6
Alternatives: Environmental and Indigenous Activism in the 1970s
Liza Piper
Alternatives (also known as Alternatives Journal or A/J) was founded in 1971 as a “journal/magazine hybrid that would transform scholarly research into tangible ideas for community activism.”1 Initially based at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Alternatives grew out of the Peterborough affiliate of the Toronto-based activist organization Pollution Probe.2 Notwithstanding its scholarly apparatus (in the early 1980s, Alternatives would move to the University of Waterloo and adopt peer review, and in 1995 it became the official journal of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada), the quarterly periodical has always served to bridge academic and activist communities and offers an important window into Canada’s environmental movement as it has evolved from the 1970s to the present.
Alternatives aimed to connect intellectuals, activists, and consultants to private enterprise and government, politicians, and others from across the broad spectrum of research areas that were relevant to the burgeoning environmental movement of the day. Alternatives was by no means the only environmentalist publication in Canada launched in this period: Energy Probe, another offshoot of Pollution Probe founded in 1969, published The Probe Post from 1978 until 1991, as a means to keep members and the wider community informed; the Science Council of Canada, in its aim to promote the transition from Canada as a consumer to a conserver society, published the Conserver Society Notes beginning in October 1975.3 As a stand-alone publication the Notes were short-lived, lasting only until June 1977. They were then picked up and incorporated into Alternatives beginning in the summer of 1979. For several issues, the Notes were printed on different paper and set apart in appearance and form from the main publication. Beginning in the Fall 1984 issue, the Notes were incorporated physically into the rest of the journal but still distinguished by a separate heading. The Notes endured thus until appearing for the last time in volume 15, issue 1, published in January 1988.4
To fully assess Alternatives’ role in and relationship with small green activism in Canada would require a closer consideration of its audience, reach, subscription base, and evolution over time. Such an analysis would offer important insights but is beyond the scope of this present short chapter. Rather, what is presented here draws on 231 contributor biographies printed in Alternatives in its first decade of publication (from the summer issue in 1971 through the spring/summer issue in 1981) in combination with consideration of the kinds of topics they covered in 253 separate articles for the journal, to better understand the relationships between environmental and Indigenous activism in Canada in the 1970s. Beyond an analysis of who participated in the discussions and on what topics, as published in Alternatives in its first decade in print, this piece aims to contextualize the reprinted article that follows (Chapter 7), which was authored by Tobasonakwut Peter Kinew and appeared in Alternatives in 1978. Kinew’s article stands in its own right as an important expression of Indigenous politics in this period; he elucidates the connection between the Treaty 3 chiefs’ struggle against a new coal-fired generating station and the larger context of Indigenous activism against resource development in northern Ontario, and demonstrates the often complicated relationships between Indigenous and environmental activists—a theme developed elsewhere in this collection by Willow, Grossman, and Clapperton in particular. The question I wish to address is: Where does Kinew’s piece stand in relationship to other articles published in Alternatives in this first decade and what can Kinew’s contribution to Alternatives tell us about Indigenous-environmentalist activist relationships in Ontario and Canada in the 1970s?
Alternatives in this period reflected the wide umbrella that 1970s environmentalism extended over many other affiliated areas of activism, with articles and special issues on topics including population growth, pollution, nuclear power, the limits to growth, soft energy paths, artistic and literary responses to environmental crisis, militarism, solar power, and the Conserver Society. Each issue typically included several feature articles of varying length (as short as one page but rarely as long as ten pages) as well as book reviews of both scholarly and popular works. In the earliest issues, there were “eco-tactics” that appeared throughout and spoke to readers about everything from airtight shelters in Inverhuron Provincial Park to be used in case of hydrogen sulphide releases (#24), to calling for greater controls on snowmobiles (#18).5 Occasional bibliographies surveyed topics that included Canadian Conservation History, Transportation and Ecology, Fossil & Nuclear Fuels, Water Diversions, Environment and Design, and Food Production from Farm to Table. Alternatives also advertised how to purchase reprints of popular articles and copies of their full selection of bibliographies.6 Alternatives was not exclusively a venue for small green activist writing but included contributions that ranged from the highly local (for example, a series of articles about the construction of Inco’s high stack in Sudbury in 1973, or a photographic essay of rocks on Manitoulin’s south shore), to national (for example, calling for a national energy policy), to much broader in scope (for example, articles about public health and the environment, or on the “Relevance of Classical Political Theory for Economy, Technology, and Ecology”).7
Where Alternatives was at its most local and small scale it served as a forum for environmentalists and allies in central Ontario. Indeed, Trent University professors and students frequently supplied content to the journal in its first decade and were among the most common repeat authors.8 This local connection was further evidenced in the way the journal was used to advertise Camp Wanapitei, an “ecology wilderness camp in Northern Ontario.”9 Bruce Hodgins, a repeat Alternatives contributor, helped to direct the camp; Wanapitei was also used as a base for an “experiential wilderness conference on labour and the environment” held in 1974, organized by the journal and which brought union members together with environmentalists from government, universities, and volunteer groups.10 This conference in itself spoke to the breadth of Alternatives’ mandate and its strong connections to labour and working-class issues in central Ontario. From the very first issue, published in the summer of 1971, Alternatives also featured international contributions. In its first decade, 41 of the 231 unique contributors (17.7 percent) gave their affiliation as outside of Canada. The vast majority of these (33 contributors, or 14.3 percent) were from the United States, and included such notable figures of the environmental movement as Barry Commoner. After the United States, a handful of contributions came from authors based in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Japan, and Germany.
