Arctic Sunrise – Greenpeace

Explorers can really be a neurotic bunch. They argue about all sorts of things as everyone tries to assert their own unique brand on what this activity is ‘really’ about. Since there is no handbook, or established representatives within this ‘society’, this will continue until the most hostile in the bunch get their way to define, as with any group, what this activity is about. While some of the arguments are quite valid, one being people should not be compiling shopping lists of locations to visit but rather going out and find something new on the odd occasion, some are kind of silly because they seem to miss the entire point of what ‘exploration’ is actually about –actually getting to see a location.

Some arguments include:

- “Rural is not really urban exploration”

- “Exploration is about visiting abandoned buildings as opposed to active ones.”

- “Active buildings are much more real then abandoned ones.”

- “Getting access to a location through proper channels is artificial”

Most of the time people explore what directly around them, and not everyone has access to large steel mills, power plants or giant storm drains. This is mostly for reasons of practicality. Not everyone can take weekly road trips in search of ‘new’ places. Most of the time there is something around you if you take the time to look. Unfortunately too many people rely on others to deliver them information about what’s new, recently closed down and then everyone ends up with the same photos. Sometimes a place like the brickworks just lends itself to this status as it is both easy to access and very photogenic, which also unfortunately means that everyone and their mother has been there.

We believe that exploring is a mix of every type of location you could imagine, from industrial to institutional, all sorts of infrastructure such as bridges and storm drains, and locations that are abandoned and also active. While we do have more of an interest in heavy industry and infrastructure, we don’t discriminate if it has the potential to be interesting as all that matters to us is seeing a location and documenting it.Sometimes interesting things present themselves to you in the strangest ways. I happened to overhear two people chatting in front of me on the bike path as we wound our way downtown. They were talking about the recent Greenpeace Action at Nanticoke Station (one of the remaining coal powered generating stations) and how those ‘crazy activists’ pulled off another amazing feat by managing to board the Algomarine and briefly halt the delivery of coal to the station. Greenpeace being such media darlings ( I believe their arrested colleagues had not been released yet), decided to dock the Arctic Sunrise in Toronto for the weekend and let people board the ship. There were not that many people around (due to no directions being provided by the media) so I didn’t have to wait long to get aboard where we received a brief overview of the different sections of the ship and told we could go where we wished! Being forever cynical, I thought I was going to get a lot of “don’t touch that”, “don’t go there”, but the crew was genuinely interested in talking about what their duties were on the ship and many had interesting stories about their more exciting moments aboard the Arctic Sunrise. This is the one of the elements that is really lacking when one visits an abandoned space – and what is also usually lacking on official tours as well — the actual stories of the people who worked/lived on these places.

The arctic sunrise itself has a colorful history, once being a sealing ship, which was confronted by Greenpeace when making a delivery for the French government in the Antarctic. Most famous of vessels actions was boarding and effectively preventing the dumping of the Brent Spar in the North Sea (which you can read about in a back issue of Infiltration) which is where I remembered the ship from.

I was quite amazed once I got inside that space was quite small, and that inside the hull was room for a small helicopter that they occasionally used on actions. And those small rubber boats… its mind blowing what Greenpeace gets done with those things – as they have utilized them from the very beginning. This is a space that I simply could not have accessed by any other means (apart from actually being stationed on the ship) and it was a unique space to see. After seeing the ship first hand and hearing the stories of the men and women who have dedicated themselves to this cause, it really hits home the true risks some individuals are willing to take to further a cause.

Photos by Kathy.