It's not just about 500 dead ducks
May 11, 2008 04:30 AM
Gillian Steward
Who could have known that a flock of ducks on its way home for the summer was fated to become a powerful symbol of all that is wrong with Alberta's most vital industrial project – the tar sands?
As much of the world knows by now, about 500 of them died when they set down on a lake of oily goo, usually referred to by the petroleum industry and the government as a tailing pond – a much more neutral phrase than 22 square kilometres of toxic sludge produced when oil is extracted from the sandy soil.