An opponent of the Northern Gateway pipeline is in the midst of running 1,170 kilometres in a campaign to stop the project and encourage use of alternate forms of energy.
Kim Slater, 32, started at the BC-Alberta border on July 8 and in the nine days since, she has made it as far as Prince George, nearly 340 kilometres to the west.
She's on a break right now - driving a compact car powered by vegetable oil and with a solar panel on its roof down to Kelowna for a wedding - but will be back in Prince George on Tuesday for a gathering with local supporters and then resuming the run the next morning.
All told, Slater will have run the length of Highway 16 from the border to Prince Rupert and then back to Kitimat where the pipeline will end if it's built. She will have covered roughly the same distance as the pipeline is proposed to be.
"It's been going really well and I owe that to just the tremendous amount of support that I've been given and just the tremendous energy around these issues," Slater said. "Just connecting with the people here in the North who've been working so hard in stopping the pipeline but also on exploring alternatives whether they're going off grid in their homes or at work."
Highlights have included meeting with Dunster resident Seth McDonald, who has launched his own biodiesel company.
Slater has been averaging about 40 kilometres per day - slightly less than the length of a marathon - and usually covering the distance in four hours.
She lives in Whistler, where she had been a environmental coordinator for the municipality and is now the executive director of the Sea to Sky Clean Air Society.
The locally-based Sea to Sands Alliance will be hosting a gathering for Slater on Tuesday at Artspace, above Books and Company on Third Ave., starting at 7 p.m. She'll be leaving the next morning from Mr. PG at the corner of Highway 16 and 97 at 8 a.m.
Her progress can be followed at www.bandtogetherbc.com and at www.facebook.com/BandTogetherBC.
