Saboteurs : Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil

by Nikiforuk, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781551991016
• ISBN10: 1551991012
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2002-10-01
• Publisher: Macfarlane, Walter & Ross

Summary

Winner of the 2002 Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime Winner of the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize Finalist for the 2002 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Nonfiction At Trickle Creek in northern Alberta, Wiebo Ludwig thought he'd buffered his tiny religious community from civilization, but in 1990 civilization came calling. A Calgary oil company proposed to drill directly in view of the farm's communal dining room. Ludwig hadn't realized his land ownership didn't include mineral rights. He wrote letters, petitioned, forced public hearings, and discovered the provincial regulator cared little about landowners. After the oil company accidentally vented raw sour gas, Ludwig's wife miscarried. Nearby parcels of land were clear-cut. Ludwig's northern boundary became a highway for semi-trailers loaded with drilling equipment. Seismic crews raced up and down his road. More sour gas wells popped up. People defending their property rights gradually turned into monkeywrenching terrorists. Hostilities began with nails on the roads, sabotaged well sites, and road blockades. They culminated in death threats, shootings, and bombings. The Mounties recruited a Ludwig acolyte as an informant, and in an attempt to establish the man's credibility the RCMP itself blew up an equipment shack at a well site. Ludwig was eventually charged with 19 different counts of mischief, vandalism and possession of explosives and later convicted on five charges. While he was out on bail, joyriding teenagers went to Trickle Creek at four o'clock one morning. Someone fired at one of the pickups, killing 16-year-old Karman Willis. Despite a lengthy investigation, the RCMP has not laid charges. This is a taut, careful work of nonfiction that reads like a thriller and raises unsettling questions about individual rights, corporate power, police methods, and government accountability. The reader comes to question whether Wiebo Ludwig can be dismissed as a zealot. And to ask: What would I have done in his shoes? From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

<b>Andrew Nikiforuk's</b> work as a journalist – for such magazines as <i>Saturday Night</i>, <i>Maclean's</i>, <i>Canadian Business</i>, <i>Report on Business Magazine</i>, <i>Georgia Straight</i>, and <i>Equinox</i> – has earned him four National Magazine Awards, the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, and top honors from the Association of Canadian Journalists. His best-selling book <i>School's Out: The Catastrophe in Public Education and What Parents Can Do About It</i> was shortlisted for the Gordon Montador Award for writing on issues of key social interest. He lives with his wife and three sons in Calgary.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>

Table of Contents

Maps	x
Genesis	1	(13)
The Woes	14	(28)
Rumours of War	42	(12)
Saboteurs	54	(13)
War	67	(9)
Dance Floor	76	(26)
Numbers	102	(23)
The General	125	(17)
Anger	142	(17)
Judas	159	(13)
A Killing	172	(11)
Romans	183	(20)
Revelations	203	(20)
Lamentations	223	(17)
Judges	240	(10)
Epilogue	250	(13)
Sources	263	(5)
Acknowledgments	268	(3)
Index	271