The journalist Arno Kopecky discusses his book The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway (Douglas & McIntyre, 2013), with Joseph Planta.

The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway by Arno Kopecky (Douglas & McIntyre, 2013). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: The Oil Man and the Sea

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

The journalist Arno Kopecky joins me now. This past fall he released his latest book, The Oil Man and the Sea. It’s an engaging book that’s part travelogue, and part memoir of the few months he sailed British Columbia’s west coast, chiefly to the Great Bear Rainforest, which is at the heart of the debate over Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline. If the project goes through, and bitumen is piped to the coast, it’s through the waters Mr. Kopecky navigated that tankers will pass. What he’s done in this book is show the reader what’s there now, what sort of wildlife is found there, and how the communities up and down the coast feel and how they’d be affected by all of this. There are dire warnings about the seaways and the navigational challenges, that most say it’s not a question of if a spill will occur, but when. I’ll ask Mr. Kopecky about worst-case scenarios, and what he thinks might happen. On Wednesday, 29 January 2014, he’ll be headlining Incite, with Charles Montgomery, author of The Happy City. That’s at the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library at 7.30pm, put on by our friends at the Vancouver Writers Festival. The website for more is at www.arnokopecky.com. His first book was The Devil’s Curve, and he appears in sundry publications including the Walrus, Globe and Mail, Reader’s Digest, and Foreign Policy. This book is published by Douglas & McIntyre. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Arno Kopecky; Mr. Kopecky, good morning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (27.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS