As students of the outdoors, the environment is a very sacred place to us and many, many other people. Our planet is slowly being destroyed as we speak. Norm Hann, a professional and dedicated stand up paddle boarder set out in 2010 to paddle the proposed En bridge oil super tanker route from Kitimat to Bella Bella, a sum of more than 400 kilometers.

Norm, along with his team presented his journey and what his plans for the future to the Discovery 10 class and the Sustainability 12 class. Norm Hann, Nicolas Teichrob, Anthony Bonello and Canadian Godfather of Surfing, Raph Bruhwiler are the 4 men that set out to film this experience. The Enbridge Northern Gateway Project proposed two 1177 kilometer pipelines across northern BC intruding many fisheries as well as fragile ecosystems. Everyday, the pipelines will carry 525000 barrels of crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat, BC where the second pipeline will carry 19300 barrels the other way back to Alberta.  Despite everything, Enbridge is planning to carry this out even if it means to destroy habitats and leak their crude oil into BC’s rivers and streams plus risk killing many fish, birds, animals and keystone species.

As many citizens of BC may not know, if the proposed pipeline of the Enbridge corps were to commence, the area of Kitimat would be annihilated. Not only will these big dangerous tankers have a colossal chance of leaking heavy crude oils that disperse into the water, ecosystems would be destroyed and species would be killed.

The 225 oil tankers that travel to BC’s Pacific North Coast every year will be facing dangerous waters as Norm described in his journey, he also told us that many of these mammals living in the ocean will be killed due to the sound disruptions produced from these massive tankers. Many of these animals need sound to communicate with each other, if Enbridge takes this away; they are basically taking away the animal’s lives.

At the end of Norm’s presentation, he and Nicolas introduced the classes about a competition on nature preservation. All you have to do is create a 30-60 second video about what you love to do nature. It could be anything from your love for mountain biking or hiking trails in the forest. This is the website: com The winner will be awarded with a paddle board and other winners will be getting outdoor gear such as backpacks, shoes and many more!

Contact Norm and his team here for any questions or ideas! http://www.normhann.com/contact/

His movie Stand is also on Netflix!