Friday 20th June 2008

We managed to leave Fort McMurray with all our goods intact!

Time on the river was much slower today as the water flow has reduced considerably. We camped on an island a kilometre from the Suncor work site (Suncor is a mining company that mines the sands by the Athabasca river.........and sadly the landscape is ravaged by this mining).

We were there for about three hours, during that time an employee of Suncor had been driving up and down on the mainland opposite to where we were. Just as Tony was about to hit the sack at around ten past ten, a car pulls up opposite us, and a fellow gets out and with the aid of a megaphone shouts "You are on Suncor land and you cannot stay there, you must move on." He repeated this a few times, and only when he saw us packing to leave did he then get back into his car and drive off.

We couldn't believe that an island could be a part of their property but as we were visitors we felt that we had no choice but to move on. We were far from impressed at having to pack up our gear and get back into the canoe at that time of night. By the time we had packed up and got back into paddling gear the sun had set. We paddled off downstream wondering why on earth someone from Suncor didn't mention this to us as soon as they saw us there. As we passed the site with chimneys, lights, noise and smoke billowing out of the stacks and actually being able to taste the pollution we just wondered why anyone would want to work there (it could only have been for the good dollars). Although the site looked a futuristic and unsightly landscape, the setting sun and smoke haze blended together and created a strange but oddly beautiful scene allowing us to momentarily forget the damage and pollution caused by this type of mining.

Luckily some 5kms or so downstream we found another little island where we had to erect the tents with a plague of mozzies attacking us.