A Friendly Visit
One day, just as summer flowers were beginning to bloom over South Ridge, a nice man in a green golf shirt with three tiny spruce trees stitched above his heart appeared at our door. He was there to tell us, in the nicest possible way, that JD Irving was planning to build 58 industrial wind turbines across the horizon. Jeb and I stood there with our jaws dropping as he explained that the oil, gas and lumber tycoon, whose conglomerate includes dozens of other businesses including railways, hardware stores, food processors, and shipbuilding was moving towards renewable energy. A step in the right direction, no? But my hackles were up.
“Do you work for Irving?” I asked. He looked shifty.
“Not for Irving Energy,” he replied. “I’m a forester. I work for Deersdale Woodlands.”
“Owned by Irving,” clarified Jeb.
“You’re a forester?” I repeated. “What do you think of the state of the forest around here?”
He looked even shiftier. “Well, it’s a working forest.”
“It’s not working too well,” I said testily.
When I first came to New Brunswick, I marvelled at the trees - hundreds of hectares of them, in every direction. Viewed from a distance, their bounty seems inexhaustible; they are a renewable resource, after all. But over many Sunday drives, through many rambles through the woods, I began to notice some strange things. The landscape has a patchwork appearance; large dark swaths of spruce blanket the sides of some mountains, while other areas are crowded so thick with baby poplar, aspen, and dogwood that you can’t get past them. In some places the foliage has a weird, withered look to it, like it hasn’t been taking its vitamins. But the worst are the clearcuts. Lurking around every turn in the road, these blasted landscapes always evoke a sinking feeling. They are war zones, and the trees lost. It will take generations for them to recover - if they’re ever allowed to.
“This is what a working forest looks like,” said Jeb. “This land has been cut, cut and cut again. It’s all about maximum production and profit. When nobody re-plants a clearcut, you wind up with this tangle of fast-growing species, all growing too close together so they don’t mature properly. If they do replant, you’ll see a spruce farm. Then they’ll spray with glyphosate to kill the broadleaf plants. That’s not a forest - a forest needs diversity to thrive. Not much can survive in a monoculture.”
Something else bothered me - the lack of large, old trees. Once in a while we come across great stands of mature Yellow Birch, Maple, Cedar - even some rare Eastern Hemlock or Ash - and then my heart expands. These magnificent sentinels, usually found near water or on the tops of ridges, host a marked increase in animal sign and vegetation.
“Don’t get too attached,” warned Jeb. “All these trees are spoken for. Section by section, they’ll all get taken down by forestry. It takes Irving about five minutes to deprogram a fresh forestry graduate from the responsible sylviculture principles learned at school to industrial forestry methodology. Everybody needs a job; slower-growing native trees don’t have a chance. Soon there will be no real Acadian-Wabanaki Forest. Right now, there is only 1% of it left in all of North America.”
And here on our doorstep, with Mount Frederick Clarke behind him, shining in all the glory of its last days uncrowned by wind turbines, was a nice forester explaining how the most rapacious logging company in the province was about to join the environmental movement by entering the wind farm business.
Well, the guy was only doing his job. The nice man provided us with a pamphlet and an email through which, he assured us, we could find more information. Jeb politely showed him out; I emailed Irving, and got an auto-reply saying they were busy and would get back to us. I bet they were. Now what?
A few amorphous questions began to form. Where would this energy be going? How would the local community benefit? Who owns the land upon which this project would be built? How would it affect the surrounding ecosystem? Was anybody out there fighting this thing, or was it a done deal? These questions had answers; but the mainstream media, owned by Irving, wasn’t supplying them. So I took to the internet.
Facebook Strikes Back
It wasn’t long before I came across a Facebook group started up by other concerned citizens who were doing their research. Some of the most pointed posts came from moderator Krista Nichol, highlighting the misleading nature of Irving’s pamphlets. Front and centre was the claim that the project could power the equivalent of 100,000 homes in New Brunswick. But she noted that the company has no power-purchasing agreement with NB Power, so whether that energy is ever going to benefit New Brunswickers remains an open question.
