Mysterious Islands

The illustration Enbridge presented for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker route seems to have left out about 1,000 square kilometres of islands in the Douglas Channel including the narrow channels, islands and rocky outcrops that would make a potential tanker access route a little trickier than open water.

Here's the map as presented and with the missing islands added back in.

"That video is meant to be for illustrative purposes only. It's not meant to be to scale. It's meant to illustrate the pipeline route, not the marine aspects of the operation," said Enbridge spokesman Todd Nogier.

So it's an illustration not meant to be "illustrative". Gotcha.

To help "illustrate" how easy it is to get oil from Alberta to the Pacific Coast, I offer Enbridge the below map with other pesky geographic details fixed (like removing B.C. entirely) "for illustrative purposes only."

You can read the Vancouver Sun article about it here: http://www.vancouversun.com/Enbridge+sinks+islands+angers+critics/7099740/story.html#ixzz23puRmnHZ