When it came to who these contributors were, whether based in the US or Canada, the majority were academics. Almost all the contributors supplied a short biography to the journal, and from these it was possible to distinguish four categories: academic, environmentalist, politician (including civil servants), and professionals (including, for instance, consultants, journalists, lawyers). Some of these categories overlapped: Robin Harger, for instance, who co-authored an article in the autumn 1971 issue, was both an assistant professor of Zoology at the University of British Columbia and a former president of the Society for Pollution and Environmental Control (SPEC) (it is in this latter capacity that Harger appears in Chapter 10, this volume). Harger was therefore categorized as both an “academic” and an “environmentalist,” as I did not attempt to fix each contributor into only one category.11 Those with an academic affiliation were most numerous: 64.2 percent, or 129 of 201 unique contributors (30 contributors either did not given an affiliation or were categorized as “other”), although 33 of these 129 also identified another affiliation as well.12 There were 53 environmentalists (26.4 percent), 39 professionals (19.4 percent), and 28 politicians (13.9 percent). Among the politicians and civil servants from Canada, most either worked for Environment Canada or the Science Council of Canada, or were involved in the nuclear power industry.
Unsurprisingly, given the number of academics writing for the journal, many of the articles featured in the first decade were conference papers, versions of lectures, or drawn from other published works. Commoner’s contribution, for instance, was a revised version of an address he gave in Ottawa in 1978 to the Conference on Jobs and Environment, an event sponsored by the Canadian Labour Congress. Work by professionals likewise often drew on work they had produced in reports for government or public distribution. Representation of different perspectives was unevenly distributed across each issue of Alternatives. Special issues, in particular, might draw on only one particular type of expertise. Two striking instances of this were the autumn 1973 issue on “Decentralization, Environment, and Community,” which was put together by the Ottawa and Toronto–based Institute for the Study of Cultural Evolution (ISCE)—a group that aimed to build an “intentional community” that would function with “a minimum interference with nature’s renewing cycles and with a minimum use of non-renewable resources.”13 The small green activists behind this initiative used the issue to detail the project and its many technical aspects. By contrast, in the spring 1979 issue on “Behaviour in the ‘Crunch,’” every article but one was authored by an academic, most of whom were psychologists or sociologists (the so-called “crunch” was an anticipated rapid shift across many different aspects of society and economy in response to intensifying environmental and economic pressures, foregrounded by the energy crises of the 1970s).