No community benefits were on offer, I found, aside from some temporary construction jobs and around a dozen permanent positions likely to be filled by skilled technicians from elsewhere. The project would require road-building, upgrades and clearcuts all along the 90 kilometer length of its footprint. Most disturbing was the news that Irving was planning to use glyphosate to control vegetation at the upper elevations, which host the headwaters of three major river systems - potentially affecting the entire surrounding ecosystem. Further, I discovered that the proposed site is industrial freehold on unceded Wolastokey Nation territory, currently embroiled in a title case before the New Brunswick courts, and thus with an uncertain future. How does this fly?
There were multiple posts raising concerns over birds, bats, turtles, salmon, and all the animals that call this land home. Where would they go, people asked, when the surrounding area is so degraded by clearcuts? What about the rare or endangered plants and trees?
But the Facebook group had no answers there, and couldn't say why we weren’t we asked, as a community, if we wanted this. Our neighbor down the road, whose family has been homesteading this land for the last two hundred years, didn’t get a visit from the nice man and knew nothing about the wind farm. It seemed the news was travelling mostly by word of mouth.
Out on the river, we talked to a couple of local fisherman. “Yeah, I heard about it,” said one of them. The two men looked at each other as if asking the each other whether it was safe to talk. “I have an agreement with Jim Irving,” the guy continued.“I won’t work for Jim Irving and he won’t hire me.“
We all laughed. “What Irving wants, Irving gets,” he added, and everybody stopped laughing.
Maybe that’s true. One in ten New Brunswickers work for some arm of the Irving conglomerate; people fear for their jobs, or their family’s jobs, and don’t dare speak up. Government is so tied to role the company plays in our economy that they fall in line as well. All the same, this little Facebook group was gathering traction, gaining followers by the day, demanding accountability and answers. I joined up and found that by putting pressure on our municipal council, they had managed to get Irving to agree to host a public information session. A big win for a small group; it remained to be seen how the company would handle it.
A Public Display
On a hot summer day in August, Jeb and I pulled up at the Juniper Community Centre, where about a hundred people were milling around looking for answers. In their wisdom, the Irvings decided to hold the meeting on a Thursday, during work hours, by registration only - but there was a pretty decent turn-out all the same. Business owners and wage earners were largely absent, with two basic segments of the local population represented - rural retirees from the Juniper area, and a considerable cadre of back-to-the-landers from the South Knowlesville. These two groups represent our neighborhood’s past, and its potential future.
By the look of them, I guessed the retirees came from old New Brunswick stock – people who’ve raised their families on tree-lots and potato farming here for generations. Some of them probably sent their kids to university on Irving dollars, and paid their mortgages that way; but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about the forests. Many are hunters, fishermen, and avid sportsman, who know better than anyone else what's happening out there. Jeb and I often see them in the woods on their ATV’s and snowmobiles; when they stop to chat, every conversation eventually devolves into head-shaking and grumbling over the way forestry has misused the land.
Lack of opportunity takes much of the younger generation to the cities; the family farms left behind that haven’t been gobbled up by McCain or the Irving-owned Cavendish company are parcelled into lots and sold. Some of these lots in the Knowlesville area were bought over the years by a newer group of residents, families who wanted to raise their kids close to the land.
Newcomers are always viewed with a measure of suspicion by long-term locals; but many of these folks came with the goal of practicing the kinds of skills and traditions that were well known to early New Brunswick forbears - skills that will serve them well when the wheel of industry finally grinds to a halt. Quite a few live completely off-grid, using solar power and wood heat. They tend livestock and plant gardens, harvesting and foraging and preserving the way it used to be done before anyone ever thought of a wind farm. I figured these visionaries would be all for the project – but I was wrong.
