bcbusiness.ca december 2014 BCBusiness 55
The saviour, lately, has not been govern-
ment but instead the energy industry, whose
pipelines surround the town. Calgary's Inter
Pipeline gave Bruderheim $50,000 this
year so it could buy a new school bus. Shell
donated $80,000 to buy a diesel generator to
ensure the fire hall has uninterrupted electric-
ity. "Those kinds of things are key building
blocks of our community," Hauch says.
It's not surprising, then, that Hauch says
there are few detractors to Enbridge's North-
ern Gateway project in Bruderheim. "Any-
thing that you come up with, there's always
going to be someone opposed to it. I can't say
there wouldn't be anyone, but I haven't talked
to any folks here that are opposed," he says.
Instead, there seems to be an accepting
indifference. "People hear a bit about it in
the news but, to be honest, it's not really an
issue for most folks," Hauch says. "The more
business we can get in town, that's positive.
In our area, knock on wood, we haven't seen
pipelines leak."
MAYerThOrPe, ALBerTA
163 km northWest of BrUderheIm
Morning traffic outside of Bentley's stops as a cat crosses
the main street. Inside the popular greasy spoon, the
television news reports that local Shawn Hennessey—
convicted of manslaughter for his role in the killing of
four
RCMP officers here in 2005—is being granted day parole. Mitch
Neaves, his partner Sally Mathieu and their former apprentice Dave
Webb are debating as they wait on their orders of eggs, bacon and
hash browns. When Gateway comes up, Webb, 40, raises his voice. "I
don't like spills and we can't be CNing this oil across the country," he
says, referring to shipping oil by rail. "We're going to have more Lac-
Mégantics. It's just not good."
Webb has lived in Mayerthorpe his entire life. He was 18 when
he started working at the local
UFA co-operative, which Neaves and
Mathieu ran at the time. When Neaves and Mathieu decided to retire,
moving to Lac Isle, Webb took it over.
As Webb talks about Lac-Mégantic, Neaves and Mathieu nod in
agreement. The three go on to list numerous oil-by-rail spills in the
area in the past few months—spills so small they aren't reported on
the news but that nonetheless worry them. "There's [a spill on the rail-
way] all the time," Mathieu says. "When a train goes off a track, until
somebody tells the news, no one hears about it; they just come out and
clean it up." Neaves and Webb rack their brains to list all of the spills.
PoPulation
1,398