Indigenous issues, if less so voices, had an important place in Alternatives pages from early on. There were 253 articles published in Alternatives in its first decade. The difference between the number of articles (253) and the number of unique contributors (231) signals the frequency with which some authors published multiple times in the journal. The category of “articles” was determined by those pieces that were identified with unique titles in the table of contents for each issue. This category does not normally include the “eco-tactics,” reviews, editorials, letters to the editor, or bibliographies, which also appeared in Alternatives with varying frequency and regularity in the period studied. In identifying Indigenous content, the count tallied all references to Indigenous peoples in Canada or elsewhere in the pages of Alternatives where they were variously referred to as specific nations (for example, “Mohawks”) or using broader categories (for example, “Native people” or “Indians”). Those articles with Indigenous content ranged significantly from detailed discussion or whole articles examining Indigenous activism, issues, or communities, for instance, to more general references to Indigenous peoples, representations, or lifeways. The former (detailed discussion of Indigenous issues, cultures, or activism) amounted to thirty-one articles, or 12.3 percent of the articles in this period that had significant Indigenous content. This can be compared to fifty-five articles that addressed energy (21.7 percent), nineteen focused on pollution (7.5 percent), and twelve focused on population control (4.7 percent), and keeping in mind that some of these categories overlapped. An additional eleven articles, or 4.3 percent, mentioned Indigenous people or issues in passing. Among the pieces that made passing reference to Indigenous issues or peoples were those that addressed ecological issues in the context of the longer scale of human history, including pre-industrial relations with the environment; others that made use of “Ecological Indian” stereotypes—such as the ISCE special issue that noted they had named their intentional community Bakavi, the Hopi word for reeds, as the Hopi “have for thousands of years lived in harmony with their surroundings.”14 As well, toward the end of the decade, and in the wake of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, articles that addressed the impacts of resource development often acknowledged potential impacts on northern Indigenous peoples and livelihoods but did not necessarily engage with them in detail.15
Development, resources, energy, and the North were the topics where Indigenous peoples and issues figured most prominently.16 There is no better example of this than the first article in Alternatives that gave significant attention to Indigenous peoples, a “Position Paper on the James Bay Project” that appeared in the summer 1972 issue. This article detailed the project at that moment in time, its anticipated consequences, and specifically the impacts on the Indigenous inhabitants of James Bay and the ways in which they had been excluded from decision making to that point. The article was authored by the James Bay Committee, which included two Indigenous groups (the Indians of Quebec Association and the Quebec Metis and non-Status Indians Association), as well as several small green organizations (including the Société pour Vaincre la Pollution, the Voice of Women, and the Montreal Field Naturalist Club).
Energy projects and their impacts on Indigenous livelihoods came up repeatedly in the pages of Alternatives, whether in reference to James Bay, the Alberta oil sands, or the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline (or Berger) Inquiry. Articles that dealt with Canadian resource development (forestry and mining, as well as oil and gas projects), more often than not gave significant attention to Indigenous communities.17 There was significant overlap in Alternatives’ meaningful coverage of the North (whether Ontario’s provincial north or Canada’s territorial north) and its attention to Indigenous people. Indeed, Kinew’s article, reprinted here as Chapter 7, was part of a special issue on the North, published in 1978.18 That said, not all northern coverage included Indigenous people. Two articles on “The Arctic in Perspective” that appeared in 1973 and 1974 gave virtually no attention to Arctic inhabitants, except for a dismissive note that “a distinctive feature of the Canadian Far North is that a majority of the tiny population is native.”19 Likewise, articles addressing resource-related pollution did not necessarily consider impacts on Indigenous people, or any people at all, for that matter; some of these pieces exclusively focused on environmental impacts.20 However, some of the key moments of environmental injustice with disproportionate impacts on Indigenous people from this period—mercury poisoning at Grassy Narrows, tailings from uranium mining in the Serpent River, arsenic exposure in Yellowknife, and contamination from the Saint Lawrence Seaway project—all featured in articles in Alternatives in the decade under review.21
What is missing topically from Alternatives’ coverage of environmental issues and activism in the 1970s is any significant consideration of the ways that Aboriginal rights, as they would come to be defined by the courts and through the process of constitutional renewal that was underway in this period, would reshape the possibilities for environmental activism in the ways that we see at work in the twenty-first century (Grossman and Willow, this volume).22 Several articles in this period addressed how the law could be used to engage with environmental issues, in both Canada and the United States, and lawyers contributed regularly to the journal.23 One article, for example, by Geoff Mains, published in the spring 1980 issue, looked specifically at “Some Environmental Aspects of a Canadian Constitution.”24 In Kinew’s article we see Treaty 3 chiefs putting great emphasis on legal tools, from the newly passed Ontario Environmental Assessment Act to the possibility of a reference to the International Joint Commission (IJC), to ensure the protection of lands and people. However, none of the articles reviewed from this period made reference to possibilities for using treaty, or what would be termed Aboriginal rights in the context of constitutional debates in the 1980s, as pathways to achieve environmentalist goals. This serves as an indispensable reminder that while many of the key decisions that enabled Indigenous-environmentalist coalitions in the 1990s and beyond came about in the 1970s or shortly thereafter—including the Calder case (1973), the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (1975), the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (1974–77), and the inclusion of Aboriginal rights in the new Constitution Act (1982)—it took time for the opportunities created by these decisions to be realized. While there were long-standing philosophical connections between environmental and Indigenous activists, and concern for resource development in Canada especially brought Indigenous issues to the forefront of the environmentalist agenda (even if, as Kinew’s article reminds us, this did not always result in effective collaboration), practical possibilities for strategic alliances rooted in Aboriginal rights were contingent on the shifting political discourses of the 1980s and 1990s. This history, which Clapperton addresses in his chapter on Clayoquot Sound, is a subject that warrants closer attention, as it is informed not only by the example of “the War in the Woods” but also the earlier mobilization of southerners around northern energy projects, and later episodes such as the Piikani Nation’s Lone Fighters’ opposition to the Oldman Dam in southern Alberta in the late 1980s and early 1990s.25
Almost all of those who wrote on Indigenous issues and peoples for Alternatives did not identify themselves in their biographies as Indigenous. Of the thirty-one articles with significant Indigenous content only three had Indigenous authors, and only one of these, the article by Tobasonakwut Peter Kinew, originally published under the name Peter Kelley, had unambiguous and solo Indigenous authorship.26 The other two included the article authored by the James Bay Committee mentioned above; this committee included two Indigenous organizations, although it appears that Dorothy Rosenberg, a southern activist, was the one responsible for much of the group’s writing.27 Lastly, in the winter 1978 issue, Lloyd Tataryn authored “Notes from the Territories: Arsenic Poisoning,” which detailed and contextualized the concerns that had arisen in Yellowknife around arsenic contamination from the Giant Mine. With the author’s biography was a note that the article was “based on a presentation delivered by Noel Starblanket, President of the National Indian Brotherhood, to the Canadian Public Health Association Task Force on Arsenic, March 1977.”28 This was not necessarily an instance of wholesale appropriation, however, as Tataryn himself was identified as “a journalist and consultant on environmental issues to the National Indian Brotherhood.”29
Tataryn’s role here speaks to the other distinguishing feature of some of the work published in Alternatives by non-Indigenous authors on Indigenous topics in this period: among these authors were people who worked as staff or consultants for Indigenous communities and organizations. This includes not just Tataryn but also Peter Usher (“a geographer and Consultant to the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada”), Melville Watkins (“a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto and Economic Consultant to the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories”), Henry Lickers (“Acting Director of the St. Regis Akwesasne Environmental Division”), and Ted Jackson (“a researcher for the Canadian Association in Support of Native People [CASNP], in Ottawa, Ontario”). These authors certainly foregrounded these affiliations in order to lend credibility to their ability to speak to Indigenous issues, and they remained, nevertheless, a minority of those writing on Indigenous topics in Alternatives. However, their contributions help to explain why the substance of the pieces published in Alternatives, while rarely espousing an Indigenous perspective, were at times more grounded in Indigenous realities than preoccupied with constructions of the Indigenous “other,” as was often the case in environmentalist writings from this era.
“Marmion Lake Generating Station,” 1978
What follows as Chapter 7 was the article published in Alternatives and written by chief of the Sabaskong or Onigaming First Nation, Tobasonakwut Peter Kinew, describing Anishinaabe opposition to a planned coal-fired generating station to be built on Treaty 3 lands, west of Thunder Bay on Highway 11, and close to the First Nations communities of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) and Wabaseemoong (Whitedog). In the fall of 1977, Ontario Hydro announced that construction of a coal-fired generating station outside Atikokan, a settler community based on mining, logging, and transportation, was to begin within three months. The project was exempted from Ontario’s Environmental Assessment Act (1975) on the grounds that planning for the generating station was well advanced when the Act was proclaimed.30
Kinew details the character of Anishinaabe opposition to the project, framed in three ways. First, he maintained that Ontario Hydro had failed to properly consult with people living in the area whose livelihoods stood to be affected by the proposed development. Anishinaabeg from Seine River and Lac La Croix wanted to know how “trapping, hunting, fishing, logging, wild rice picking, and the tourist camps” would be affected.31 Second, their concerns about the effects on the land and wildlife were not in a vacuum but shaped by their experiences with the impacts of mining, pulp and paper, and logging operations in the area, specifically the devastating health and ecological impacts of mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows.32 The former concern meant that First Nations had lived experience with the extinction of sturgeon as a result of pollution and the effects of raised water levels on fishing and trapping. The Treaty 3 Chiefs Council also drew on the expertise of a McMaster University biologist, J. R. Kramer, who was concerned with the buffering capacity of local waters. Kramer asserted that “emissions from the proposed development must be considered as adding to the background which is at present marginal for most susceptible lakes.”33 Combined, these concerns demonstrate critical awareness of what would only later come to be recognized as cumulative effects: that the ecological impacts of resource and energy projects needed to be considered not only in isolation but in historical and regional context.34 Third, and lastly, the effects of pollution at Grassy Narrows not only led to heightened concern about mercury contamination from resource projects like the proposed Atikokan generating station but also ensured that the concerns of the Treaty 3 Chiefs Council as representing local Anishinaabe views were heard nationally and internationally. The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and Ottawa Citizen carried articles and opinion pieces about the proposed Marmion Lake development and local opposition.
