map already contains images from Gabriola - but we can have as many as we want!)

Images can be from an individual, a group or a community. They can take any form you want – a message in the sand, a protest, a poster or piece of art you have created – or simply a favourite place you don’t want to see destroyed. Living Oceans hopes people will have as much fun as they can celebrating British Columbia’s waters and land. 

Photos can be submitted for the map at  www.livingoceans.org/maps/keep-it-clean.

If you are particularly proud of your image, it can also be submitted for consideration in the Living Oceans annual Ocean Exposures photo competition. This year an extra category, Keep It Clean, has been added. All photos submitted in this category will also automatically be included on the map. Deadline for competition entries is Sept. 30.

Whether or not you are able to send a photo, please take a minute to send a message to Premier Christy Clark (www.livingoceans.org/initiatives/tankers/action), reminding her that it is not the job of the government of British Columbia to demand money from Alberta to clean up oil spills. It is the government’s job to prevent oil spills ever happening.

Please share this invitation with friends, family and colleagues through newsletters, websites, social networking or good old-fashioned word of mouth.  And please don’t limit yourself to people living in British Columbia. We’re not the only Canadians opposed to the Harper government’s tar sands oil plans and ours are not the only images which should be on this map.

Thanks for helping Living Oceans spread the word.

PS: If you haven’t already seen it, you may enjoy Dan Murphy’s version of the Enbridge Northern Gateway advertisement.