Regardless of one's feelings towards the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, all of Prince George should mourn the loss of Janet Holder.
Raised in Prince George until her final year of high school, Holder's feelings for this city and the entire region were deep, strong and sincere. As Enbridge's vice-president for western access, she returned to her hometown in 2011 to oversee Northern Gateway and she was a fixture at the company's local office.
Holder saw nothing but opportunity for Prince George and central and northern B.C. residents from Northern Gateway. An Enbridge employee since 1992, she rose through the ranks, becoming president of the company's gas distribution arm in 2008.
Her experience gave her an intimate understanding how essential pipelines are to Canada's national infrastructure and economic well-being. She understood far better than most how pipelines moving fuel in various forms from one location to another are as common across the North American landscape as highways carrying cars and trucks, covering hundreds of thousands of kilometres in Canada alone.
Like highways, pipelines aren't perfect and accidents do happen but transporting fuel through pipelines is not only more efficient but far safer than shipping it by truck or rail.
An engineer by training, Holder saw her life and her work through an engineer's eyes. That's both a compliment and a criticism.
Engineers, like architects, carry both the imagination and the self-confidence of artists. Building complex working buildings and machinery is a celebration, of beauty through design and functionality, and the height of human intellect and creativity. The more technically demanding, the more significant the accomplishment.
Seen through Holder's perspective, Northern Gateway was simply another engineering challenge, another opportunity to apply perseverance and skill to benefit everyone.
Build the safest, most reliable pipeline ever constructed through challenging and remote geography, filled with mountains, rivers, lakes, animal habitat, private property and First Nations territory? We can do that was Holder's unequivocal response. Enbridge has the engineering, expertise and experience to get the job done.
For Holder, protecting the environment, building the pipeline and transporting raw bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat and the Pacific Ocean were compatible goals, since the miracles of modern engineering can make anything possible.
She didn't want any kind of spill or accident as much as any First Nations or environmentalist advocate. Her pride in her work, her profession, her employer and the knowledge and accomplishments of her co-workers made Northern Gateway personal. Pride and confidence in workmanship - another sign of the engineer as artist - are powerful motivators always found on the path to innovation and excellence.
The money was certainly good but the challenges of Northern Gateway, both the technical issues but also convincing the public of the project's merits, appealed to Holder.
Unfortunately, the engineer's endless optimism and ability to solve problems can also be a blindfold. Holder, like her Enbridge colleagues and much of the pipeline industry, was honestly puzzled and dismayed by both the quantity and the fierceness of the opposition to Northern Gateway. Puzzled because the public has so much faith in the safe and continued operation of all of the engineering and technological marvels that power modern society but why not pipelines? Dismayed because engineers, like artists, prefer admiration, not condemnation, from the public for their work. Holder kept a stiff upper lip and projected calmness in the public eye but the constant and unfair portrayal as a greedy natural resource developer who cared more about corporate profits than keeping people safe and the land clean and pristine was no doubt a painful burden she carried in private.
She also kept her illness private, which is why the news Monday of her death from leukemia shocked and surprised so many.
Thankfully, Northern Gateway's final fate will not be Holder's final legacy. She will be remembered for her drive, her intelligence, her work ethic and her positive attitude, all traits she developed in her childhood days in Prince George.