The Treaty 3 Chiefs Council brought their concerns to the hearings of the Ontario Royal Commission on the Northern Environment (Hartt Commission), as it gathered testimony in Dryden, Ontario. The commission was prompted by public concerns over proposed new pulp and paper developments in northern Ontario and the growing awareness of the devastating impacts at Grassy Narrows.35 Kinew, the main public spokesperson in media reports at the time, emphasized that the commission’s response to Treaty 3 concerns about the development at Marmion Lake was a measure of its willingness to act on the issues surrounding resource exploitation and First Nations in northern Ontario.36 While commissioner Hartt convened a meeting between representatives of Treaty 3 and Ontario Hydro in early 1978, the conversation between the different parties had no consequential impact on the outcome of the project, and thereafter Hartt refused to focus on Marmion Lake and the Atikokan generating station.
The Treaty 3 chiefs had more success when it came to international pressure. Kinew notes in his piece in Alternatives that the proposed generating station would fall within Canada’s and Ontario’s SO2 guidelines (sulphur emissions were directly linked to acid rain, a major environmental issue of the day) but not within the stricter emissions standards south of the border.37 Kinew and the Treaty 3 Chiefs Council specifically called for scrubbers to be installed to mitigate sulphur dioxide emissions. These were what Ontario Hydro deemed too expensive in their 1978 meeting. However, as boundary waters in a protected wilderness area were among those that stood to be affected by the proposed generating station, not only was Kinew able to ensure media attention in the United States but US representatives formally requested that the Atikokan power project be referred to the IJC for review, a request that Canada denied.38 That Ontario, with the federal government’s support, was so invested in the Atikokan project and unmoved by First Nations’ concerns about its environmental impacts reflected not only the unyielding power inequities of the late twentieth-century colonial state but also, as part of this, the desire to ensure ongoing “development” in northern Ontario. Advocates for the Atikokan generating station emphasized the potential for new jobs, particularly in light of the anticipated closure of the local iron mine.39 As well, in the mid-1970s, Ontario Hydro greatly overestimated the future electricity needs of the province.40 Anticipated growth in demand led Ontario Hydro to commit to several new power plants, including the one at Marmion Lake. It was not until later in the decade and into the 1980s that the plans for new power developments would be scaled back.
Notwithstanding the environmental concerns highlighted by Kinew, the project received the green light. But construction of the Atikokan generation station was first delayed in 1979 and then only partially realized, as only one of the two planned 200-megawatt (MW) generating units was built. The generating station opened in December 1984 and operated into the twenty-first century, when greater public awareness of the role of coal-fired power plants in greenhouse gas emissions led Ontario to close or repurpose its thermal generating stations.41 And so, between 2012 and 2014, Atikokan generating station became the site of the Atikokan biomass conversion project, using wood pellets sourced from Ontario forests to continue to produce 200 MW at full capacity.42 The Pembina Institute, an NGO focused on clean energy issues, produced a report on behalf of Ontario Power Generation (a successor to Ontario Hydro) on the sustainability of such biomass projects in April 2011 that included among its socio-economic criteria that “Aboriginal peoples should have the authority to control biomass operations on their lands” and that full and meaningful consultation with Indigenous residents was key.43 Nevertheless, local First Nations, including Treaty 3 residents and a former chief of the Seine River First Nation, “were the least supportive” of the Atikokan biomass project, highlighting a range of ecological and economic concerns, as well as their enduring opposition to the limited control that Treaty 3 First Nations could exert over this and other resource projects in the area.44
