Emily Kelsall and Lucy Everett dressed in inflatable dinosaur costumes for a protest at a TMX work site in Burnaby.
Two B.C. women have been sentenced to jail time for their involvement in a protest of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline in Burnaby.
Emily Kelsall and Lucy Everett dressed in inflatable dinosaur costumes last spring, scaled a wall, and entered a TMX worksite in a bid to draw attention to the climate emergency, according to the court.
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They were charged with criminal contempt for violating a court-imposed injunction preventing blockades of the work site, according to the environmental activist group Protect the Planet. Both plead guilty.
On Friday, the B.C. Supreme Court imposed sentences of 21 days in jail and $1,240 restitution for Everett and 28 days jail and $1,240 restitution for Kelsall, according to Dan McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the B.C. Prosecution Service.
The women are part of a “T.Rex Against TMX” campaign to stop construction of a pipeline they say ignores Indigenous rights and climate science. The dinosaur costumes symbolize mass extinction.
“The TMX pipeline is an atrocity,” said Kelsall, in an earlier statement. “Canada is acting criminally by ignoring Indigenous rights and climate science. I’ve concluded it’s up to ordinary citizens, like me, to rise up. Someone needs to act on behalf of humanity and reason. I’m proud of what the T.Rexes have accomplished, yet there’s so much more to do. I don’t want to go to jail, but I’m ready.”
More to come…
