Fort McKay: Where Canada's Boreal Forest Gave Way To Oil Sands

Fort McKay, Canada, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th Nov, 2022 ) :The acrid stench of gasoline permeates the air. And the soot coats everything in sight: the trees, the bushes, even the snow in winter. And all day long, explosions send the birds soaring to safety.

At Fort McKay near Fort McMurray in western Canada, in the heart of the country's boreal forest, the pines and the people were long ago cleared out to make way for huge open-pit mines dedicated to excavation of oil sands.

It's one of the biggest industrial projects in the world: as seen from above, the zone is in stark contrast to the vast expanse of green surrounding it. Huge black holes are gouged in the brown earth -- they are giant pools of water.

Then there is the network of roads on which hundreds of trucks drive every day, and the immense factories, with smoke spewing from wide chimneys.

On the ground, the noise is deafening. And it's quite a scene for the uninitiated: in the middle of the huge basins dug to capture the polluted waters stand huge metal scarecrows clad in helmets and security vests.

The ghoulish creatures are designed to scare away millions of migratory birds that arrive every year in this northern part of Alberta province. Adding to the mayhem: airhorns that are used several times a minute.

The mines have made the people left in Fort McKay -- many of them Indigenous Canadians -- very rich. But the installations have also profoundly altered and damaged the land on which their ancestors relied for centuries.

"Everything has changed, everything's destroyed to me now," says 74-year-old Margie Lacorde who lives in the center of town in a house chock full of knick knacks and framed photographs.

The talkative Lacorde, who belongs to the Metis people, is sad to see the parched, yellowing leaves due to drought, and wishes she could still swim in the rivers and gather berries in the forest like she did in her youth.

The hunting grounds are long gone -- the land was sold for industrial use.

"The pollution is killing our nature," Lacorde tells AFP, though she herself worked in the oil industry for years to provide for her family.

She remembers her childhood with a significant bit of nostalgia.

Back then, families gathered snow and melted it to use as drinking and cooking water. Such a thing would be impossible today -- once the snow hits the ground, it's immediately filthy, covered in the dust that filters down from the factories.