Slick by Sara Cassidy Read Free Book Online

big day?”
    She’s right. It’s the last day of November, the day Argenta’s lawyers are supposed to hand over the compensation. We check my email. Sure enough, there’s a letter from Jamaica. Subject line: The Bill is Paid!! Olive and I dance a polka around the kitchen, then read:
    Dear Liza and the Girls of GRRR!
    The money in full was wired to the campesinos’ lawyers today. That’s the good news.
    The bad news is that tankers are moving in your province’s coastal waters, even though they’re banned. And you can expect a lot more.
    A Canadian company is building a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands through your province to the ocean. Once the pipeline reaches the ocean, the oil will be shipped out to Asia and the US on supertankers.
    Right now tankers are carrying thousands of liters of condensate, a flammable poisonous chemical, up your rocky coast, through Gitga’at territory. Condensate is used to thin crude oil—it’s like molasses—so that it flows more easily through the pipelines.
    You can bet that one day a tanker will smash against the rocky shore and spill enormous amounts of oil or condensate into the habitat of millions—no, trillions —of marine plants and animals.
    We don’t need a spill or an explosion.
    Can GRRR! help raise the alarm? Oil and water don’t mix!
    In defiance of the oil industry,
    Jamaica
    â€œWow,” Olive whistles. “She’s intense!”
    â€œThe news is intense, Olive!” I point out.
    â€œWell, we’ve got to find out how much is true,” Olive argues.
    â€œChickening out again?” I tease.
    â€œNo! I just want to know what’s true and what isn’t. And what is Gitga’at?”
    The name sounds familiar. Then it hits me. “They’re First Nations,” I say. “They live in Hartley Bay, in the Great Bear Rainforest, where we go every Christmas.”
    â€œYeah, you rent that little cabin. I always wish I could go too.”
    â€œLast year Mom ordered clam chowder in the town restaurant, but they weren’t serving any. The waiter told us that a big ferry had sunk nearby in 2006. It hit a huge rock and went down.”
    â€œI remember that. Two people died, right?”
    â€œYeah. The waiter thinks the people at the helm were having a little romance. They had turned down the lights and were playing music. A warning alarm was turned off.”
    â€œUh, Liza, what does that have to do with clam chowder?”
    â€œWell, the ferry has been leaking oil into the water ever since. The clam beds are badly polluted. The clams are basically poison.”
    Olive and I spend the rest of the afternoon researching—googling tar sands, condensate, tankers and supertankers, oil spills . The best part was learning more about the Gitga’at. Their territory is huge, way bigger than Lake Michigan. Of course, the oil companies hadn’t talked with them. They just barged in, exactly like the oil companies did to the Mayans.
    According to the articles we found, the Gitga’at were frightened. Some saw the ferry sinking as an omen of things to come. A supertanker is way larger than a passenger ferry.
    Olive and I open Google Earth and imagine steering a supertanker, which is even bigger than a city block, down the narrow shipping route. A supertanker needs three kilometers to come to a full stop. So what if the captain and sailors are expert? The ferry operators were professionals and had the best navigating technology, but sailed straight into a giant rock sticking way up out of the water.
    I am pretty angry by the time I read the comment from scientist Janie Wray, who studies whales in the area. “If there is a major oil spill, it will be the end of the Great Bear Rainforest. It would be the end of the salmon, the eagles, the bears and the wolves.”
    I am still mad when Slick comes over for supper. He mentions that he did some gardening that