A small hub-bub was breaking out as Jean Arnold emerged, unfurling a long banner protesting the windfarm and highlighting its location on unceded Wolastokey land. She was being photographed and filmed by local media as well as a crew from CBC, to whom she was probably familiar. Now in her 70’s, she’s been at the heart of many local and international environmental initiatives over her career, including Fallsbrook Centre - an education-based non-profit organization that taught sustainable living skills locally for many years. There was Tegan Wong-Dougherty, who runs the Knowlesville Art and Nature Centre, a school that incorporates Wabanaki-Acadian Forest restoration into kid’s curriculum. We saw Sparrow Houghton of Fairlight Farm and Forest Centre, a working homestead that offers programs teaching sustainable animal husbandry, farming and foraging. All of them were sporting anti-windfarm buttons made by Aiyanna and Fatima Rahali, a mother and daughter who make their living catering with fresh local produce and selling carvings and art inspired by the woods they live in.
But there were also a lot of those long-term locals - ordinary rural folk in plaid and hunting caps. A couple of them had a forester from Irving cornered, bellowing, “There’s no fish left in the Miramichi anymore, thanks to all your clearcuts! And now you want to build 700 foot wind turbines at our headwaters?”
“The land is so screwed up, there’s nothing left to hunt,” said the other guy. "And bird populations are taking a beating. Hardly any came to our feeders last winter."
“Well, when you cut a forest, the animals just move someplace else,” said the forester.
Right. And what happens when they have no place to go to?
A gaggle of reps from Irving circulated, all wearing pained smiles and tidy green golf shirts, quickly surrounded by clutches of people asking questions. A lot of the conversations seemed pretty heated, and I wondered if the Irving reps felt like they were being paid enough to be on the front lines. Their best audience was off-site, working for some arm of the Irving conglomerate; many of those that surrounded them either used to work for Irving and knew the score, or would never be caught dead in a feller buncher.
Eventually everyone wandered inside to look at the booths Irving had set up to demonstrate their plan. Though a formal Q & A wasn’t on the books, the reps agreed to take questions from the floor. Somebody produced a mic, and one lucky dude was anointed the role of moderator; a loose semi-circle of green golf shirts faced the crowd, which wasn’t looking any too friendly. There was nowhere to sit, so a sea of people shuffled and craned; I joined a few practical women who elected to park on the floor. People’s hands went up, and questions came fast and furious.
“Why are we finding out about this after the fact?” said one guy. “I live here, and I never saw so much as a flyer announcing this thing. I found out about it about it at the store!”
“We visited 250 households and distributed flyers,” said a guy from Irving.
“Nobody came to my house!” somebody called out. “Mine either!” murmured others.
“Look, we did our best,” said the Irving guy. “And we’re here today to provide information. If we can’t answer your questions, you can email the company from our website and we’ll get back to you.”
The room erupted into a din of bitter mirth. “I’ve emailed Irving 42 times and I get is the same auto-response!” one woman called out. Others grumbled in agreement.
The next woman the moderator approached signaled her distrust by refusing the mic, setting a dangerous precedent. “How are you going to build the foundations for these things?” she asked. “They’re huge. You’ll have to drill into the mountains, won’t you? Use dynamite? Fracking? How is that going to affect run-off into the streams? Are you going to be using glyphosate to manage vegetation? Is that all that going to wind up in the headwaters of our rivers?”
An Irving rep explained that until they got into it, they weren’t sure how those problems would be addressed, but would be attended to with the utmost care for water safety.
“They’re going to have to build roads, won’t they?” came a voice from the back. “How many, and how wide?”
“Most of the roads are already in place,” said an Irving guy. “That’s why it makes sense to put turbines there. Forestry roads and ATV trails. They’ll just have to widen them.”
Somebody snorted. “Those are dirt tracks. You’ll have to do a lot of widening to get one of those turbine trucks across them. Have you seen the size of those things?”
“And what about our ATV and snowmobile trails?” was another question. “Are we still going to be able to use the land? If they restrict access, isn’t that going to affect our tourist trade?”
“What tourist trade?” came another voice. “It’s already been ruined by logging. And when those turbines are up there, who’s going to be coming here to look at nature?”
“What about the birds?” asked somebody else. “Turbines kill birds, don’t they?”
“And bats,” called another.
“There are no bats left because of the logging,” Jeb murmured. “There’s no habitat for them.”
Then it was my turn. When the mic came to me, I asked what was in my heart; the fear that nothing anybody could ever say or do was going to stop Jim Irving from destroying that land.
