BURNABY, B.C. — Anti-pipeline protesters are standing off against Mounties in a Metro Vancouver conservation area after officers moved in to end the months-long demonstration against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
At least six arrests were made Thursday morning, while a separate group of activists took a seated position in an area where they've been told to leave, linking arms and occasionally bursting into chants of "Stop Kinder Morgan."
Officers were enforcing a court injunction four days after a Monday deadline passed for environmentalists to vacate. The B.C. Supreme Court issued the order for protesters to dismantle round-the-clock encampments blocking workers from survey work.
Eric Doherty arrived on Burnaby Mountain to lend his support early Thursday, just before police arrived about 8 a.m. to start breaking up the camp.
"Maybe 20 minutes after I got here, a whole bunch of police arrived en masse, suddenly without any notice. People were quite upset," Doherty said in an interview as he watched police in bright yellow vests stroll around the perimeter of the barricade.
"I guess the police community relations officer who had been talking to people here also looked very sheepish, because apparently they had promised there wouldn't be any surprises and then there was suddenly a surprise."
Mid-morning, about 70 people were either demonstrating or watching from the sidelines, while about two dozen officers stood surveying the situation, Doherty said.
He said everything had been quiet at the camp when the police arrived and immediately began reading out the court's order.
"It seemed like maybe halfway through, a group of police officers charged past and into the camp and grabbed a man," he said. "I ran around there and they were kneeling on him and handcuffing him inside the kitchen area."
RCMP Staff Sgt. Major John Buis confirmed that arrests have been made.
Maryam Adrangi camped out overnight at the site and said she joined the demonstration to lend her support.
"I just felt like, as a community, we need to be coming together. We need to be supporting those who are risking arrest."
She said a handful of people were sitting on the pavement, linking arms, while others had been taken into a police wagon.
"I think the cops may have perceived them as leaders," she said of the people who had been arrested.
Simon Fraser University Prof. Lynne Quarmby, one of five defendants named in the injunction application, said her "heart's a little broken" by what's happening.
"It is very disappointing to me that this had to happen today," she said. "I can only assume that the RCMP is under tremendous pressure from Kinder Morgan. It doesn't really make logical sense any other way."
Quarmby said she had hoped the situation would not change until a separate legal action by the City of Burnaby made its way through the courts, adding she expected resolution on that matter within in a few days. The city has asked a federal court to expedite its own appeal of the National Energy Board's permission for the company to conduct its route assessment.
Kinder Morgan has held off from resuming work while the protesters were on the premise. It has said the survey work is a necessary part of the federal application process.
A spokesman for Kinder Morgan wouldn't comment on Thursday's arrest, and referred any comment back to the RCMP.
The company plans to bore two small holes and then drill 250 metres into the mountain. The field studies will help the company determine whether it can tunnel through the mountain as it triples its crude pipeline from Alberta.
Doherty said the activists appeared determined, and noted the situation was tense but also calm. He didn't think many of the protesters had experienced that kind of demonstration before.
"It's a mix of younger people, but also a lot of local residents here in Burnaby with grey hair that just haven't had something like this happen in their neighbourhood. (They) are motivated because of the attention to climate change and this is a local thing they can do about it."
Doherty said he attended the historic Clayoquot Sound logging protests on Vancouver Island in the late 1980s.
"I would say that this has a potential to be much bigger," he said. "Clayoquot Sound was isolated, a long way from a major city, but it also didn't have the huge climate justice movement behind it that this does."
