MAD AS HELL

DARREN PORTER IS MAD AS HELL AND IT SHOWS. Just watch his Facebook video. He doesn’t hold back. He wants the whole world to know about how the multi-national corporation Emera got to kill fish where he fishes—and get away with it.

Darren’s take is refreshing and bracing. You don’t even need to know all the ins and outs of what makes him so mad. You just feel good watching him get mad and refuse to accept the bullshit offered up to shift the blame for a disaster from a corporation to the local community. We need more of this.

We all need to: “get mad as hell and not take it any more.”

Some background

Emera owns and operates a NS Power dam on the Gaspereau River in Nova Scotia. Darren, and the local community, blame Emera practices at the dam for a massive kill of smelt-like gaspereau fish during their annual run on the river last spring. Darren knows how these things work. He is a river fisherman and spokesperson for the Fundy United Federation of fishermen’s associations.

On March 22 the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced it would not be charging the corporation with any violations of our fisheries protection laws.

The department failure to charge Emera lets the company shift blame for the kill on to a community charity. The community group asked the corporation for a change in water flow through the dam for one day to make a rubber duck race better.

Darren points out the fish kill started days before the race.

The spring run of fish on the Gaspereau River was going on before Champlain came from France to the Bay of Fundy.