In closing his 1978 article in Alternatives, Kinew raised four essential questions about the proposed generating station at Marmion Lake: Was this power source necessary? How could damaging ecological effects be prevented or mitigated? How can Indigenous people be “truly involved” in public consultations? And lastly, “Where were the environmental interest groups when we needed them?”45 Each of these questions resonates through the small green struggles examined throughout this volume, in particular, the critical intersection between Indigenous sovereignty and environmental activism explored by Welch, Grossman, and Evans. However, it is the last question that is perhaps most revealing about the character of 1970s environmental activism as represented in Alternatives. Kinew calls out environmentalists for their failure to effectively join forces with Indigenous opponents to the proposed power project. In the next issue of Alternatives, Jan Marmorek with Energy Probe replied to these concerns, claiming that Kinew had misunderstood Energy Probe’s role.46 But it was Marmorek who missed the forest for the trees. Kinew’s closing comments emphasized the need for ongoing, close, cross-cultural communication between Indigenous peoples and environmental groups in order to build a “strong alliance.” Kinew was calling for relationships to be built, predicated on shared concerns. Marmorek suggested that better communication could be achieved through Energy Probe’s new publication, The Probe Post. But if this analysis of Alternatives is any indication, small green activist publications were not a meaningful forum where Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices alike could hold equal sway. So Kinew asked, “Were environmental groups founded only to work with the white middle class?” Here Kinew takes Richard White’s well-known provocation, “Are you an environmentalist or do you work for a living?” and resituates it in a colonial context.47 Who did 1970s environmentalists work for? The white middle class? Or for the land and the people, fundamentally interconnected in Kinew’s perspective? That his remained the only prominent Indigenous voice published in Alternatives in its first decade was ultimately the most powerful evidence of the limits to engagement between small green and Indigenous activists in this early history of Canada’s modern environmentalist movement.
Notes
1 For a short history of the journal, see “The Alternatives Journal Story,” last updated 2018, http://www.alternativesjournal.ca/about/history.
2 Ryan O’Connor, The First Green Wave: Pollution Probe and the Origins of Environmental Activism in Ontario (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014), 66.
3 For more on the Conserver Society, see McLaughlin, this volume; Henry Trim, “Planning the Future: The Conserver Society and Canadian Sustainability,” NiCHE: Network in Canadian History and Environment, 8 October 2015, http://niche-canada.org/2015/10/08/planning-the-future-the-conserver-society-and-canadian-sustainability/.
4 The Notes are not included in the analysis of Alternatives’ contributors presented here.
5 “Eco-tactic no. 18,” Alternatives 1, no. 4 (1972): 19; “Eco-tactic no. 24,” Alternatives 2, no. 4 (1973): 10. For more on the hydrogen sulphide releases at Inverhuron, see Joy Parr, “Smells Like? Sources of Uncertainty in the History of the Great Lakes Environment,” Environmental History 11, no. 2 (2006): 269–99.
6 An example of these advertisements appeared in Alternatives 3, no. 2 (1974): 12.
7 See, respectively, multiple articles in Alternatives 2, no. 3 (1973): 6–37; James Hodgins, “Manitoulin South Shore,” Alternatives 8, no. 1 (1978): 11–14; Sanford Osler, “For a National Energy Policy,” Alternatives 2, no. 4 (1973): 18–19; Trevor Hancock, “Ecological Sanity and Social Justice: Public Health in the Age of Osiris,” Alternatives, 9, no. 4 (1981): 11–18; Mulford Q. Sibley, “The Relevance of Classical Political Theory for Economy, Technology, and Ecology,” Alternatives 2, no. 2 (1973): 14–35.
8 John Marsh, professor of Geography at Trent, authored seven separate articles in this period, and Jamie Benidickson, “a Peterborough resident” and researcher, five, making them the two most frequent contributors aside from the editor (Robert Paehlke, who authored three articles and many editorials) and David Brooks with Energy Probe, who also authored five articles.
9 Jamie Benidickson, “The Meaning of the North in Canada,” Alternatives 2, no. 3 (1973): 4.
10 Ted Schrecker, “Labour and Environment: Alternatives Conference Report,” Alternatives 4, no. 2 (1975): 34–43.
11 That said, unless a contributor specified an environmentalist affiliation or described themselves explicitly as such, I did not assume that every contributor was an “environmentalist,” although perhaps an argument could be made that, given the venue, I should have.
12 I made no attempt to judge which affiliation was more important, for example, whether for Harger, his status as an assistant professor was more or less meaningful than his work with SPEC.
13 Quotations from editorial authored by Robert C. Paehkle, “Decentralization, Environment & Community,” Alternatives 3, no. 1 (1973): 2.
14 For examples of the first type, see R. K. Vastokas, “A Hint from the Past,” Alternatives 1, no. 1 (1971): 10–11; Gary Moffatt, “Evolving into Freedom,” Alternatives 3, no. 1 (1973): 34; n.a., “ISCE,” Alternatives, 3, no. 1 (1973): 5. The one example from this decade of a sustained examination of Indigenous people that was highly romanticized was Allison Mitcham, “The Wild Creatures, The Native People, and Us: Canadian Literary-Ecological Relationships,” Alternatives 7, no. 2 (1978): 20–23.