“This has all been decided already, hasn’t it?” I asked. “This presentation is all just for show. You guys are going to put those turbines up there no matter what, aren’t you?”
“Hey hey,” said the guy from Irving, waving his hands. “We're following protocol here. Yes, we intend to put in this project if the Environmental Impact Assessment is passed. The Department of Land and Government will review the data, and if everything looks good, we’ll be breaking ground next year. We have biologists working in the field to assessing wildlife populations and making plans for mitigations where necessary.”
“Who is paying the biologists?”
“Well, we are.”
Really.
“I was just talking to one of those biologists,” Jeb said in my ear. “He said it was the best job he’s ever had.”
A Voice In The Wilderness
One lone wolf got ahold of the mic and faced the crowd angrily. “Listen, I drove to this meeting in an electric car!!” he trumpeted. “The world is in a climate crisis, and here people are doing this not-in-my-backyard syndrome stuff! This project is the way forward to de-carbonizing our electrical grid!” The moderator let him rant for a good five minutes, with the CBC film crew right up in his face.
Most people in New Brunswick can only dream of driving an electric car. Where we live, you’ll see about five cars go down the highway in a space of two hours; but if you get in trouble on the road, somebody is sure to stop and help you out. People are good neighbors here.
Sometimes to be a good neighbor you have to put up with a little inconvenience on behalf of the greater whole. We might not want to see a string of wind turbines slicing through our sky, but nobody wants to be accused of NIMBYism, either; we are all citizens of the same planet. Maybe the electric car-driving trumpeter had a point. We do need renewable energy solutions. But I’m not sure blasting dynamite and spreading glyphosate at the headwaters of three river systems is necessarily the best route, and I very much doubt that Mr. Irving is going about this project with a mind to with improving the lives of his neighbors, much less the environment.
The trumpeter played on until loud shouts of dissent eventually required intervention by the moderator, who retrieved the microphone anxiously and offered some conciliatory words. It was clear this thing needed wrapping up; more conciliatory words issued from the Irving reps, with reminders to check the company website and send emails with any more questions.
Then, from the back, came the voice of Jean Arnold. I’d been waiting to hear her speak up all through the meeting - a community elder with a fierce reputation for fighting the forces of corporate greed, she had been curiously silent throughout the meeting. But now she came forward with her arms in the air, in a gesture that seemed both prayer and outrage, offering one last objection on the basis of Indigenous peoples.
“It’s unceded land!” she declared. Nobody had an answer to that.
Sometimes the long reach of Irving’s tentacles poisons our enjoyment of this country; you round a corner and see a new clearcut, you see people spraying glyphosate, you see a new road being put in, and you wonder which trees are going down next. It’s a hopeless, helpless feeling, a fear of being overtaken, of being a voiceless victim to evil forces utterly beyond your sphere of influence. To imagine the degree to which the original inhabitants of this land felt this way when the white man came is beyond my reach; but sometimes Irving gives me a taste of it.
Media Perspective
As people were filing out, I snagged the cameraman from CBC and said, “Hey, I’m not sure if you know this, but a lot of the people here don’t even use power from the grid. For that guy to accuse them of NIMBYism is unfair. They’ve made a lot of sacrifices to live sustainably, and they don’t need electric cars full of cobalt to do it.”
“Yeah, we drove around today and got some film,” the CBC guy said. “Everybody at the base of that mountain seems to be on solar. What’s the deal?”
“I think it started with Fallsbrook Centre and the Art and Nature School. People just started moving there, and they’ve got a pretty tight community of like-minded folk. They’re doing what they can for the environment by living as simply as they can.”
“Would you be willing to say that on camera?” he asked.
“Sure,” I replied. “But if you want to find out more, you should talk to one of them,” I said, waving at Fatima and Aiyanna Rahali, who were still handing out their buttons.
Suddenly I found myself staring into a big black lens, fumbling for answers to the questions CBC reporter Sam Farley was firing at me. I’m not great in this context; I should have kept my mouth shut. All I really wanted to express was the irony that off-grid people who are fully conscious of their environmental responsibilities should have to watch their local habitat destroyed in the name of sustainability.
