Neil Young's anti-oilsands tour hits Calgary Sunday
Neil Young, who has been touring across Canada with an anti-oilsands message, will be in Calgary this weekend.
"If the treaties are broken, all hell will break loose, and the blood will be on modern Canada's hands,” Young said Friday in Regina.
Young will play to a sold-out crowd at the Jack Singer Concert Hall on Sunday night.
The rock star’s anti-oilsands message is being heard, and now the pro-treaty message is ramping up.
"Right now, in the wake of expansion, those rights are being completely diminished and alienated,” said Young.
“That is against the law."
This is all about the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation fighting to stop Shell Canada's Jackpine Mine expansion which is nothing new for them.
In the last five years, the First Nation has spent more than $2 million in legal fees challenging oilsands development.
About $300,000 is expected to be raised during this tour. Young said some of that money will pay employees and band members and the rest will go to the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation legal fund.
"I don't get paid. I don't make anything,” said Young.
“There's no profit, there's nothing. So everything we make goes to the legal defence in this dire situation."
After tonight's concert in the Regina, Neil Young and company make their final stop - in the heart of oil country and Calgarians have mixed feelings about his arrival.
"His political views have completely ruined any respect I had for the guy,” said Calgarian Gary Stitt.
Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy also weighed in on Young on Friday.
The singer had been quoted as saying Young was "extreme, crazy." He released a statement Friday saying his comments were in regard to what Young said about Fort McMurray, not the oilsands.
"I believe that Neil Young is brave and articulate and very well informed about the oil sands," wrote Cuddy.
"To clarify, I was asked about the town of Fort McMurray, not the oil sands. My comments regarding the exaggeration of the conditions there were about Fort McMurray. The oil sands are as visually grotesque as described. Fort McMurray, on the other hand, is a thriving town whose people are directly affected by the issue of the expansion of the oil sands."