15 See, for example, A. R. Lucas and Sandra K. McCallum, “Looking At Environmental Impact Assessment,” 5, no. 2 (1976): 30. Articles that addressed Indigenous peoples in detail in the context of resource development are counted among those with “significant” Indigenous content.
16 And not just in Canada: see, for example, Hanna J. Cortner, “Development, Environment, Indians and the Southwest Power Controversy,” Alternatives 4, no. 1 (1974): 14–20.
17 See, for example, Ted Jackson, “Clearcutting Canada’s Forests,” Alternatives 6, no. 2 (1977): 28–31; and Glen Scobie, “The Proposed Hat Creek Valley Coal Development: A Report,” Alternatives 9, no. 2 (1980): 2–4.
18 Bruce Hodgins and Shelagh Grant (both from Trent) would go on to co-author a 1986 review in Acadiensis (a history journal) that discussed how the Berger inquiry and environmentalist concern had reshaped northern historiography—they did so even as both contributed directly to this trend as authors in Alternatives (Hodgins, in particular, as he co-edited the 1978 special issue on the North). Bruce W. Hodgins and Shelagh D. Grant, ‘‘The Canadian North: Trends in Recent Historiography,’’ Acadiensis 16, no. 1 (1986): 173–88.
19 W. P. Adams and J. R. Glew, “‘The Arctic’ In Perspective,” Alternatives 3, no. 2 (1974): 37.
20 For instance, J. R. Kramer, “Atmospheric Composition & Precipitation of the Sudbury Region,” Alternatives 2, no. 3 (1973): 18–25.
21 See n.a., “Minamata: Canada,” Alternatives 5, no. 1 (1975): 36–39; Jim Harding, “Nuclear Power and Public Health: The Eldorado Refinery Proposal,” Alternatives 9, no. 4 (1981): 37–41; Lloyd Tataryn [and Noel Starblanket], “Notes from the Territories: Arsenic Poisoning,” Alternatives 7, no. 2 (1978): 12–15; Henry Lickers, “Saint Regis, the Shrouded Nation,” Alternatives 8, no. 1 (1978): 33–36. There were other articles on social justice and racism, including one by Wilson Head, “The Canadian Case,” addressing historical racism in Canada, in Alternatives 8, no. 2 (1979): 18–20; Janet McClain, “Energy Savings at Home – A Reasonable Place to Begin?” Alternatives 9, no. 3 (1980): 23–25, which addressed briefly housing inequity on reserves; and Jim Harding, “Development, Underdevelopment and Alcohol Disabilities in Northern Saskatchewan,” Alternatives 7, no. 4 (1978): 30–33, which addressed social and health issues facing northern Indigenous people in Saskatchewan.
22 I use “Aboriginal rights” rather than “Indigenous rights” here and elsewhere in this chapter to specifically identify the rights under discussion in the constitutional debates of the 1970s and 1980s, as this was the language employed at the time.
23 See, for instance, David Estrin, “Legal Weapons for Environmental Quality,” Alternatives 2, no. 1 (1972): 4–9.
24 Geoff Mains, “Some Environmental Aspects of a Canadian Constitution,” Alternatives 9, no. 2 (1980): 14–17.
25 For more on the Oldman Dam, see David Boyd, Unnatural Law: Rethinking Canadian Environmental Law and Policy (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003), 46, 159, 222.
26 There is no evidence that any of the 222 articles without significant Indigenous content had Indigenous authors.
27 Dorothy Rosenberg was a prominent peace and environmental activist later profiled in Peace Magazine, February–March 1986, 10, http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v02n1p10.htm.
28 Tataryn and Starblanket, “Notes from the Territories: Arsenic Poisoning,” 12.
29 Ibid., 12
30 The Environmental Assessment Act, 1975, SO 1975, c. 69. The Atikokan generating station was not the only energy project exempt at this time; so too was the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station: see Hugh Winsor, “Could Public be Right?” Globe and Mail, 2 March 1979, 7; and John Swaigen, “Environmental Law 1975–1980,” Ottawa Law Review 12 (1980): 452. For a broader history of environmental assessment legislation in Ontario, see Mark S. Winfield, Blue-Green Province: The Environment and the Political Economy of Ontario (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012).