Fifteen-year-old Aiyanna said it better; she stared straight into the camera and spoke with all the fearless determination and courage of untested youth. “I’m not going to let this happen,” she said. “This is my home, my future and I care about the land that I grew up on.”
For a brief moment, some of her confidence drifted over me, and I imagined a world where the captains of industry might listen to the voices of the children who inherit the world we create. Then I wondered how that bright face would change should that string of turbines appear across her horizon. “I'm not against windmills per se, I'm against where they're putting them on that mountain behind my house,” she went on. “This site might be great as far as Irving is concerned, but shouldn’t it be happening on land that is already cleared, so trees and animals don’t have to die?”
In just a few words, little Aiyanna nailed it, with all the might of CBC to record it for posterity. I was glad they were there - after all, Jim Irving doesn’t own the CBC.
But to my surprise, when the article and news broadcast came out the next day, front and centre was JD Irving’s questionable claim that their plan was all about decarbonizing New Brunswick’s power grid. The crowd’s very real concerns were painted as “rowdy,” without consideration of their substance; it incorrectly referred to the South Knowlesville community of individualists as a “commune.” While the trumpeting electric car-driver appeared the voice of reason in a wilderness, the fact that the land in question is disputed in a First Nations claim was completely ignored.
A Closer Look
On a bright day in September, Jeb and I took a drive out to Brighton Mountain. We wanted to see for ourselves what was to be sacrificed on the altar of environmentalism. All along the woods road to the site were great stands of massive birch and maple swaying peacefully in the wind, their fall colours just coming on; the ground beneath them was peppered with animal tracks, the air fresh and alive with sound of birdsong. Crystal clear streams flowed from the ridges to join the Miramichi River, buzzing with insects. Around the base of the mountain to the left emerged a wetland flapping with birds, crowned by a truly spectacular beaver lodge. Nature in all its splendor was carrying on as it always has, with an axe hanging over it.
“Well, we still have our fifteen acres of forest,” Jeb said on our drive back home. “Nothing’s going to take that down." In the woods below our house, not five kilometers from where the turbines are to stand, we hear the cries of the nighthawk in summer and see lynx tracks in winter; but without a surrounding habitat for these threatened species, there soon will be nothing left to protect.
In the years before I came, Jeb fed his family by guiding, hunting, fishing and trapping, and remembers the days when he drove sled-dogs through pristine forests of hundred-foot trees in every direction. “I couldn’t do that anymore,” he says. ”The land won’t support it.”
He's not the only one that remembers. The other day, he ran into a couple he’s met several times over the year during his rambles in the woods. They’ve been coming back to our area to camp, hunt and fish for decades, but - “This will be our last time here,” the man said. “The land has changed so much, it just breaks our hearts.”
Ours, too.
Community Engagement
Accusations of NIMBYism require serious soul-searching; but the flip side of that coin is to hole up in your shell and ignore an injustice. I’ve never thought of myself as an activist, but Jeb has a phrase that has stuck with me - “Protect what you love.”
So I started turning up to a weekly meeting of residents that gathers to share information and hatch plans to protect Brighton Mountain. It’s a good feeling, to be surrounded by smart people working together; much more can be achieved when everyone brings their own skill set and ideas to the group. Our numbers vary meeting by meeting; people are busy, but do what they can.
Most often, it’s bunch of women around the table, drinking tea and brainstorming, the men mostly leaving us to our planning and offering practical help when asked. Fatima organized the first of several community group hikes to Brighton Mountain; some of the men took up the torch and followed up, coming back with photos of spectacular waterfalls, highly biodiverse vegetation, and threatened species – just in case anybody believes Irving’s claim that the land is mostly degraded.
We downloaded the 500-page environmental assessment, available on the JD Irving site, and studied it - gleaning many more questions than answers. Among them was why “no follow-up” was required for mitigations of every single environmental impact listed. I wrote in and asked three times and never received a clear answer to that question. All of us in the group have written to all levels of government, to JD Irving, and to the Technical Review Committee of the environmental assessment, receiving countless form letters and canned PR responses at every level.
