Protesters gather at corner to oppose funding of pipeline

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This article was published 23/08/2021 (1684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

About 50 people from Winnipeg’s Mennonite community gathered Sunday at a TD Bank at the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Sherbrook Street to protest the bank’s funding of the Line 3 pipeline replacement.

As rain pelted down on a canopy of umbrellas, one man cut his TD Bank card into pieces while the crowd cheered. After some minutes of song and prayer, the group took non-permanent markers and wrote messages over the windows of the bank.

“Stop fossil fuel funding,” one man wrote on the door. The red ink ran in long streaks from the rain down over the bank’s hours.

Organizer Steve Heinrichs said he drew inspiration from Indigenous communities leading protests in Minnesota.

“It’s the work and the witness of Anishinaabe water protectors down at Line 3, who have been sacrificing hard trying to resist this pipeline for a number of years, not only for the sake of their own communities, but for us all,” said Heinrichs.

He said Indigenous people are often at the forefront of climate action and non-Indigenous people need to “do our part.”

Heinrichs said Christian churches have strayed from their roots, and he hopes his church and others can learn from land and water protectors and rediscover a “deep love and respect for creation.”

“That’s why we’re doing this specifically around faith communities,” said Heinrichs. “We’re saying: ‘Hey, we’ve been missing in action — we’ve got to step up.’”

The event’s other organizer, Allegra Friesen Epp, said the courage of Tara Houska, an Ojibwa lawyer and anti-pipeline activist who police in Minnesota shot by rubber bullets, helped spur her to action.

“Honestly, it makes my heart hurt,” she said. “It’s a reminder to me that some of these actions come with a cost, and that it’s often Indigenous people who bear that burden firsthand,” she said.

Friesen Epp said she hopes her church can engage more in this sort of activism. She believes that is an important aspect of her religion and that somewhere along the line, the church deviated somewhat from it.

“This shouldn’t be radical, out-there work for the church; this should be the centre of the church’s work,” she said. “So this is one small way that we’re trying to reprioritize and recentre ourselves in the good work of Christ.”

Gilbert Detillieux, the man who cut up his bank card, said learning TD Bank was the pipeline’s biggest funder made him rethink his 30 years banking with the company.

“It was kind of the final straw,” he said. Detillieux said he hopes more people will follow suit and cancel their accounts with the bank.

Recently, protests have largely been focused in Minnesota, where the Line 3 replacement project will be finished. Activists in the U.S. have run email campaigns to inundate the mailboxes of other large banks, such as JPMorgan, with calls to defund the pipeline. Another group of activists recently blocked a bridge in Duluth, Minn. to protest the issuing of permits.

About 80 per cent of the approximately $9 billion project is already done. The pipeline will stretch 1,660 km and is expected to transport more than 120 million litres of crude oil each day from the Alberta tar sands through Saskatchewan and Manitoba and as far as Wisconsin.

cody.sellar@freepress.mb.ca