Renowned artist worries about possible oil spill

"It was a little difficult. I was a little hesitant," he said in an interview Thursday from his home in Fulford Harbour on Saltspring Island.

But the dripping black paint, covering the images of whales and seabirds, graphically illustrates what would happen if there was an oil spill in the B.C. waters that provide Bateman with much of his inspiration.

"It would be lights out for thousands of living things. Faded to black, to extinction," Bateman says in a video posted on YouTube, which he produced with the Dogwood Initiative, a Victoria-based environmental group trying to keep oil tankers out of sensitive northern B.C. waters.

The video shows Bateman talking about the abundance of coastal life, from shellfish to grizzly bears, and as he blots out the images, his fear of disaster striking the coast.

The picture on the easel is a print, not the original, he admitted slightly reluctantly. It is, however, a digitally reproduced limited edition, probably worth a couple of thousand dollars.

But the important thing is the message that the coast could face an environmental disaster, Bateman said.

"We have to think about what can happen to thousands of organisms if there is an oil spill, and we know these can be treacherous waters, from what happened to the Queen of the North and the Exxon Valdez," he said.

Fears over tanker traffic in B.C. waters have escalated since Enbridge Inc. last month rekindled plans for a $4-billion pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat.

If the pipeline is approved, the port would be expanded and crude oil shipped by tanker to overseas markets.

Bateman said rapid expansion of the polluting tarsands is a huge environmental worry.

"It's going ahead at this insane pace," he said.

"I would like to see us step back and calm down. Why spend extra money right now on producing more carbon for the planet? I am against the whole thing from beginning to end and an oil spill is just the end product."

Bateman, who has been involved in other environmental actions, worries about climate change and the shifts he has seen in wildlife patterns since moving to Fulford Harbour in 1985.

At that time, Bateman would gloat to friends in Ontario about the wealth of wildfowl outside his window, but now he often looks out and sees nothing in the water.

"I don't know if it's something on the summer grounds, overfishing or pollution in the water," he said.

"It's an overworked phrase, but these birds are the canaries in the coal mine," he said.

Charles Campbell, Dogwood Initiative spokesman, is hoping the video persuades people to sign an online petition at www.notankers.ca, asking the federal government to legislate a ban on tankers in northern B.C. waters, such as Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound.

Policies forbidding oil-tanker traffic have been in place since 1972, but the moratorium has never been formally written into legislation.

There is no benefit to the people of B.C. in allowing supertankers, and inevitable spills, into waters that support the fishing industry and coastal communities, Campbell said.

"People make mistakes and accidents happen and, in that area, there's no way to mitigate the damage," he said.