Using the photos the men had taken, we produced a 2025 calendar highlighting the diversity of life on the proposed site, and sold it at local fairs to raise money for an informational flyer that counters JD Irving’s claims. We’ve circulated it among friends and neighbors, hoping that they will catch some of our faith that we can make a difference, and offer their efforts to further our cause. Mothers baked cookies to help raise money. I even dusted off my guitar and wrote a protest song, which I taught to the kids at the Nature School; they sing it with such gusto I’d like to take them on the road.
Through it all, I’ve learned a lot about wind farms – including the fact that they are rapidly blanketing Canada’s countryside from coast to coast, often on environmentally sensitive sites and without community benefits. The federal government is making it easy to do, with lax regulations and rubber-stamped environmental assessments. And it seems that these assessments, so casually granted, are now going the way of the Dodo – or should I say, the Canada Lynx. Out of British Columbia came yesterday the news that they won’t even be required there for new wind projects. And in our own back yard, it turns out that that three more wind farms have been proposed, just to close any gaps wildlife might be able to escape through. If people don’t speak up, soon there will be nothing but tree farms and wind farms across our great Canadian wilderness.
As a group, our biggest hurdle has been combating the ingrained attitude that “What Irving wants, Irving gets.” People fall in line. If they work in government or business, they feel they have to. God help you if you’re caught liking a post from Krista’s Facebook group; it might get you fired. But maybe you’ll be more like one local lady that quit her job so she could speak her mind.
A Christmas Wish
Just as the snow began to fall, we got word: Jim Irving got what he wanted, and the environmental assessment was approved. A few days after later, several local families, with kids in tow and Jean at the helm, gathered in the cold outside a community centre in Hanwell. The great man himself was hosting a meeting there for business and government leaders, extolling the virtues of his company’s forestry practices. I came armed with protest signs and my guitar; I guess I’ve turned into an activist, after all.
When I struck the opening chords, the kids sang out loud and clear; around their necks were little cardboard cutout mountains featuring drawings of the animals they were hoping to save. Meanwhile, Mother Nature was getting frostier by the moment, but they didn’t care.
People entering the building had to pass by us, and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of those little faces - perhaps some guessed that Jim Irving had arranged Christmas carolers for them as welcome. Many stopped and listened until they realized that we were not heralding the birth of Christ, but the death of an ecosystem, and slithered inside uncomfortably.
One man stayed and listened all the way through with a broad smile on his face. “Good luck to you,” he said, as he went into the lobby. You find allies in the most unlikely places.
By the time the meeting started, it was clear some of the little ones needed to get out of the cold. “Well, let’s go in,” said Jean. “This is a community centre. It belongs to all of us.” We looked at each other, shrugged, and followed her. In the lobby was a table set up with folded cards lined up in rows for all the participant who’d been invited. Only about half of them had been taken. We shuffled around trying to warm up, wondering what to do next.
Through a glass wall was the meeting hall, where seated at the head of the table was our nemesis, arms crossed: Jim Irving in the flesh. Some other guy was doing the talking, waving his arms around in the chilly blue light of a Powerpoint presentation in front of some very bored-looking people, who one by one, became aware of our presence.
Suddenly, somebody began to sing. Other voices joined in. Soon everyone in the lobby was standing, facing the astonished group, singing our song through the glass doors at the top of our lungs. It was a face-off - between the cold calculations of commerce and the hot blood of community conviction. Everyone in the room looked at us with open mouths, unsure of what to do next.
Then, Jean threw open the door to the meeting hall.
Worried bureaucrats leapt from their seats and rushed the lobby, trying to plead with the singing families; I just kept on banging my guitar. In a corner, beneath the din, I saw one of the mothers speaking earnestly to a worried-looking lady who seemed to be in charge of the building; on her face I could see a war going on between duty and responsibility. We sang and sang, our voices rising together in pure joy of our togetherness, as the meeting collapsed into confusion.
