Participants from London, Guelph, Toronto, and Montreal arrived at the Aamjiwnaang First Nation Reserve in Sarnia on Friday, Sept. 4 and Saturday, Sept. 5, 2015 for the “Toxic Tour.” Friday evening featured a welcome feast and was followed on Saturday by a march through the surrounding area, which contains over 60 refineries and chemical processing plants. Visitors were able to experience the daily life of those on the reserve, and heard testimony from members of the community about the impact of the petrochemical industry on their lives.
The Aamjiwnaang First Nation resides on a treaty-given territory near Canada’s “Chemical Valley,” and is surrounded by industrial plants operated by companies such as SunCor, Imperial Oil, and Enbridge. The community claims that these plants pollute their air and water and cause harmful medical issues.
A 2005 study from the journal Environmental Health Perspectives noted that the community’s male-to-female sex ratio of live births has steadily declined over time, with some years seeing two females born for every male.
Low proportions of male births have been correlated in the past with exposure to parental smoking, dioxin, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—the latter two have been detected in the blood and hair of Aamjiwnaang residents. While it has not been unequivocally proven, exposure to PCBs is also suspected to increase the risk of melanoma and liver cancer.
Many residents, such as spokesperson Vanessa Gray, spoke of the effect that the plants had on their own lives.
“This is a very important space that we have to acknowledge, because there were a lot of children that went to daycare in this brown building… including myself and my sister, who went home sick because our air was so unhealthy,” explained Gray in an interview with The Observer. “We have to acknowledge that these children’s lives are never going to be the same because of these companies that are right across the street from us.”
Some presenters spoke of the decreased quality of life due to chemical fumes and frequent sirens from the plants, while others noted the impact of industry on the local habitats and on the Great Lakes system. Demonstrators were also present to protest the use of oil pipelines in the area. A proposal has been put forward to use the nearby Line 9 pipeline to transport tar sands oil from Alberta to Montreal.
While there was no official response from the companies involved to the “Toxic Tour,” there have been clean-up efforts in the past to mitigate the effects of industry. Dow Chemical removed poisoned sediment from the nearby St. Clair River in 2004, while Imperial Oil and NOVA Chemicals have reduced emissions through fixing leaking valves.
For now, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation is raising funds for a study to test local water for heavy metals and other chemicals.
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