31 Peter Kelley [Tobasonakwut Peter Kinew], “Marmion Lake Generating Station: Another Northern Scandal?” Alternatives 7, no. 4 (1978): 14.
32 High levels of mercury in water and fish downriver from the Dryden Chemical pulp and paper plant were discovered in 1969–70, and by 1977 the Grassy Narrows and Wabaseemoong First Nations had initiated legal action against the company responsible. For a timeline, see Delores Broten and Claire Gilmore, “The Story of Grassy Narrows,” Watershed Sentinel, 19 January 2017, https://watershedsentinel.ca/articles/story-grassy-narrows/.
33 Kinew, “Marmion Lake,” 14.
34 A brief overview of the recent history of recognizing the importance of cumulative effects in one of Canada’s most intensively developed industrial regions—the Athabasca oil sands—is described in Steven A. Kennett, Closing the Performance Gap: The Challenge for Cumulative Effects Management in Alberta’s Athabasca Oil Sands Region (CIRL Occasional Paper #18, May 2007), vii.
35 See Roger Suffling and Gregory Michalenko, “The Reed Affair: A Canadian Logging and Pollution Controversy,” Biological Conservation 17 (1980): 5–23; Michael Coyle, “Addressing Aboriginal Land Rights in Ontario: An Analysis of Past Policies and Options for the Future – Part II,” Queen’s Law Journal 31 (2006): 796–845; Ontario, Royal Commission on the Northern Environment, Final Report and Recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Northern Environment (Toronto: Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, 1985). One opinion piece on the Hartt Commission noted that it had been modelled on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry: see Jonathan Manthorpe, “Time Hartt Started Talking Tough,” Toronto Star, 19 January 1978, A10.
36 See, for instance, Michael Moore, “Credibility has Dipped, Hartt is told,” Globe and Mail, 18 January 1978, 8. Kinew is variously referred to as John or Peter Kelly or Kelley in news reports and other media from the time.
37 Dimitry Anastakis has examined the reasons behind and consequences of these different emissions standards in “A ‘War on Pollution’? Canadian Responses to the Automotive Emissions Problem, 1970–80,” Canadian Historical Review 90, no. 1 (2009): 99–136.
38 There is an important history of environmental impacts along the US-Canada border in forcing industrial change and mitigation in Canada: see, for instance, J. D. Wirth, “The Trail Smelter Dispute: Canadians and Americans Confront Transboundary Pollution, 1927–41,” Environmental History 1, no. 2 (1996): 34–51; Daniel Macfarlane, Negotiating a River: Canada, the US, and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).
For the specifics on the IJC reference in 1978, see “No IJC Inquiry on Coal Plant at Atikokan,” Globe and Mail, 23 March 1978, 8; Victor Malarek, “Acid Rain Report Called Grossly Inaccurate: Ontario Attacks U.S. Agency,” Globe and Mail, 12 May 1979, 1. For the longer history of the IJC’s role in regulating the ecological health of Ontario boundary waters, see Jennifer Read, “‘A Sort of Destiny’: The Multi-Jurisdictional Response to Sewage Pollution in the Great Lakes, 1900–1930,” Scientia Canadensis 22–23 (1998–99): 103–29.
39 Michael Moore, “Hydro Denies all Responsibility for Damage in Indian Graveyard,” Globe and Mail, 30 November 1977, 10; “Massive Hydro Project Renewing Faith in Economic Future of Atikokan Area,” Globe and Mail, 12 October 1977, 10.
40 Thomas Claridge, “Ontario Hydro Has Large Power Glut,” Globe and Mail, 25 February1983, 17.
41 See, for example, Keith Leslie, “Ontario to Close Four Coal-Fired Generating Units,” Globe and Mail, 4 September 2009, A6; Winfield, Blue-Green Province, 136–39.
42 Ontario Power Generation, “Atikokan Biomass Conversion,” last updated 2018, https://www.opg.com/generating-power/thermal/stations/atikokan-station/pages/atikokan-station-biomass-conversion-project.aspx.
43 Pembina Institute, “Biomass Sustainability Analysis: Summary Report,” April 2011, 7.
44 Cassia Sanzida Baten, “Woody Biomass-Based Bioenergy Development at the Atikokan Power Generating Station: Local Perceptions and Public Opinions,” (PhD diss., Lakehead University, 2014), 120, 130.
45 Kinew, “Marmion Lake,” 15–16.
46 “Letters,” Alternatives, 8, no. 1 (1978): 44.
47 Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. W. Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 121–85.