At some point, Jean strode inside the hall with one of our calendars. A few moments later, she emerged with a twenty-dollar bill. “I got Jim Irving to buy a calendar!” she said, grinning. “His assistant, too!”
We roared. All the way home, I was laughing.
They say Jim Irving always gets what he wants, but I’m not sure he really wanted that calendar. He got one anyway, and had to cough up the green for it. So we’re not giving up. It feels good to connect with neighbors and work together in defense of what you love, and one thing is certain – we’ll have a better chance if we try. Maybe under those spruce trees on Jim Irving’s breast is a heart, and he too was touched by the fervency of those little carollers. If he wasn’t, I’d say his heart is about three sizes too small.
And hey. There’s always the Ombudsman, or maybe the First Nations will make a stand. Maybe Donald Trump will want a cut, and the whole thing won’t be worth it. Personally, I believe that if the Grinch’s heart can grow three sizes, maybe Jim Irving’s can too. It’s Christmas, and miracles do happen.
To support the cause, email windfarmnewbrunswick@gmail.com and purchase a 2025 calendar.
Blown Away By Greenwashing In New Brunswick
By Krista Nichol
In April 2024, JD Irving Limited announced plans to build 58 industrial wind turbines on Brighton Mountain in rural New Brunswick, on unceded Wolastoqey Nation land. This project threatens one of our most biodiverse forests, and the headwaters of three major rivers. It requires clearcutting, road construction, and the use of glyphosate-based herbicides in high elevation areas. This destruction could irreparably damage the local ecosystem, already suffering from the company's previous clearcuts and extensive glyphosate use.
While wind power is part of the renewable energy mix, building industrial wind farms on fragile, biodiverse ecosystems is not environmental progress. It’s greenwashing, and it’s happening across Canada, with governments bowing to corporate interests and advancing projects that ultimately harm the environment. Taxpayer-funded incentives are driving a rush to renewables without adequate regulations or long-term planning, leaving future generations to clean up the mess.
What can you do? If you’re concerned about wind projects in your area, act now.
Question industrial wind farms. Demand responsible site selection for turbines. Mandate direct community benefits to the host communities through policy. And highlight the need for stricter provincial and federal regulations. Let’s make sure that the pursuit of clean energy doesn’t come at the cost of the land, our people, and the biodiversity required for climate change resilience. Together, we can hold corporations and governments accountable and call out greenwashing.
BLOWN AWAY
Copyright Leslie Noel Butler 2024
(Capo 3, Key of B flat)
VERSE 1
G C G Em
Took a drive to Brighton Mountain where the wind farm is gonna be
G C G Em C
They say nobody lives there but the animals and trees
G C G Em C
They say nobody lives there tear it down and paint it green
Em C G C G D C
I don’t believe a word they say after everything I’ve seen
VERSE 2
Looked around on Brighton Mountain ‘neath the hemlock and the ash
The birch the ancient cedar all as green as cold hard cash
There’s the bear, the bats, the beaver, there’s the lynx, the fox and hare
And up in the sky the eagle flies but I guess they just don’t care
CHORUS
C G D
Blown away, blown away yes it just blows me away
Em Cm G C G D G
If the windfarm stands on native lands it will all be blown away
VERSE 3
Have you been to Brighton Mountain where the wind blows wild and free
They say they need the power but it’s not for you and me
We'd rather have the flowers they will trample every seed
they will poison all the streams that flow to the mighty Miramichi
CHORUS
VERSE 4
Take a drive across the country from the forests to the seas
They will cover it with windfarms if the government agrees
Do they see somebody lives here plant a flag and stand your ground
Cause the wind belongs to you and me and the lost can still be found
CHORUS
C G D
Blown away, blown away yes it just blows me away
Em Cm G C G D Em
If the windfarm stands on native lands it will all be blown away
C G D
Blown away, blown away yes it just blows me away
Em Cm G C G D Em
If we join our hands they’ll have no chance we will blow them all away
G Cm G C G D G
If we make our stand across this land we can blow them all away
BLOWN AWAY: Trees, Not Turbines for One New Brunswick Community / Copyright Leslie Noel Butler 2024
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