MONTREAL - Environmentally-inclined marchers will set off on a 600-kilometer trek from Rimouski to Montreal on Monday in an effort to publicize their demand for a 20-year moratorium on shale gas development in Quebec.
The march will last 33 days, from May 16 to June 18, and will visit 33 municipalities before arriving in Montreal.
The marchers will visit regions where rights were sold to allow for gas exploration, according to the spokesman for the event, Philippe Duhamel.
The marchers seek one-generation moratorium on shale gas development to allow for technical advances in the field in hopes of increasing the safety of the practice.
"We have a hardcore group of about 30 walkers who are basically going to do the entire walk," says Duhamel, who has been carefully planning his footwear, as he is among that group.
The marchers will be sleeping "mostly in community centres," said Duhamel. "We're being hosted by very generous people all across Quebec, often it's the municipality welcoming us," Duhamel tells CTV Montreal.
Duhamel says that hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, has been known to contaminate groundwater and hold other disastrous environmental consequences.
He also asserts that Quebecers are insufficiently informed of the issues around shale gas, partly because the government has confused the issue with a strategic environmental assessment on the industry.
Duhamel argues that Quebec must harness green energy, such as wind power. He says that Quebec is considered "the Saudi Arabia of wind."
Their path will bring them down the Richelieu River as well, to St. Mathias, where a woman found drillers on a piece of property last August. "That set off the whole saga that's known as the shale gas controversy," says Duhamel.
The march will eventually end in front of Premier Jean Charest's downtown office on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal.
Those wishing to participate in the trek are invited to visit the marchers' site.
With files from the Canadian Press.
